political mistakes and policy failures in international relations

Political Mistakes and Policy Failures in

International RelationsEDITED BY ANDREAS KRUCK,

KAI OPPERMANN, ALEXANDER SPENCER

Political Mistakes and Policy Failures in International Relations

Andreas Kruck • Kai Oppermann Alexander Spencer

Editors

Political Mistakes and Policy Failures in

International Relations

ISBN 978-3-319-68172-6 ISBN 978-3-319-68173-3 (eBook)https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68173-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933066

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-tional affiliations.

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer NatureThe registered company is Springer International Publishing AGThe registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

EditorsAndreas KruckGeschwister-Scholl-Institute of Political ScienceLudwig-Maximilians-University MunichMunich, Germany

Alexander SpencerInstitute of Social Sciences and HistoryOtto-von-Guericke University MagdeburgMagdeburg, Germany

Kai OppermannDepartment of PoliticsUniversity of SussexBrighton, East Sussex, UK

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68173-3

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This edited volume represents the fruits of a collective endeavour that spans several years. Our special thanks go to the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich for their generous support for a workshop on foreign policy failures in Munich back in January 2014 from which many of our original ideas for this vol-ume have emanated. We are also grateful to the CAS for supporting our work through a Visiting Fellowship for Kai Oppermann in Munich which enabled us to work together on our project and which greatly facilitated our collaboration. Since then, we have benefited from comments and feedback at various international conferences and workshops. In particu-lar, we wish to thank the participants of a workshop on the construction of mistakes in international politics, which we organised at the 2014 European Workshops in International Studies in Izmir in May. Many thanks also to the participants of panels on the topic at the International Studies Association Annual Conventions in Toronto (2014) and Baltimore (2016), the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) General Conferences in Glasgow (2014) and Prague (2016), the IR Section Conference of the German Political Science Association in Magdeburg (2014) and the Political Studies Association Annual Conference in Brighton (2016). Furthermore, we would like to thank Tina Rosner, Tim Niewerth and Katharina Storbeck for their research assistance at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg as well as all those involved in the

Acknowledgement

vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

production of this book at Palgrave. Last but not least, we would like to thank the contributors to this volume for bringing their expertise and knowledge from a range of different fields into the study of mistakes in international politics. Without doubt, the volume itself includes objective and subjective mistakes, failures and omissions. For these, we apologise and accept the blame.

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1 Introduction: Mistakes and Failures in International Relations 1Andreas Kruck, Kai Oppermann, and Alexander Spencer

Part I Foreign and Security Policy 31

2 From Precaution to Prejudice: Mistakes in Counter-terrorism 33Timothy Legrand and Michael Lister

3 The Social Construction of Mistakes: Germany’s Abstention on UN Security Council Resolution 1973 on Libya 55Kai Oppermann and Alexander Spencer

4 Where Berlin Got It Terribly Wrong: German Foreign Policy Fiascos in the News Media 79Mischa Hansel, Henrike Viehrig, and Danae Ankel

5 Policymaking in the Pub: New Labour’s European Policy Failure 101Oliver Daddow

contents

viii CONTENTS

Part II International Political Economy 121

6 Private Governance Failures and Their Consequences: Towards Enhanced Legal Control of Private Authorities in Finance and Security? 123Andreas Kruck

7 The ‘Get Out of Jail Card’: The Immunity Risk Provides Financial Markets and Regulators from the Consequences of Their Mistakes 145Bartholomew Paudyn

8 The European Blame Game: Explaining Public Responsibility Attributions in the European Union 171Tim Heinkelmann-Wild, Berthold Rittberger, and Bernhard Zangl

Part III International Public Policy 191

9 What Went Wrong? The World Health Organization from Swine Flu to Ebola 193Adam Kamradt-Scott

10 ‘Success’ and ‘Failure’ in International Development: Assessing Evolving UK Objectives in Conditional Aid Policy Since the Cold War 217Jonathan Fisher

11 When Foreign Aid and Wider Foreign Policy Goals Clash: The Pergau Dam Affair 241Tim Lankester

ix CONTENTS

12 ‘First as Tragedy…’: Mistakes, Blaming and Learning at the Copenhagen Climate Conference 261Antto Vihma

13 On the Indeterminacy of Policy Mistakes: Lessons from British Immigration Policy 285James Hampshire

Index 305

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notes on contributors

Danae Ankel is Research Assistant and Lecturer at the Chair of International Politics and Foreign Policy at the University of Cologne.

Oliver Daddow is Assistant Professor in British Politics and Security at the University of Nottingham.

Jonathan Fisher is Senior Lecturer in African Politics in the International Development Department at the University of Birmingham.

James Hampshire is Reader in Politics at the University of Sussex.

Mischa Hansel is Assistant Professor (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) of International Relations at the RWTH Aachen University.

Tim Heinkelmann-Wild is Research Assistant at the Chair for Global Governance and Public Policy and the Chair for International Relations at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of Political Science, Ludwig-Maximilians- University Munich.

Adam Kamradt-Scott is Associate Professor in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney.

Andreas Kruck is Assistant Professor of Global Governance at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of Political Science, Ludwig-Maximilians- University Munich.

xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Tim Lankester was an economist at the World Bank. Later he worked in the UK Treasury and, from 1989 to 1994, and he was Permanent Secretary in Britain’s aid ministry.

Tim Legrand is Lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, the Australian National University, Adjunct Associate Professor at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra and Adjunct Research Fellow at Griffith University.

Michael Lister is Reader in Politics at Oxford Brooks University.

Kai Oppermann is Reader in Politics at the University of Sussex.

Bartholomew Paudyn is Researcher and Lecturer in the International Political Economy (IPE) of financial/debt relations and the management through risk/uncertainty at the London School of Economics & Political Science.

Berthold Rittberger holds the Chair for International Relations at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of Political Science, Ludwig-Maximilians- University Munich.

Alexander Spencer is Professor of International Relations at the Otto- von- Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany.

Henrike Viehrig heads the Europe direct Information Centre at the City of Cologne. Previously she worked as Lecturer for Political Science at the University of Bonn’s North American Studies Program.

Antto Vihma is Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and Adjunct Professor at the University of Eastern Finland.

Bernhard Zangl holds the Chair for Global Governance and Public Policy at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of Political Science, Ludwig- Maximilians- University Munich.

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AFRO WHO African regional officeAMA Advanced Measurement ApproachATP Aid and Trade ProvisionAUM assets under managementBCBS Basel Committee on Banking SupervisionBI Business IndicatorBIJ Bureau of Investigative JournalismBMJ British Medical JournalBNA British Nationality ActCDO collateralized debt obligationCDU Christlich-Demokratische UnionCOP Conference of PartiesCORF corporate operational risk functionCOSO Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway

CommissionCRA credit rating agencyCSO civil society organizationCSU Christlich-Soziale UnionCUKC Citizenship of the United Kingdom and ColoniesDAC Development Assistance CommitteeDD distance-to-defaultDESO Defence Exports Sales OrganizationDfID Department for International DevelopmentDoD Department of DefenseDTI Department of Trade and Industry

list of AbbreviAtions

xiv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EBA European Banking AuthorityECB European Central BankECDG Export Credits Guarantee DepartmentECJ European Court of JusticeEcofin Council of Economic and Finance MinistersEDF Expected Default FrequencyEDP Excessive Deficit ProcedureEEC European Economic CommunityEMH efficient market hypothesisERM enterprise risk managementESMA European Securities and Markets AuthorityETF exchange-traded fundEVD Ebola virus diseaseEWP Early Warning ProcedureFAO Food and Agriculture OrganizationFCO Foreign and Commonwealth OfficeFDP Freie Demokratische ParteiGAO Government Accountability OfficeGBS General Budget SupportGEC General Electric CompanyGHEW global health emergency workforceGOARN Global Outbreak Alert and Response NetworkHECF health emergency contingency fundICOC International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service

ProvidersIHR International Health RegulationsILM internal loss multiplierIPCC Independent Police Complaints CommissionLTCM Long-Term Capital ManagementMEJA Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction ActMiFID Markets in Financial Instruments DirectiveMiFIR Markets in Financial Instruments RegulationMoD Ministry of DefenceMPS Metropolitan police serviceMSF Médecins Sans FrontièresNAO National Audit OfficeNGO non-governmental organizationODA Overseas Development Administration

xv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

OECD-DAC Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development- Development Assistance Committee

OIE World Organization for Animal HealthOLS ordinary least squaresOR operational riskORMF operational risk management frameworkPC political conditionalityPMSC private military and security companyPRA public responsibility attributionsRAROC risk-adjusted return on capitalRMBS residential mortgage backed securitiesSEC Securities and Exchange CommissionSGP Stability and Growth PactSMA Standardized Measurement ApproachSOP standard operating procedureSPD Social Democratic PartyTNB Tenaga Nasional BerhadTTC through-the-cycleUCMJ Uniform Code of Military JusticeUKIP United Kingdom Independence PartyUNFCCC United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

