AGENCIFICATION AND BLAME SHIFTING: EVALUATING A NEGLECTED SIDE OF PUBLIC SECTOR REFORMS
研究了机构化改革如何影响机构管理者在受到公众批评时指责政治上级的倾向，以及部长和议员的指责修辞变化，以丹麦铁路公司1995-2007年的转型为例。
Abstract The establishment of autonomous agencies has been a strong trend in the public sector across countries for about 25 years. In line with the official rhetoric accompanying such reforms, almost all reform evaluations have focused on various kinds of performance improvements. This article investigates a set of behavioural consequences of such reforms, which have been claimed by the blame avoidance literature, but have never been subjected to systematic empirical analysis. In particular, the article examines how a reform of agencification influences the propensity of agency managers to blame the political principals when the agency is subject to public criticism. Furthermore, it examines how the reform influences the blaming rhetoric of ministers and MPs . To evaluate such reform effects systematically, the article introduces a new empirical approach and illustrates the utility of the approach in a case study of the transformation of the national Danish railway company from 1995 to 2007.