Learning during times of failure and blame: how English local government responds to central government intervention

Abstract

How policymakers learn from failure is a perennial question. Some argue that blame avoidance hinders nuanced reflection and learning, suggesting that less blame could lead to more focus on avoiding repeated policy failures. However, the conceptual and empirical relationship between failure, learning and blame is underdeveloped in political science. By uncovering the way policy actors interpret failure, learning and blame, this thesis argues that learning is the means by which failure and blame are known. This finding results from an interpretive comparative case study analysis of the “dilemmas” and “narratives” English local government actors encountered during central government interventions. Specifically, the interventions into Birmingham City Council (2014-2020) and Northamptonshire County Council (2018-2021). The dilemmas were shaped by two governance “traditions” – centralisation and autonomy – each with competing ideas about local government’s purpose, power, and accountability. By identifying the narratives that emerged and how they changed over time, this thesis finds that local actors shifted from contesting failure to accepting wrongdoing and responsibility. By showing that groups learn to shift from contestation to consensus over failure and blame, this thesis provides a novel connection between concepts which past research has only narrowly examined. This thesis also contributes to the policy failure literature by demonstrating that actors compete over the boundaries of failure as a means to delimit and/or expand notions of change embedded within. By tackling the under-researched topic of “blame-games” outside of the public view, this thesis shows that those who witness their colleagues “lose” blame-games draw lessons from such experiences and apply these to future conflicts. Finally, this research contributes to the policy learning literature by demonstrating that learning can entrench, rather than challenge, ideas about power within governance