ChangeUNMEER United Nations Ebola Emergency ResponseUNSC United Nations Security CouncilUNSCR UN Security Council ResolutionVaR Value-at-RiskWDM World Development MovementWHA World Health AssemblyWHE Health Emergency ProgrammeWHO World Health OrganizationWTO World Trade Organization

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Fig. 1.1 Howlett’s typology of policy failure 4Fig. 1.2 Bovens’ and ‘t Hart’s logics of evaluation 7Fig. 4.1 Most frequent foreign policy fiasco references, 1992–2014 84Fig. 4.2 Who defines the fiasco? 87Fig. 4.3 Attribution of responsibility 89Fig. 8.1 Summary of the articles 178Fig. 8.2 Inter-case comparisons: distribution of PRA 181Fig. 10.1 Primary motivation spectrum for political conditionality 222

list of figures

xix

list of tAbles

Table 3.1 Narrative elements of stories of failure 60Table 10.1 Applications of political conditionality by ODA

(1987–1997) 224Table 10.2 Applications of political conditionality by DFID

(1997–2014) 225

1© The Author(s) 2018A. Kruck et al. (eds.), Political Mistakes and Policy Failures in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68173-3_1

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Mistakes and Failures in International Relations

Andreas Kruck, Kai Oppermann, and Alexander Spencer

We all make mistakes. Mistakes are human. Mistakes happen not only in our individual lives but also in national and international politics. While mistakes have always been at the centre stage of International Relations (IR) as a discipline implicitly, due to the fact that events attract far more attention when they are considered to have gone wrong, the conceptual-ization of ‘mistakes’ as an explicit analytical concept and focus so far has been neglected. This edited volume is concerned with mistakes in differ-ent realms of IR including foreign and security policy, international politi-cal economy and issues of international public policy such as health and development, environmental policy and migration. In particular, the book and the individual chapters address the following key questions: What is a ‘mistake’ or ‘failure’, and how does one identify and research such a phe-nomenon? Why do mistakes and failures occur? How are actors made responsible, and what consequences do mistakes and failures entail? When and how do actors learn from mistakes and failures?

A. Kruck (*) • A. Spencer Institute of Social Sciences and History, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

K. Oppermann Department of Politics, University of Sussex, Brighton, East Sussex, UK

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In pursuit of some answers to these questions, this introductory chap-ter first considers the concepts of ‘mistakes’ and ‘failures’ in IR and other disciplines and reflects on ontological and epistemological perspectives on how to study mistakes and failures. The second part turns to the question of what causes mistakes and failures and considers a range of theories from different fields for explaining and understanding mistakes and failures. Part three examines the notion of responsibility attribution and considers why and how actors get blamed for mistakes and failures. In these three parts, we both summarize the state of the art on the relevant questions and point out how the chapters in this volume add new insights and perspec-tives. Part four offers an overview of the chapters which are to follow and part five elaborates on the lessons learnt from these insights on mistakes and failures in IR.

The ConCepTs of MisTakes and failures and how To sTudy TheM

The study of situations in which something has gone wrong has, at least implicitly, always been a part of IR. Political events and decisions usually attract much greater scholarly attention if they are seen to be a failure than if they are considered a success. It is of little surprise then that many of the best-studied events are precisely those which have been linked to ‘disas-trous’ failures or consequences. Mistakes such as the appeasement of Hitler, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the catastrophic mismanagement of dis-eases and pandemics (e.g. AIDS or Ebola) or the failure of banking regula-tions in the run-up to the recent financial crisis have always preoccupied scholars of IR. It is hardly a stretch to say that mistakes are omnipresent in IR research and that we do research and teach our students IR by studying mistakes. Many studies in IR, however, do not explicitly engage with or employ concepts such as ‘mistake’ or ‘failure’ as an analytical category but expect the consequences of the policy to be a sufficient indicator of a mis-take or failure. Mistakes have rarely been the subject of systematic concep-tual and comparative analysis in IR. This edited volume wants to address this gap in the literature by analysing mistakes of different dimensions in various issue areas.

As this volume illustrates, there is very little agreement on the defini-tion of a political ‘mistake’ or a policy ‘failure’ and how to study such a phenomenon. In the literature, one encounters a number of very different

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concepts including ‘fiasco’, ‘catastrophe’, ‘blunder’, ‘crisis’ or ‘disaster’ denoting similar things (Dunleavy 1995; Gray 1996; Bovens and ‘t Hart 1996; King and Crewe 2013). While some try to make distinctions between these different concepts with regard to their severity, we consider a key difference between mistakes and failures to relate to the role of agency. While the concept of mistakes is necessarily linked to agents or their choices playing a substantial role in negative outcomes, the concept of failures zooms in on the negative outcomes but is less explicit about the role of agency. Beyond this basic distinction, the volume emphasizes the unifying characteristics of the phenomena and considers mistakes and fail-ures as ‘something considered to have gone wrong’.

Overall one can distinguish two different approaches to failures: an objectivist and an intersubjective perspective. The first objectivist perspec-tive tends to follow a foundationalist and positivist tradition that has long been dominant in policy evaluation studies (Marsh and McConnell 2010: 567). According to this perspective, policy failures are objective facts that can be independently identified and verified. Thus, policies count as a failure if they fall short of certain objective criteria or benchmarks for suc-cess (Howlett 2012: 541–542; McConnell 2010: 349–351). In the nar-rowest sense, the classic model of policy evaluation starts out from a policy’s official objectives and considers the policy a failure if it does not meet these objectives (Gray 1996: 76). In a slightly broader sense, ratio-nalist understandings of policy failure may also bring in the costs of a policy, the damage caused by it as well as the policy’s unintended and adverse consequences (King and Crewe 2013: 4; Dunleavy 1995: 52).

A number of scholars have here emphasized the need to examine differ-ent levels of failure. For example, Michael Howlett (2012) developed a typology which differentiates between the magnitude of a failure in terms of its extent and duration and its salience in public debate with regard to its intensity and visibility (see Fig. 1.1). Thereby he articulates four types of failure including major failure (high in both magnitude and salience), focused failure (low in magnitude but high in salience), diffuse failure (high in magnitude and low in salience) and minor failure (low in magni-tude and salience).

Allan McConnell (2016: 672–675) in contrast differentiates between process, programme and political failure. Process failure is here understood as failure with regard to the government’s inability to produce the neces-sary policy instruments or formulate desired outcomes, the illegitimacy of the policy process, the existence of widespread opposition and inability of

INTRODUCTION: MISTAKES AND FAILURES IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

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governments to gain support for the policy. Programme failure is charac-terized by the failure in the implementation of policy, the inability to pro-duce results, the damage to the intended beneficiaries of the policy, the inability to adhere by standard policy criteria and the existence of major opposition to the aims, values and means of implementation. Political fail-ure is considered to be composed of reputational damage, inability to keep politically difficult issues off the agenda, danger to the entire trajectory of government and opposition to the government as a whole. In all these approaches there is little critical reflection on the subjective side of the ‘failure’ label, but it is taken as a starting point for the explanations of why policy failures occur and what conclusions can be drawn from these explanations.

The second intersubjective perspective sees ‘failure’ not to be an inher-ent attribute of policy but rather considers it a judgement about policy. Here, policy outcomes do not speak for themselves but only come to be seen as successful or unsuccessful because of the meaning imbued to them in political discourse. Policy mistakes and failures are understood as ‘essen-tially contested’ concepts (Gallie 1955). Since there are no fixed or com-monly accepted criteria for the success or failure of a policy, such judgements are always likely to be subjective and open to dispute (Bovens and ‘t Hart 1996: 4–11). This holds no less for efforts at evaluating poli-cies against the benchmark of officially stated objectives, which will often be vague, diverse and conflicting and which may have been formulated more for their strategic or symbolic functions than as a realistic guide to policy-making: ‘The goals of policy are often not what they seem to be, and it is a mistake to take stated purposes too literally’ (Ingram and Mann 1980: 20).

Fig. 1.1 Howlett’s typology of policy failure (Adapted from Howlett 2012: 544)

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Policies that are seen as successful by some may thus well be dismissed as failures by others. Such opposite judgements can come, for example, from differences in the timeframes or geographical and social boundaries of assessing the impacts of a policy as well as from cultural biases or diverg-ing evaluations of available alternatives (Bovens and ‘t Hart 1996: 21–32; Marsh and McConnell 2010: 575–577). They may also be driven by uneven levels of expectation or aspiration (Levy 1994: 305). Most nota-bly, however, the designation of (foreign) policy as success or failure is inescapably intertwined with politics (Brändström and Kuipers 2003: 279–282; Bovens et al. 2001: 10). Policy evaluations will thus be influ-enced by the values, identity and interests of the evaluator and may reflect underlying power relations in the political arena or in society at large (Ingram and Mann 1980: 12; Marsh and McConnell 2010: 566–568).

