Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Third party government delivery of services complicates citizen accountability structures as well as citizens’ assessment of punishment. If a private company provides the service, how culpable is government when service delivery failure occurs? Recent experimental research examines the politics side, James et al. (2016) conclude only delegation a public unit inside the government reduces blame to local politicians and Marvel and Girth (2016) find sector influences perceptions of mayoral control. Looking at the bureaucratic side, Piatak, Mohr, and Leland’s (2018) experiment demonstrates that citizens attribute blame to whichever sector is providing the service, except for in the case of budget shortfalls where blame is shifted from the contractor to the government.

This experimental study explores how privatization and deservingness influence citizen blame attribution when something goes wrong. We use a timely experiment of prisoner transport, where recently private companies have been found negligent. Utilizing a 2 X 2 experiment, we vary 1) whether the transportation is provided by the government or a for-profit firm and 2) whether the prisoner died due to negligence in transport or the prisoner escaped and killed an innocent bystander due to negligence in transport. The results have implications for research and practice on blame attribution and the role of deservingness perceptions in shaping public opinion. Our first hypothesis is that citizens will place greater blame on the government than the contractor. Our second hypothesis is that citizens’ blame will be higher when the bystander is killed than when the prisoner dies. We will examine the data descriptively with crosstabs and with regression to control for potential confounding factors, like political orientation. Our results demonstrate some of the pros and cons of contracting out services when public safety is at stake in light of who is harmed.

James, O., Jilke, S., Petersen, C., & Van de Walle, S. (2016). Citizens' blame of politicians for public service failure: Experimental evidence about blame reduction through delegation and contracting. Public Administration Review, 76(1), 83-93.

Marvel, J. D. (2014). The Boston Marathon bombings: Who's to blame and why it matters for public administration. Public Administration Review, 74(6), 713-725.

Marvel, J. D., & Girth, A. M. (2016). Citizen attributions of blame in third‐party governance. Public Administration Review, 76(1), 96-108.

Piatak, J., Mohr, Z., & Leland, S. (2017). Bureaucratic accountability in third‐party governance: Experimental evidence of blame attribution during times of budgetary crisis. Public Administration, 95(4), 976-989.