Shifting the Blame: On Delegation and Responsibility

Abstract

Abstract:To fully understand the motives for delegating a decision right, it is important to study responsibility attributions for outcomes of delegated decisions. We conducted an experiment in which subjects were able to delegate the choice between a fair or unfair allocation, and used a punishment option to elicit responsibility attributions. Our results show that, first, responsibility attribution can be effectively shifted and, second, this constitutes a powerful motive for the delegation of a decision right. Furthermore, we propose a formal measure of responsibility and show that this measure outperforms measures based on outcome or intention in predicting punishment behavior.

On the Difference between Social and Private Goods

“…Going back to Allais (1953) and Kahneman and Tversky 8 This subsumes motives like shifting responsibilities as, for example, observed by Bartling andFischbacher (2011) andHamman, Loewenstein, andWeber (2010). 9 If the utility of a lottery L over outcomes x ¼ ðx 1 ; x 2 Þ specifying the realization for each of two players can be written as the utility over expected realizations UðLÞ ¼ uðE L ðx 1 Þ; E L ðx 2 ÞÞ with u non-linear, then it cannot be represented as expected utility UðLÞ ¼ E Lũ ðx 1 ; x 2 Þ for any functioñ u because this is linear in probabilities.…”

Theorising the use of private military and security companies: a synthetic perspective

“…The political-instrumentalist model relies on the principal-agent literature on accountability-evasion, responsibility-shirking and blame-shifting as motives for delegation (Hood 2002;Flinders and Buller 2006;Bartling and Fischbacher 2012). According to this strand of principal-agent research, delegation may be a rational strategy for political cost-sensitive actors who seek to avoid accountability for (potentially) controversial or unsuccessful policy decisions and measures.…”

Deliberate Indiscretion? How Political Corruption Encourages Discretionary Policy Making

“…In contrast, I argue that the simple act of delegating more responsibility to implementing bureaucrats separates politicians from policy outcomes enough to reduce the amount of blame voters assign them for outcomes. This is the finding at the center of a growing body of experimental evidence demonstrating that alienating decision-making power can redirect blame for undesirable outcomes (Bartling & Fischbacher, 2012;Coffman, 2011;Duch, Przepiorka, & Stevenson, 2014;Fershtman & Gneezy, 2001;Hamman, Loewenstein, & Weber, 2010). …”

“…An illustrative experiment features a decision-maker (politician, in our setting) who must allocate resources fairly or unfairly among a group (Bartling & Fischbacher, 2012). The decision-maker can allocate the resources directly or allow a delegate (bureaucrat, in our setting) to do it.…”