In particular, labelling a policy or decision a ‘mistake’ or ‘failure’, i.e. its social construction, is an intensely political act (Gray 1998: 16). It makes for a powerful semantic tool in political discourse to discredit opponents and seek political advantage (Howlett 2012: 547). Accusations of policy failure are likely to provoke political conflict over the interpretation of a policy where the result depends on the extent of intersubjective agreement in this regard, in particular among powerful political and social actors (Boin et al. 2009: 82–85). Political discourse, in this sense, can be seen as a struggle between competing claims which either attribute the ‘failure’ label to political decisions or reject such a label.

A number of authors have pointed out that the constitution of a policy failure and the attributed notion of blame (see below) is down to a contest of competing frames of interpretation (‘t Hart 1993; Brändström and Kuipers 2003; Boin et al. 2009). As Arjen Boin and others point out in this respect: ‘Contestants manipulate, strategize and fight to have their frame accepted’ (Boin et al. 2009: 82). Therefore, emphasizing the socially constructed and political nature of a ‘failure’, Bovens and ‘t Hart (1996: 15, emphasis added) consider a fiasco as ‘a negative event that is perceived by a socially and politically significant group of people in the community to be at least partially caused by avoidable and blameworthy failures of public policymakers’.

Closely intertwined with the question of what constitutes a ‘failure’ is the question about how to do research on the subject. While the objective perspective will try and find indicators of the failure of a policy with refer-ence to objective benchmarks of success, the intersubjective perspective will be rather interested in how something comes to be seen as a ‘failure’


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regardless of whether this policy is ‘really’ a failure or not. As a result, both will examine very different material for their research: The objective approach will examine numbers, statistics, statements by experts/eyewit-nesses or similar evidence of success or failure of a policy, while the inter-pretivist will examine representations in political debates, media reporting or similar discourses and practices.

Despite these seemingly unsurmountable ontological and epistemo-logical differences between these two perspectives, scholars have recently started to bring objectivist and intersubjective approaches together by both arguing that subjective non-material aspects do play a vital role in the labelling of events and conceding that a ‘failure’ is not totally inde-pendent of material events as there are limits to what can be constructed into a failure (Oppermann and Spencer 2016; Kruck 2016). Even tradi-tionally objectivist scholars agree that the assessment of a failure is often the result of political struggle. As Allen McConnell notes: ‘A policy fails, even if it is successful in some minimal respects, if it does not fundamen-tally achieve the goal that proponents set out to achieve, and opposition is great and/or support is virtually non-existent’ (McConnell 2016: 672, emphasis added).

Bovens and ‘t Hart (2016) explicitly focus on this interconnection between objective and subjective characteristics of a failure or what they refer to as reputational or performance evaluation and hold that the over-lap between intersubjective and objective elements can tell us something about the severity or kind of failure we are encountering. They hold that if both the political (subjective) and programmatic (objective) assessments are negative, we are able to talk about a major failure or ‘fiasco’. If the subjective interpretation is negative and the objective positive (or at least not negative), we could consider this a ‘tragedy’. Vice versa, if the subjec-tive interpretation is positive and the objective assessment negative, they consider this to be a ‘farce’. Only if both the subjective and the objective evaluations are positive, can we speak of a success (see Fig. 1.2).

These objectivist, intersubjective and middle-ground perspectives are all also visible in this edited volume. A number of chapters take an objec-tivist perspective and analyse how their empirical event can be objectively considered a mistake or a failure (Lankester, Chap. 11, this volume; Kamradt-Scott, Chap. 9, this volume). In this vein, the chapter by Tim Heinkelmann-Wild, Berthold Rittberger and Bernhard Zangl (Chap. 8, this volume) refers to policy performance as an indicator for failures in the realm of EU financial policy. Similarly, the chapter by Antto Vihma

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(Chap. 12, this volume) also points to the modest results of the Copenhagen climate conference as an indicator for failure.

The volume however also includes chapters which take a middle-ground position: These chapters point to objective negative consequences of a policy or a decision but at the same time hold that a failure or a mistake is not a natural fact but something which is widely seen to have gone wrong and very much depends on the audience, readers or those being addressed by a policy (Kruck, Chap. 6, this volume; Fisher, Chap. 10, this volume). For example, Michael Legrand and Michael Lister (Chap. 2, this volume) argue that (objective) genuine errors and misapplications of counter- terrorism policy can, due to the precautionary logic of counter-terrorism, lead to unintended consequences where a ‘suspect community’ subjec-tively perceives the occasional objective errors as representative of how things ‘really’ are.

Finally, on a more intersubjective side, a number of chapters clearly focus on the representation and construction of ‘mistakes’ and ‘failures’. For example, Mischa Hansel, Henrike Viehrig and Danae Ankel (Chap. 4, this volume) examine how foreign policy failures are portrayed in German media reporting and who actively participates in this framing regardless of whether the event was ‘truly’ a failure or not. James Hampshire (Chap. 13, this volume) shows that mistakes are greatly shaped by indeterminacy and contingency with regard to the criteria by which a policy is evaluated, the intentions of the policy-makers and the timeframe in which the ‘negative’ consequences are evaluated. This indeterminacy makes it very hard to objectively categorize a policy as failure. Also along this intersubjective line, Kai Oppermann and Alexander Spencer (Chap. 3, this volume) argue that the social construction of failure occurs through the clash of competing

Fig. 1.2 Bovens’ and ‘t Hart’s logics of evaluation (Adapted from Bovens and ‘t Hard 2016: 4)


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claims in political discourse, and Oliver Daddow (Chap. 5, this volume) holds that failure is down to a hegemonic interpretation of a policy which flows from narrative contestation. Thus, the chapters in this volume repre-sent a broad range of conceptual perspectives on the study of mistakes and failures in IR, underlining the analytical usefulness of both objectivist and intersubjective approaches while also pointing to opportunities to catch the middle ground between these opposite perspectives.

why Things go wrong: The Causes of MisTakes and failures

Understanding why mistakes happen or why some policies or decisions come to be seen as mistakes will be of interest to many concerned with the topic of mistakes in IR. For one thing, knowledge about the causes of mistakes is intrinsically linked to any attempts at learning from mistakes in order to avoid them in the future. Similarly, such knowledge is critical for attributing responsibility for mistakes and thus for holding political leaders to account. While the interest in the causes of mistakes cuts across the divide between objectivist and intersubjective approaches to studying mis-takes, scholarship in the two traditions explores this question from differ-ent angles. From an objectivist perspective, the issue at stake is quite straightforward: ‘Why have things gone wrong?’ Adopting an intersubjec-tive perspective on mistakes, to the contrary, suggests a rather different take on the question: ‘How was it possible that things have come to be seen as having gone wrong?’

Beginning with the objectivist angle on the question, the theoretical toolbox in IR and Foreign Policy Analysis explicitly or implicitly points towards a broad and diverse range of possible causes of mistakes in IR. These causes relate to four different levels of analysis: individual decision- makers, the decision-making process, domestic politics and the structure of the international system.

On the individual level of analysis, a particularly rich history of schol-arship has put mistakes in IR down to cognitive biases and limitations of decision-makers. Perhaps the foremost example of such studies in IR is Robert Jervis’ (1976) work on ‘misperceptions’. Here, mistakes happen because decision-makers misperceive and misrepresent the intentions and behaviour of other actors in the international arena. For example, such misconceptions arise because decision-makers interpret incoming

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information about international events through the filter of pre-existing beliefs and try to maintain consistency between new information and their established views (Jervis 1968). Actors in IR (and elsewhere) are therefore primed to see what they expect to see. Decision-makers who hold an image of another country as an ‘enemy’ will likely interpret the actions of that country as hostile or deceitful and respond accordingly even if these actions were intended to be friendly and sincere (Herrmann and Fischerkeller 1995). Along similar lines, the over- and underestima-tion of hostility have been linked to the outbreak of international wars, including World Wars I and II (Jervis 1988). Attribution theory, in turn, points to a general tendency of decision-makers to ascribe hostile or harmful behaviour of others to their motives and personal characteristics while downplaying the role of situational factors. In contrast, decision-makers are much more ready to excuse their own behaviour in terms of external constraints and (often wrongly) expect others to recognize these constraints as well. It is easy to see how this ‘fundamental attribution error’ (Gawronsky 2007) can lead to misjudgements in IR.

