|
President's page
The Federal Blame Game
By George Anderson
Playing the “blame game” is sometimes the way certain federations operate. The first things to pop up on Google for ‘blame game” are articles on borderline personality disorder and the psychological dynamics of childhood relations. Is this cutting a little too close to the federal bone?
The blame game involves politicians at different orders of government trying to pass the buck for things that have gone wrong. It runs counter to a supposed virtue of federalism, namely enhancing political accountability to voters.
Sometimes, the blame game itself rouses the ire of voters. Thus in last year’s federal elections in Australia, Kevin Rudd promised that his Labor Party would end one particular blame game, the one between the Liberal government in Canberra and the Labor governments in the states. As Prime Minister, he has moved quickly on a new federalism agenda, boiling down some one hundred conditional grant programs to a handful, with much less intrusive controls. In exchange, states will develop various benchmarks by which their performance will be measured.
Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast from central Florida to Texas in 2005, was one of the most devastating natural disasters in US history. The devastation extended to the reputations of many politicians and officials and to the image many Americans had of their federal system.
Such an event provides an exceptional opportunity to look at the blame game in a federal system because the public follows the details of a major disaster much more closely than they do most issues. Publius: The Journal of Federalism recently dedicated an entire issue to the attribution of blame around the Katrina disaster.
Politicians seek votes and avoid blame. In Katrina’s case, things went spectacularly and dramatically wrong. Who to blame? It was not always the politicians. Lack of communication between governments, the physical challenges of the area and governments in general were often targeted. When blaming one government or politician more than others, partisan affiliation strongly affected judgments. The media played an important role in framing the debate, with stories about blame most often discussing the federal government. Sophisticated voters were more likely to blame particular officials or governments than were less sophisticated (typically poorer and
less educated) voters. On balance, despite the partisan bias in judgments, the public was influenced by the facts of the case and this provided some weak, if rather diffuse, accountability.
It would be discouraging if things stopped there. When things do go wrong, it is important that governments and officials learn from the experience and make corrections for the future. There were numerous official inquiries after Katrina and many in-depth reviews by scholars and other independent experts. These all showed that mistakes were made by all three orders of government – so there was blame for all. But they also showed major structural and personnel problems at the federal level, many related to how the emergency measures organization was integrated into the new Homeland Security department, whose focus was on terrorism, not natural disasters. These inquiries contain clear policy lessons.
Unfortunately, these lessons have not been at all adequately reflected in reforms within and between governments. And public attention has moved elsewhere. A failure to act on important lessons is not just a shame, it is perhaps the greatest justification for blame. But the public may only realize this when another disaster comes around. 
|
