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From Claiming Credit to Avoiding Blame: The Evolution of Congressional Strategy for Asbestos Management

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  • Twight, Charlotte

Abstract

This paper develops a theory synthesizing credit-claiming and blameavoidance explanations of congressional behavior and evaluates it against asbestos policy in the United States from the 1920s through the 1980s. Public policy is viewed as shaped by officeholders' ability to achieve political ends through augmenting information costs and other transaction costs facing the public. Public perceptions are seen both as the endogenous product of congressional information-cost manipulation and as an exogenous constraint that changes in identifiable ways over time. Different policy stances - open credit claiming, concealed credit claiming, early-stage blame avoidance, and full-scale blame avoidance – are predicted to emerge in response to specified conditions, yielding implications about the expected timing of public policy changes. Specific types of transaction-cost manipulation are predicted to accompany the identified policy stances. The US asbestos policy experience is shown to be consistent with the predictions of the model.

Suggested Citation

  • Twight, Charlotte, 1991. "From Claiming Credit to Avoiding Blame: The Evolution of Congressional Strategy for Asbestos Management," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 153-186, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jnlpup:v:11:y:1991:i:02:p:153-186_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Charlotte Twight, 1994. "Political Transaction-Cost Manipulation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 6(2), pages 189-216, April.
    2. J. Michael Angstadt, 2020. "Applying Stone in a Western Landscape: Ranchers, Conservationists, and Causal Stories in the “American Serengeti”," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 37(2), pages 244-259, March.
    3. Twight, Charlotte, 1996. "Federal control over education: Crisis, deception, and institutional change," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 299-333, December.
    4. Ching Leong & Michael Howlett, 2017. "On credit and blame: disentangling the motivations of public policy decision-making behaviour," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 50(4), pages 599-618, December.
    5. Charlotte Twight, 1992. "Constitutional renegotiation: Impediments to consensual revision," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 89-112, December.

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