Closely related, research in cognitive and social psychology has explored a range of decision-making heuristics which individual decision-makers employ to reduce uncertainty but which also imply certain biases that might result in mistakes. For example, decision-makers are prone to assess the likelihood of an event in terms of how easily they can retrieve examples of the same type of event from memory (‘availability heuristic’). However, this will often not reflect the true probability of the event but rather the familiarity of the decision-maker with this class of event or the salience of previous examples of such events in their minds (Tversky and Kahneman 1982: 11–14). Similarly, decision-makers may rely on particular historical analogies to make sense of their decision context not so much because the analogies resemble that decision context but more because they are top of their heads (Oppermann and Spencer 2013). Prospect theory, in turn, suggests that mistakes in IR may be caused by the tendency of decision- makers to give excessive weight to (and prepare for) events with very low probabilities and that they are overly risk acceptant when they seek to recoup losses but unduly risk averse when realizing gains (Kahneman and Tversky 1979).

Another strand of research on the individual level of analysis traces mis-takes less to the cognitive limitations and strategies of decision-makers but foregrounds the role of their emotions. Specifically, the argument is that emotions such as anger, fear, happiness, sadness, stress or disgust affect


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how decision-makers process information and make judgements (McDermott 2017). Emotions thus shape how decision-makers respond to their environment and might trigger behaviour that, from an objectivist perspective, fails to realize their goals or interests. Along similar lines, mis-takes might happen because decision-makers are predisposed to avoid or ignore value trade-offs in their decisions in order to shield themselves against the emotional strain which such trade-offs entail (Jervis 1986: 333–334).

On the level of the decision-making process, the causes of mistakes have mainly been put down to either social-psychological dynamics in small decision-making groups or the rigidities of organizational routines. As for the former, the most prominent example, by far, is Irving Janis’ (1982) work on ‘groupthink’. This concept describes a mode of decision- making in cohesive groups of decision-makers that prioritizes concurrence seeking and consensus within the group over a critical and open debate about the promise and drawbacks of different options. The tendency for groupthink is facilitated by a range of structural and situational context factors, such as the insulation of the group, a lack of impartial leadership, high stress as well as low self-esteem of group members, for example, as a consequence of previous failures. The symptoms of groupthink involve an overestimation of the group, including a sense of invulnerability and moral superiority, the closed-mindedness of group members as well as self- censorship. These symptoms, in turn, result in defective decision-making which facilitates mistakes and failures. Prominent examples of foreign pol-icy failures which have been linked to groupthink mainly include cases in US foreign policy, such as the lack of preparation for a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II, the escalation of the Korean War, the attempted ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion of Cuba in 1961, the Vietnam War (Janis 1982) as well as the abortive mission to rescue US hostages in Iran in 1980 (Smith 1985) and the 2003 Iraq War (Badie 2010). However, oth-ers have rejected the notion of an intrinsic causal relationship between groupthink and foreign policy failures and argued that some symptoms of groupthink may actually lead to successful foreign policies, for example, in the case of the US-led liberation of Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion in 1991 (Yetiv 2003).

While groupthink traces mistakes in IR to pathologies in small-group decision-making, the organizational process approach starts out from the policy-making process inside government bureaucracies (Allison and Zelikow 1999). Specifically, the approach suggests that decision-making

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in government departments is shaped by relatively stable and rigid rou-tines, so-called standard operating procedures (SOPs). These SOPs are central to how organizations operate and are functional in reducing the complexity of decision-making. In particular, they enable boundedly ratio-nal decision-makers to come up with consistent responses to recurring types of decision problems (Simon 1957; Cyert and March 1963). Such organizational routines are therefore not only unavoidable in government policy-making; in the overwhelming majority of cases they also represent an efficient use of cognitive and bureaucratic resources and result in ‘good enough’ decisions. In exceptional cases, however, these same routines can have unintended consequences and thus cause mistakes and failures in IR. This is mainly because of the inflexibility of organizational routines, their lack of responsiveness to the particularities of specific cases and their difficulty in accounting for interdependencies between different decisions. Cases in point relate to military planning in the run-up to World War I (Levy 1986) and naval strategies between the World Wars (Steinbruner 1974: 79–80), the US system of defence readiness levels in the wake of Pearl Harbor (Wohlstetter 1962: 394–395) and during the Yom Kippur War (Sagan 1985: 122–128) as well as a number of ‘near misses’ during the Cuban Missile Crisis (Allison and Zelikow 1999: 208–217; Sagan 1985: 118–121).

Moving on to the level of domestic politics, objectivist approaches trace mistakes in IR either to domestic constraints on decision-makers that pre-vent them from pursuing successful policies or on domestically driven interests of decision-makers. The focus on domestic constraints is particu-larly evident in works on two-level games (Putnam 1988) in which the key benchmark for success or failure becomes whether or not decision-makers are able to devise policies on the international level that do not flounder over obstacles in the domestic arena. From this perspective, mistakes hap-pen when decision-makers are unable to implement domestically what they have agreed to internationally, either because they have misjudged their domestic constraints or because these constraints have changed. A similar argument follows from veto player approaches which trace the failure of decision-makers to implement their preferred policies to the number and preferences of domestic veto players (Tsebelis 2002). Prominent examples for such ‘involuntary defections’ (Iida 1996) in IR are widespread, including the failures of US President Woodrow Wilson to secure Senate support for the League of Nations in 1920 and of President Bill Clinton to achieve domestic ratification of the Comprehensive Test


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Ban Treaty in 1999. European integration is also beset with these kinds of mistakes, from the rejection by the French National Assembly of the European Defence Community in 1954 to the unsuccessful referendums on the European Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands in 2005 and the failure of the UK government of Prime Minister David Cameron to win public support for its ‘remain’ position in the 2016 British EU membership referendum.

A different argument on the level of domestic politics starts out not from the constraints of decision-makers but rather zooms in on how their domestic interests drive them towards making mistakes. The classic exam-ple here is Graham Allison’s (1971) bureaucratic politics model. From this perspective, government decision-makers are motivated primarily by securing and expanding their bureaucratic interests, in particular their budget and turf. Foreign policy thus emerges as the result of bureaucratic struggles inside the government, rather than as an attempt to find the best possible answer to foreign policy problems. Mistakes in IR that have been explained along these lines include the abortive mission to rescue the American hostages in Iran in 1980 (Smith 1984) and the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003 (Smith 2008).

On the highest level of analysis, in turn, objectivist studies of the causes of mistakes in IR may point to the structure of the international system. The prime exhibit for this line of argument comes from the neorealist school of thought for which a state’s foreign policy is driven by its relative power position in the international system (Elman 1996). Specifically, the international power position of states implies a set of systemic imperatives and opportunities to which they respond in order to secure their survival. Mistakes, however, can happen if the incentives and pressures from the international system are complex, ambiguous or in flux. For example, some neorealists maintain that multipolar systems are more war prone than bipolar systems, partly because there is less clarity about threats and more scope for miscalculations. Also, significant changes in the balance of power can make states misread structural incentives from the international system and lead to conflict and war (see Mearsheimer 2007: 78–82). Along these lines, Robert Jervis (1994) has suggested that the post-Cold War international system has become structurally more complex, making mistakes in IR increasingly likely.

In contrast to explanations of the causes of mistakes and failures in IR that take an objectivist viewpoint, looking at the topic from an intersub-jective angle changes the perspective entirely. Mistakes and failures are no

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longer seen as objectively given but rather as socially constructed in politi-cal discourse. It follows that studying the ‘causes’ of mistakes turns into questions about how social constructions of mistakes in IR become pos-sible and what facilitates or hinders such constructions. These questions can be addressed on three levels of analysis: the authors of ‘mistake claims’ in political discourse; the content of the discourse itself; and the audience of the discourse. From all three perspectives, the social construction of policies, actions and decisions as mistakes is facilitated by ‘unsettled’ dis-cursive contexts, in which no interpretation of these policies, actions and decisions has attained dominance and in which their meaning remains contested (Krebs 2015a: 32–36). Since claims of mistakes and failures in such contexts will likely meet with counterclaims rejecting allegations of mistakes and failures, the critical issue is which attempt at meaning giving gains the upper hand in political discourse.

