Beyond Blame Avoidance: Elite Explanations for Social Policy Reform and their Effects on Public Opinion

Our paper addresses the second objective of the workshop, (1) by invstigating how policy-makers explain their social policy choices, (2) by analyzing how these explanations affect various aspects of public opinion, including policy-makers’ perceived legitimacy as well as support for the explained policy and the welfare state at large, and (3) by discussing the broader implications of variation in the effectiveness of different explanatory strategies. First, we begin by developing an argument about the conditions under which differentially motivated policy-makers pursue different types of explanation strategies (excuses versus justifications) for social policy retrenchment, expansion, and innovation. Excuses are designed to absolve policy-makers of personal responsibility, while justifications intend to legitimize a policy by linking it to a desirable outcome allegedly achieved by the policy. On average, justifications are more effective than excuses in increasing the policy-makers’ legitimacy and support for the policy, but using justifications effectively requires reliable information about the preferences of the constituency that is being addressed. Second, we test the effects of excuses and justifications on public opinion using an experimental design. We manipulate the content of elite explanations between different types of excuses and justifications, based on a text analysis of actual social policy debates in varying institutional contexts. Third, based on our experimental findings about the effectiveness of different explanatory strategies, we draw additional conclusions about the empirical fit of our theoretical argument regarding the behavior of policy-makers, and we point out the implications of our findings for democratic legitimacy, welfare states, and the policy-making process.