Economists Say There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. The burgeoning ‘risk industry’ – no doubt set for further expansion after the terrorist attacks on US heartlands in 2001 – says there is no such thing as a risk-free lunch. Anthropologists say there is no such thing as a blame-free risk. And political scientists know blame is central to politics. The growth of the ‘risk industry’, the associated explosion in discussion of safety and hazard issues and the search for better ways of assessing and managing risk, has been much commented on. The BSE issue, highlighted in the UK by the blockbuster sixteen-volume Phillips report in 2000, is taken by Ulrich Beck as emblematic of what he claims to be a ‘risk society’. Michael Power says an age of ‘new risk management’ has dawned in corporate governance, sparked by high-profile business failures and accidents. Much academic and media attention has been paid to risks from food, electric power lines, mobile phones, dangerous people, even dangerous dogs (ostensibly a rather traditional risk, but one that in recent years has been the subject of draconian new regulatory regimes in several countries, including France, Spain and Germany). Such developments in the ‘risk game’ have been described by best-selling sociologists like Beck and Giddens (who make much of their world-historical significance in an era of ‘high modernity’) and by social psychologists interested in what shapes risk perception or ‘amplification’.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0017257X00003213

I.—A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address

The Risk Game and the Blame Game

This chapter centers on the multiple ways in which personal and collective actions, embedded in cultural and historical contexts, form—and are formed by—development over the life span. Section 1 considers the rise of action perspectives in developmental research, with a particular emphasis on the mutually constitutive relations between development, culture, and processes of self-regulation and intentional self-development. Section 2 delineates different action-theoretical approaches and discusses related conceptual or definitional issues. In the third section, notions of contextual embeddedness, plasticity, regularity, universality in development are addressed from an action perspective. Sections 3 and 4 focus more closely on activities and component processes of intentional self-development, as well as on the development of beliefs and competences related to the control of personal development over the life span.


Keywords:

action theories;
cultural regulation of development;
developmental goals;
developmental plasticity;
development of intentionality;
future selves;
intentional self-development;
life planning;
personal control;
self-continuity;
self-evaluation;
self-regulation

Action Perspectives on Human Development

That many different officials contribute in many different ways to decisions and policies in the modern state makes it difficult to ascribe moral responsibility to any official. The usual responses to this problem—based on concepts of hierarchical and collective responsibility—distort the notion of responsibility. The idea of personal responsibility—based on causal and volitional criteria—constitutes a better approach to the problem of ascribing responsibility to public officials. Corresponding to each of these criteria are types of excuses that officials use in defending the decisions they make. An analysis of the conditions under which the excuses eliminate or mitigate responsibility provides a foundation for accountability in a democracy.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1954312.pdf

Moral Responsibility of Public Officials: The Problem of Many Hands

Public officials are not passive bystanders in the electoral process. Rather, they actively try to shape or manage citizens' perceptions of events (particularly those involving negative outcomes) through explanations or accounts. I argue that consideration of citizens' understandings of political accountability and how these are shaped by public officials represent critical missing components of models of electoral behavior. The distinction between excuses and justifications provides a valuable conceptual framework for understanding the impact of political accounts on a variety of judgments and psychological processes. I examine satisfaction with various excuses and justifications and their impact on subsequent evaluations of the official.

Managing blame: an experimental test of the effects of political accounts

1. Introduction 2. Epistemic value 3. Reasons for belief (I) 4. Reasons for belief (II) 5. Assertion 6. Action 7. Justification.

I.—A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address

Citations

The Risk Game and the Blame Game

Action Perspectives on Human Development

Moral Responsibility of Public Officials: The Problem of Many Hands

Managing blame: an experimental test of the effects of political accounts

Justification and the Truth-Connection

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