On the level of an actor-centred and resource-based understanding of discursive power, the resonance and reception of claims of mistakes and failures depends on the power and standing of the authors of such claims. Specifically, social constructions of mistakes in IR will more likely gain traction if they can rely on the judgements and interpretations of actors who have the capability to shape public and media discourse. This in turn is conditional on a range of immaterial and material resources, including the authority, personal credibility and reliability of the speakers, as well as their expertise, rhetorical skills and access to the media and public rela-tions budgets (Aronczyk 2008; Hülsse 2009). Similarly, claims of mistakes and failures are more likely to become dominant in political discourse, if actors who seek to reject such claims lack some or all of these resources. As a case in point, the interpretation of Germany’s abstention in the UN Security Council on the 2011 military intervention in Libya as a major diplomatic mistake initially resonated strongly in political discourse, partly because the main actor who stood against a broad coalition of highly respected German and international voices and who tried to counter such an interpretation, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, was widely regarded as a weak and incompetent foreign minister who lacked in political capital and authority (Oppermann and Spencer 2016).

As for the level of the content of political discourse, the attention shifts to the plausibility and persuasiveness of ‘mistake claims’. Here, the scholar-ship on policy failures in public policy points to a range of factors which make assertions of mistakes in IR more or less convincing. For example, social constructions of mistakes critically depend on the argument that


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there would have been (better) alternatives. If this case cannot be made, mistakes look as if they had been unavoidable. Without an element of choice and agency, ‘things that have gone wrong’ will likely be put down to ‘fate’ and cannot be convincingly construed as a mistake (Ingram and Mann 1980: 14). Similarly, arguments about mistakes and failures should be more powerful in political discourse if they can point to warnings that have been ignored. This suggests that a failure was foreseeable which makes it more difficult to invoke ‘misfortune’ or an erratic turn of events (Bovens and ‘t Hart 1996: 73–92). Moreover, the resonance of ‘mistake claims’ tends to be stronger if they can refer back to stated objectives of a policy and make a plausible case that the policy has fallen short of these objectives or led to unintended (and undesired) consequences (Dunleavy 1995: 52; Howlett 2012: 541–542). The ability to support allegations of mistakes with histori-cal analogies (Khong 1992) or metaphors (Oppermann and Spencer 2013) can also contribute to the plausibility of such allegations. Finally, the social construction of mistakes is inextricably linked to the allocation of blame and responsibility (see below). Such constructions are not usually successful, if mistakes and failures cannot be causally linked in political discourse to the actions or inactions of responsible agents (Gray 1998: 8–9).

On the level of the audience of political discourse, the social construc-tion of mistakes and failures may be helped or hindered by pre-existing intersubjective understandings (Van Ham 2002: 262). Such predisposi-tions within the audience, for example, regarding the appropriate stan-dards for success and failure in politics or the trustworthiness and responsibility of political elites, define the boundaries of what can legiti-mately and successfully be portrayed as mistakes in political discourse (Krebs 2015b: 813). In other words, ‘mistake claims’ must have ‘verisi-militude’ in light of the intersubjective understandings in the audience of what counts as mistakes and they must fit into the canonicity of culturally embedded expectations in this regard in order to resonate.

If anything, this overview of the very broad array of different perspec-tives on what causes mistakes in IR and on what facilitates the social con-struction of such mistakes serves to indicate how central these questions are for scholarship on mistakes in politics. It is little surprise, therefore, that many chapters in this volume also implicitly or explicitly speak to the ‘causes’ of the mistakes under study.

On the ‘objectivist’ side of the debate, a number of chapters zoom in on the decision-making process. Adam Kamradt-Scott’s (Chap. 9, this vol-ume) account of the mistakes of the WHO in dealing with the 2009 ‘Swine

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Flu’ pandemic and the 2014 Ebola outbreak, for example, links the failings of the organization to deficiencies in the management and bureaucratic procedures of the WHO secretariat, including poor coordination efforts, obstructive intra-organizational dynamics and a lack of an ‘emergency cul-ture’. Legrand and Lister (Chap. 2, this volume) in their analysis of British counter-terrorism point to the misapplication of the precautionary princi-ple in the making of counter-terrorism policy as a cause for mistakes. On the same level of analysis, Vihma (Chap. 12, this volume) traces the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference partly to procedural mistakes of the Danish Presidency, in particular, its inability or unwillingness to provide strategic leadership. In addition, the chapter shows how factors on the international level of analysis have also contributed to the failure of the conference, in particular the emergence of China as a key player in climate negotiations and the failure of the US and the EU to try to accommodate China’s more powerful and assertive position. Tim Lankester (Chap. 11, this volume), in turn, sees the root causes for the failure of the Pergau Dam project, a controversial UK foreign aid project in Malaysia, on the level of British domestic politics. Despite warnings from civil servants that the programme represented a poor use of development aid, the British government went ahead with the project for political reasons and as a quid pro quo for a major arms deal with Malaysia. The result was not only the waste of development money but also significant damage to the reputation of UK development policy and the British government.

From the perspective of an ‘intersubjective’ understanding of mistakes, Oppermann and Spencer (Chap. 3, this volume) argue that the social con-struction of mistakes proceeds through narratives. In particular, they point towards certain discursive elements, i.e. setting, characterization and emplotment, which are essential to ‘narratives of failure’ and thus to the construction of mistakes in political discourse. Hansel, Viehrig and Ankel (Chap. 4, this volume), moreover, focus on the role of media frames in constructing German foreign policy mistakes and suggest that these frames are most powerful in political discourse when they suggest interpretations of particular decisions as violations of salient norms in German foreign policy. Hampshire’s chapter (Chap. 13, this volume) on British immigra-tion policy, finally, foregrounds the temporality of social constructions of mistakes. In other words, the chapter reminds us that judgements about policies will often shift over time and depend on the time horizon of the observer. In consequence, answers to the question of how policies can be constructed into mistakes are time sensitive as well.


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failures, MisTakes and The aTTribuTion of responsibiliTy

Whenever things go wrong, the question of who is to blame is usually quick to pop up. The realm of IR is no exception in this regard. If any-thing, politics, including international politics, is particularly prone to ‘blame games’ after mistakes and failures. Besides those who suffer from the harmful consequences of a policy failure, a whole range of actors—including various critics, rivals or foes of the alleged ‘perpetrator’—can be expected to denounce policy-makers for their (perceived) mistakes and failures. At the same time, policy-makers, who are sensitive to the political costs of publicized mistaken decisions and failing measures, face strong incentives to evade or shift responsibility for mistakes and failures (Gerhards et al. 2013; Hood 2002, 2011; Rittberger et al. 2017; Weaver 1986).

Thus, the questions of how responsibility for mistakes and failures is attributed and how we can explain such responsibility attributions have traditionally preoccupied researchers of public policy and have also been picked up by IR scholars. Mirroring different objectivist and intersubjec-tive understandings of mistakes and failures (see above), some perspectives emphasize how objective properties of mistakes, of their perpetrators or of the political context shape the attribution of responsibility, whereas others highlight discursive struggles as well as the role of interpretation and con-testation in the construction of mistakes and those seen as responsible for them.

From an objectivist perspective, first of all, the avoidability and severity of a mistake or failure are key determinants for the attribution of blame (Howlett 2012). As we have highlighted in our above discussion of subjective approaches to the ‘causes’ of mistakes, social constructions of mistakes will likely fail if alternatives to the taken actions (are considered to) have been absent. By implication, policy-makers will hardly be held responsible for political developments that took a bad, possibly even disas-trous turn but were beyond their reasonable control. By contrast, if a mistake was foreseeable, for example, because it went against the advice of relevant observers or participants of decision-making (Tuchman 1984: 5), not only successful failure constructions (see above) but also ex-post attri-bution of responsibility for the failing policy and its consequences to a particular actor are likely. Also, more severe, that is, more harmful, failures are expected to trigger more intense blame games than minor ones, espe-cially when they affect powerful constituencies.

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Moreover, a number of authors have sought to identify particular attri-butes of policy-makers that render them prone to be blamed for mistakes and failures (Rudolph 2003; Malhotra and Kuo 2008; Marsh and Tilley 2010; Tilley and Hobolt 2011; Hobolt and Tilley 2014). Besides playing a leading role in the making of the relevant decision(s) leading to policy failure (Hill 2003: 56–62), inexperience, weakness, dishonesty or arro-gance as well as the pursuit of personal or domestic political motives for foreign policy decisions may make policy-makers particularly vulnerable for attributions of responsibility and blame. Governments or other actors that were considered weak or unreliable even prior to the mistake will have a particularly hard time to deflect responsibility (Bovens et al. 1998: 199; Dunleavy 1995: 61–4).

Another strand of objectivist research focuses on the importance of the institutional context for responsibility attributions (Powell and Whitten 1993; Anderson 2000; Rudolph 2003; Gerhards et al. 2013). As Heinkelmann-Wild, Rittberger and Zangl (Chap. 8, this volume) elabo-rate in more detail in their contribution to this volume, some studies find that responsibility ‘travels’ with policy-making authority (Gailey 2013; Gailey and Lee 2005; Hamilton 1986). Those actors who have the decision- making authority will also be held responsible for mistakes that occur under their authority. Thus, there is a congruence between the for-mal institutional distribution of authority and the distribution of blame, not only in the national political arena but also in international contexts. By contrast, others argue that authority structures do not shape responsi-bility attributions in complex multi-level governance systems because due to their institutional complexity and the general public’s lack of knowl-edge about the actual distribution of authority in such cases, the general public cannot attribute responsibility correctly, leading to diffuse public responsibility attributions (Hobolt and Tilley 2014; Hobolt et al. 2013; Powell and Whitten 1993). Thus, in international institutions that are characterized by a complex and opaque distribution of policy-making authority among states and between states and international bureaucra-cies, decision-makers may find it easy to escape public responsibility and blame for policies they actually brought about. Public responsibility attri-butions will be untargeted and infrequent as it is hard([er] than in domes-tic contexts) for broader public constituencies to identify and assess international authority structures and attribute responsibility accordingly (Hobolt and Tilley 2014: 24).


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Rather than locating the determinants of blame in ‘objective’ proper-ties of mistakes, policy-makers or institutional contexts, an intersubjective, interpretivist approach to the attribution of responsibility for political mis-takes and policy failures emphasizes that blame games are not only highly political but also discursive phenomena. On a fundamental level, the social construction of a policy or decision as a mistake or failure (see above) already implies the invocation and attribution of blame. As Boven and ‘t Hart hold: ‘to explain [a failure] is to blame’ (Boven and ‘t Hart 1996: 129). Claiming that a person’s, government’s or international organiza-tion’s policy has failed at the same time constitutes the originator of the failing policy as an object of blame, which in turn may undermine her/his/its authority. The close link between labelling a policy a failure, blam-ing its originators and reaping political benefits from succeeding in the blame game crucially contributes to making the designation of a policy as a failure so political, powerful and contested.

Who is blamed for a perceived mistake or failure—and how much so—is shaped by the struggle between competing and possibly shifting frames of interpretations (‘t Hart 1993; Brändström and Kuipers 2003; Boin et al. 2009) and narratives (Oppermann and Spencer 2016) that seek to make sense of actors’ responsibilities for mistakes or failures. The key question for understanding the attribution of blame is then which frames or narratives are intersubjectively shared and accepted by a relevant audi-ence. While framing approaches tend to stress the role of situational agency in mobilizing political constituencies by the skilful use of frames and counter-frames to attribute responsibility (Boin et al. 2009), narrative analysis highlights the cognitive and cultural embeddedness of narratives, which limits what can be (convincingly) told in a certain cultural and dis-cursive context about the sources and perpetrators of alleged mistakes. This allows narrative approaches to capture the middle ground between objectivist and radically subjectivist accounts of responsibility attributions by highlighting certain features of narratives and their broader discursive cultural contexts which (likely) shape the extent to which certain narra-tives of responsibility for mistakes are intersubjectively accepted (see Oppermann and Spencer 2016; Chap. 3, this volume). In other words, they discursivize seemingly material, objectively given properties of mis-takes and their perpetrators.

For example, as already indicated above, the setting of the failure narra-tive has to allow for agency and the possibility of choice. Compared to events which are construed as being beyond the control of decision- makers,

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the construction of the narrative setting of policy failures as avoidable makes it easier to (successfully) represent a certain course of action as a ‘mistake’ (see the section on ‘subjective’ causes of mistakes) and more dif-ficult for decision-makers to escape blame by invoking mitigating circum-stances such as misfortune or structural constraints. Such narratives are most compelling in attributing blame if they make plausible claims to the effect that the negative implications of a policy were foreseeable and con-trollable at the time when the policy was formulated (Bovens and ‘t Hart 1996: 73–90). Moreover, the narrative attribution of blame for policy fail-ures can be driven by characterizations of decision-makers which cast doubt on their competence, credibility and sincerity. Such characterizations will likely resonate best if they can pick up on low levels of trust and reputation and pertain to agents who command only little political capital (Boin et al. 2009: 96–100; Bovens et al. 1998: 199; Dunleavy 1995: 61–4).

Several chapters in this volume contribute to our understanding of responsibility attributions in international politics by introducing new perspectives and findings. Heinkelmann-Wild, Rittberger and Zangl (Chap. 8, this volume) qualify the prevailing ‘authority’ and ‘complexity’ hypotheses in the institutionalist literature on public responsibility attri-butions in international governance systems. They argue that in complex policy- making systems, which are common in international politics, responsibility tends to be attributed to implementing actors rather than politically superior actors. The chapter by Hansel, Viehrig and Ankel (Chap. 4, this volume) sheds new light on the questions of who is blaming and who gets blamed in their analysis of German media reports on foreign policy fiascos. Perhaps most interestingly in this regard, their findings con-tradict the widely held expectation that blaming and blame games are ubiquitous wherever failures are discussed. Rather, they claim that a large portion of fiasco references in the German news media does not blame anybody at all. The chapter by Andreas Kruck (Chap. 6, this volume) highlights that even in cases of severe and intersubjectively recognized failures, their consequences in terms of enhanced mechanisms to hold their originators accountable may be limited, if and when institutional path-dependencies and the structural power of incumbent governance actors are pronounced. Kruck’s chapter thus proposes to move beyond a focus on the ‘objective’ severity of mistakes and/or the amount of inter-subjective agreement on a discursively construed mistake to take seriously the role of institutional dynamics and regulatory path-dependencies as determinants of post- failure accountability politics.


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Bart Paudyn (Chap. 7, this volume) emphasizes in his contribution how a hegemonic discourse of risk (management) in financial governance provides ‘immunity’ to financial markets and regulators from the conse-quences of their highly costly mistakes. In his account, the performativity of risk management/discourse creates and legitimizes the conditions and subjectivities that validate its continued utility and normative authority, shielding those responsible for mistakes from public contestation and accountability-enhancing reform. By contrast, analysing the failing UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen and the ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ learning they spurred, Antto Vihma stresses on a more encouraging note that intense blaming after mistakes and policy-makers’ desire for blame avoid-ance may indeed have positive effects in the sense that they may drive policy learning for strategic political motivations. Thus, while the litera-ture on responsibility attributions in IR is still relatively young compared to equivalent research in public policy, several chapters in this volume add important insights and point to new avenues for research on blame and responsibility attribution in international politics.

sTruCTure of The book

The chapters which follow this introduction analyse mistakes and failures in various issue areas of international politics from a range of analytical perspectives.

The chapters in Part I focus on mistakes and failures in Foreign and Security Policy. Considering mistakes in counter-terrorism, Legrand and Lister (Chap. 2, this volume) highlight how issues of uncertainty lead to complications in assessing when ‘something goes wrong’ in counter- terrorism, with uncertainty giving precautionary logics a promi-nent place in this policy area. Distinguishing different types of mistakes in counter- terrorism and discussing their effects, they conclude that ‘mis-takes are endemic to counter terrorism, and not aberrations which result from faulty application of tools/techniques or individual errors’. The chapter by Oppermann and Spencer (Chap. 3, this volume) retraces how Germany’s abstention in the UN Security Council vote on Resolution 1973 in March 2011 regarding a military intervention in Libya was con-stituted as a mistake in German media reporting. Introducing narrative analysis as a discourse analytical method, they use this case to illustrate how foreign policy mistakes are socially constructed in and through narra-tives—and can thus fruitfully be studied by means of narrative analysis.

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Drawing on a salience and framing analysis, Hansel, Viehrig and Ankel (Chap. 4, this volume) study German news media coverage to point out which foreign policy episodes came to be regarded as major failures or fiascos in the German press. They argue that it is first of all the violation of fundamental foreign policy norms such as the norm of multilateralism that triggers a fiasco framing in German media coverage. Daddow (in Chap. 5, this volume) considers New Labour’s alleged European policy failure, pre-cipitated by an overheard phone call in the Red Lion public house in 1997. Taking an interpretivist approach and investigating criticisms and defences of New Labour’s European policy, the chapter makes the case that judgements about ‘success’ and ‘failure’ cannot be objectively deter-mined but instead flow from different forms of narrative contestation about ‘what really happened’ and why.

Part II of this volume is concerned with mistakes and failures in the International Political Economy. Focusing on credit rating agencies (CRAs) and private military and security companies (PMSCs), Kruck (Chap. 6, this volume) explores when and to what extent private gover-nance failures in finance and commercialized security have subsequently led to enhanced legal control of these private authorities. The chapter puts forward an analytical approach that centres on political costs/benefits and structural path-dependencies to capture why regulation and legal over-sight of CRAs and PMSCs have increased after their failures but are plagued with limitations and entail unintended consequences. Chapter 7 (this volume) by Paudyn focuses on post-crisis financial market practices and regulation, asking how it is possible that, despite its history of trigger-ing major mistakes, so much dubious financial risk management remains taken for granted and promoted by financial markets and regulators today. Paudyn argues that the hegemonic discourse of risk (management) insu-lates market subjects from serious public contestation and reform; it thus depoliticizes the constitution of authoritative knowledge underpinning the political economy of finance. Heinkelmann-Wild, Rittberger and Zangl (Chap. 8, this volume) study EU financial policies to address the question of who is held publicly responsible for mistakes in EU policies. Their key claim is that in complex policy-making systems, responsibility for mistakes—such as the absence of sanctions against countries that vio-lated the Stability and Growth Pact and harmful tax competition between EU member states—tends to be attributed to implementing actors.

The chapters in Part III on International Public Policy consider mistakes and failures in global health, development, environment and migration.


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Chapter 9 (this volume) by Kamradt-Scott analyses the WHO’s han-dling of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak to draw out what mistakes occurred throughout these two health crises, why they happened, the consequences arising from them and whether the organization has learnt from these mistakes. Kamradt-Scott argues that various structural, cultural and political fac-tors influenced these events, in particular the WHO secretariat’s aver-sion to offending member states and the division of the organization into autonomous regional offices. Fisher (in Chap. 10, this volume) examines the UK Government’s international development policies, focusing particularly on political conditionality, to explore the difficul-ties in assessing the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of policy initiatives in the face of different and changing objectives for such initiatives. He argues that the UK Government’s dominant rationale for political conditionality in giv-ing aid has shifted from ‘instrumental’ to ‘expressive’ concerns in the mid-2000s, raising difficult questions around viewing political condi-tionality as a success or a failure in its current application. Chapter 11 (this volume) by Lankester on the UK’s funding of the Pergau hydro-electric project in Malaysia in the early 1990s analyses how the wilful misuse of aid turned into a serious foreign policy blunder. Retracing how the decision to fund the Pergau hydroelectric scheme came about, Lankester, who was the most senior civil servant in the Overseas Development Administration at the time, provides an insider’s account of how a range of non-developmental factors and conflicting policy objectives led to deficient decision-making, creating high economic and political costs. Vihma (in Chap. 12, this volume) considers the failure of the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen, investigating the reasons for the failure and pointing to lessons learnt from Copenhagen. He argues that procedural failures in the run-up to and during the meeting as well as excessive expectations coupled with misconceptions of great power politics were responsible for the Copenhagen failure, but at the same time this massive failure of negotiations has spurred ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ learning on process and politics in global climate talks. Finally, Hampshire (in Chap. 13, this volume) conducts an empirical analysis of immigration policy mistakes in Britain to emphasize the indeterminacy of policy mistakes. Immigration policy evaluations are shown to be inde-terminate or contingent as they are politically contested, the intentions of policy actors are often ambiguous or difficult to recover, and the eval-uation of policies changes over time.

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learning abouT/froM MisTakes and failures

In the various ways spelled out in this introduction, the focus of the fol-lowing chapters is to contribute to our learning about mistakes and fail-ures, how to study them, what their causes are and how responsibility for them is attributed. At the same time, the book also includes important insights and findings on learning from mistakes and failures. Indeed, ques-tions around whether, what and how actors learn from their own or oth-ers’ mistakes and failures have always been part and parcel of scholarship on mistakes and failures in public and foreign policy (Janis 1989; Howlett 2012; Bovens and ‘t Hart 2016). Some of this research has precisely been driven, at least in part, by a self-consciously normative agenda of how to improve policy-making and to avoid mistakes and failures in the future (Gray 1996; King and Crewe 2013).

As an analytical concept, learning depicts a process in which actors change their instrumental or normative beliefs and ‘ways of doing things’ as a result of their interpretation and evaluation of experience. This can involve either more shallow forms of ‘simple’ learning in which actors adapt their behaviour and strategies to better realize given goals or deeper forms of ‘complex’ learning in which actors re-examine their underlying goals, interests and identities (Levy 1994; Harnisch 2012; Ziv 2013). While such learning can take place in response to any sort of (direct and indirect) experience, it is often assumed that (perceived) mistakes and fail-ures provide strong incentives for actors to reconsider their beliefs, behav-iour and interests and should thus be particularly likely to foster learning (May 1992: 341–343). In other words, actors are expected to learn more from failure than from success.

Broadly speaking, the chapters in this volume relate to debates about learning from mistakes and failures in three different ways. First, a number of chapters present cases in which mistakes and failures have indeed trig-gered learning. In particular, Vihma (in Chap. 12, this volume) shows how the failure of the Copenhagen climate conference has resulted in learning, for example, with regard to the institutional set-up of UN cli-mate conferences, the role of the Presidency and the importance of expec-tations management about what can and cannot be realistically achieved. According to Vihma, the lessons learnt from Copenhagen facilitated the success of the subsequent climate conference in Paris. Kamradt-Scott (in Chap. 9, this volume) suggests that the WHO and, above all, its secre-tariat have attempted to learn from various investigations into their mis-


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takes and failures in handling the H1N1 and Ebola crises, for example, by launching a new Health Emergency Program. Kamradt-Scott also notes, however, that the underlying ‘mind-set’ of the WHO that played a large part in its mistakes in the two crises has been very resistant to change, indicating that ‘complex’ forms of learning face the most entrenched opposition. An important takeaway message from Vihma’s and Kamradt-Scott’s chapters is that learning, in both cases, is built on a clear under-standing of the main causes of mistakes and failures and of who was responsible. While the learning processes identified by Vihma and Kamradt-Scott can both be characterized as ‘simple’ learning, Fisher (Chap. 10, this volume) gives an example of ‘complex’ learning. Specifically, he argues that the shift from ‘instrumental’ to ‘expressive’ motivations as the main rationale for political conditionality in UK inter-national development policy has been driven by changed beliefs about the effectiveness and appropriateness of the ‘old conditionalities’ since the late 1990s. However, whether this kind of complex learning has contrib-uted to better development policy in terms of improving the living condi-tions in recipient countries seems very doubtful.

A second group of chapters, in contrast, foregrounds the difficulties and obstacles to learning from mistakes and failures. At the most extreme, Paudyn (in Chap. 7, this volume) argues that hegemonic discourses of risk have made public and private actors involved in financial risk management immune to learning from their mistakes in recent financial crises. Kruck (in Chap. 6, this volume) shows that the scope for policy-makers to learn from private governance failures of actors such as CRAs and PMSCs and to introduce effective regulatory reforms is severely circumscribed by path-dependencies, the political costs involved and structural dependencies of policy-makers on private authorities. Kruck also emphasizes the unin-tended consequences that attempts to learn from mistakes and failures within such constraints might entail. Legrand and Lister (in Chap. 2, this volume), in turn, highlight the role of uncertainty as a particular obstacle to learning. Specifically, their analysis suggests that the difficulties in coun-ter-terrorism to establish ‘when things have gone wrong’ seriously inhibit any prospects for learning. Overall, the message of this group of chapters is that learning from mistakes and failures is less straightforward than it may seem.

The third perspective on learning in this volume, finally, can be found in chapters that go furthest in adopting an intersubjective understanding of mistakes and failures. From this point of view, learning is not about avoiding

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objectively negative consequences of policies but about the social construc-tion of mistakes and failures. In other words, these chapters focus attention on social and political learning rather than instrumental policy learning (May 1992: 335–340). For example, the analysis of Oppermann and Spencer (in Chap. 3, this volume) suggests that whether policy- makers can forestall perceptions of their policies as ‘having gone wrong’ depends on their ability to learn, in a specific social, cultural and political context, how to develop powerful counter-narratives to thwart attempts in political dis-course to construct the policies in question as mistakes or failures. Closely related, the argument of Hansel, Viehrig and Ankel (in Chap. 4, this vol-ume) about the framing of foreign policy failures in the German news media implies that learning from such failures will start out from the logic and context of German media reporting. Finally, Hampshire (in Chap. 13, this volume) emphasizes the temporality of discursive constructions of mistakes and failures which adds an interesting twist to intersubjective views on learn-ing from failures. In particular, he turns the relationship between failures and learning around and argues that, over time, social learning can change intersubjective agreements on whether or not ‘things have gone wrong’. Also, he reminds us that what actors learn from mistakes and failures is shaped by their temporally situated vantage point.

If anything, what this introduction should bring across is the extent to which the key questions of the volume are interconnected and entwined. What are ‘mistakes’ and ‘failures’ and how can we study them? Why do mistakes and failures occur? How is responsibility for mistakes and failures attributed? What and how do actors learn from mistakes and failures? The following chapters give a wide range of answers to all of these questions and doubtless raise many new ones. Collectively, we hope, the chapters in this volume succeed in reinvigorating the study of mistakes and failures in IR.

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PART I

Foreign and Security Policy


CHAPTER 2

From Precaution to Prejudice: Mistakes in Counter-terrorism

Timothy Legrand and Michael Lister

The area of counter-terrorism (CT) is littered with mistakes, be these high- profile mistakes which have dire consequences (the fatal shooting of John Charles de Menezes) or more mundane errors (such as incorrect detention/questioning of those suspected of terrorism). In this chapter, we seek to disaggregate the mistakes, errors and miscalculations around counter- terrorism policy. We begin by noting the particular difficulties and complications in assessing when ‘something goes wrong’ in terms of counter-terrorism. There are particular issues around uncertainty in terms of counter-terrorism. This uncertainty gives precautionary logics a promi-nent place in counter-terrorism, such that the absence of knowledge about terrorist attacks is often seen as no barrier to pursuing counter-terrorism measures. In such a situation of uncertainty, does the absence of a terrorist attack mean that counter-terrorism has successfully averted an attack? Or was an attack not likely/never planned? How do we calculate the impacts, or costs and benefits, of counter-terrorism in more subjective terms? Fear

T. Legrand Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

M. Lister (*) Oxford Brooks University, Oxford, UK

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is an important dynamic in terrorism, and the extent to which public opinion is broadly supportive of counter-terrorism raises important issues concerning their subjective effectiveness (although, as the chapter also notes, certain sub-sections of the population, specifically ethnic minorities and Muslims, frequently do not find counter-terrorism measures reassur-ing and fear assuaging).

Moving to consider specific aspects of counter-terrorism, in examples drawn from British counter-terrorism policing and measures, there are, we argue, three different types of ‘mistakes’ in counter-terrorism policy. First, there is what we might call ‘genuine’ errors, where misinformation or lack of knowledge results in mistaken outcomes. A second form of mistake arises from the misapplication of policy—either in a context or way in which it was not originally designed or simply used inappropriately. A third form of error lies around unintended consequences which can be understood as effects other than those which the intervention aimed at. In so doing, we also consider the effects of such mistakes, in the form of ‘suspect communities’, and the ways in which high-profile mistakes come to shape perceptions of counter-terrorism practices. We conclude the chapter by arguing that such mistakes are endemic to counter-terrorism and not aberrations which result from faulty application of tools/tech-niques or individual errors. Given the inherent uncertainty and the seem-ing decision to prioritise precautionary logics, ‘mistakes’ (in the tripartite sense listed above) are inevitable. Thus, in seeking to enhance security through precautionary logics, such interventions, perhaps understood as a kind of administrative exceptionalism, whilst potentially reducing the threat of terrorism, also inevitably destabilise and disrupt the security of some/others. The chapter concludes by considering some of the conse-quences of mistakes in counter-terrorism. It suggests that high-profile mistakes are doubly damaging for counter-terrorism programmes, as they are frequently taken by wider populations not to represent aberrations from the norm (of good, effective policy) but as illustrations of how things really are.

Mistakes in Counter-terrorisM

A number of scholars around the literature on policy mistakes (and the associated language of failures, crises, fiascos and disasters) suggest the importance of disaggregating the idea of mistake or failure. Bovens et al. (1998: 196) distinguish between programme failures, where ‘a policy

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decision, plan or strategy that has been implemented, fails to have the desired impact on target populations, or even produces major unintended and unwanted effects’ and political failures which relate to ‘the way in which policies are perceived in the court of public opinion and the political arena’. This is similar to McConnell’s (2013) distinction between process, programme and politics in terms of mistakes, where the first is the means by which policy is arrived at, the second is the way it is implemented and the last is the way the policy is interpreted or viewed. Both authors note that it is perfectly possible for failure in one area to coexist with success in another. Bovens et al. (1998: 198) note the paradox of ‘policies that entail major social costs or conspicuously fail to meet even modest performance standards and yet are not labelled a failure in the political arena’. McConnell (2013: 357) meanwhile explicitly identifies the creation of the Department of Homeland Security as just such as policy.

There is a debate between rationalist and constructivist accounts of policy evaluation as to the objectivity (or subjectivity) in the ascription of mistakes and errors (Gray 1998; McConnell 2013). To some extent, we may wish to suggest that programme failures/mistakes, whilst not entirely objective, can potentially be assessed through appeal to objective factors (even if there is a disagreement about the significance or meaning of this) whereas political failures/mistakes have a much greater degree of subjec-tivity around them. In this chapter, we mainly focus on programme mis-takes although we offer some thoughts about the political mistakes/failures of counter-terrorism towards the end of the chapter. We begin by noting the complexity and difficulty of finding viable indicators with which to assess the success or failure of counter-terrorism measures. There are a number of factors which make finding viable ‘objective’ indicators of suc-cess or failure in counter-terrorism difficult. These include lack of clarity as to what success or failure looks like, the invocation of precautionary logics and the almost tautological view of counter-terrorism (the presence and absence of terrorist violence validates counter-terrorism policy). This, we note, has led to problems for the literature on counter-terrorism, to explore what is effective in counter-terrorism—what ‘works’. Yet despite these problems, some assessments, particularly at a cost-benefit level, have been conducted that find counter-terrorism spending to be inefficient in the extreme. This suggests that counter-terrorism as a whole (or at least the recent upsurges in spending and effort) might be considered a mis-take, or at least a sub-optimum approach, as it fails to pass a common standard for evaluating policy.

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Such objectivist accounts, though, fail to fully capture the issue of mis-takes/failure in counter-terrorism. For large swathes of the public, counter- terrorism is not seen as mistakes, and indeed, if they are seen to be mistakes, it is frequent that measures do not go far enough. For instance, 67% of people in the UK felt that any British citizen fighting for Islamic State should have their British citizenship revoked, even if they had no other citizenship to fall back on (Holehouse 2014), a position in con-flict with international law that the UK government did not pursue. Similarly, in 2008, 69% of the population supported increasing pre-charge detention for terrorist suspects to 42 days from 28 (Pantazis and Pemberton 2012), a measure that failed to find enough support in Parliament. Despite this apparent political success of counter-terrorism programmes, there are high-profile mistakes and failures in counter- terrorism which dog governments, from misapplied laws, incorrect deten-tions and arrests to fatal mistakes such as the shooting of John Charles de Menezes. Beyond these high-profile cases, there are reports and analyses which suggest both that policy is being misused and, in particular, that counter-terrorism policy has unintended consequences. This latter issue is perhaps most prominently associated with the literature around suspect communities.

The broad, umbrella definition of mistakes which this volume adopts is the idea of mistakes as ‘something gone wrong’. Counter-terrorism, as we shall see, is, if not unique, perhaps distinctively placed in terms of these criteria. This is because it is distinctively difficult to assess whether some-thing has gone wrong for two reasons. First, counter-terrorism frequently looks tautological. Karl Popper (2002 [1963]: 46) famously argued ‘a Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page con-firming evidence for his interpretation of history’—so too for certain advocates of counter-terrorism for whom the absence and presence of terrorist attacks constitute justification for enhanced counter-terrorism efforts. Thus, as Mueller and Stewart (2011) argue, counter-terrorism measures are impervious to criticism because the absence of attacks dem-onstrates their effectiveness, whilst new attacks demonstrate the need for even further measures. In other words, if counter-terrorism measures cor-relate with less terrorism, they are seen to be working; if they correlate with increased levels of terrorism, more (not less) counter-terrorism is seen to be the answer. In either situation, counter-terrorism, like Popper’s Marxist, is continually affirmed and validated as necessary and important.


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A second reason that makes mistakes in counter-terrorism (as ‘some-thing gone wrong’) hard(er) to point to is the increased (since 9/11) way in which counter-terrorism is aligned with a certain analysis of risk and the precautionary principle. Aradau and van Munster trace the origin of the concept of precautionary risk to environmental politics, which holds that where the threat is great, uncertainty of knowledge should not be a barrier to action (Aradau and van Munster 2007: 102). They go on to note that the precautionary principle applies only to certain risks, namely, where there is scientific uncertainty, there is a possibility of serious, irreparable damage. Thus, many states designate terrorism as an (potentially) uncon-trollable risk, which must be dealt with in a precautionary way. The invoca-tion to action comes not from information but from the lack of it or the uncertainty surrounding it. This reverses the traditional method of policy-making, where policy is made on the basis of what is known to be the case. Contemporary counter-terrorism policies are often based on the opposite; they take the form that they do because of a lack of knowledge, and indeed, policy is seen to be necessary because of an absence of knowledge. As the then British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith suggested in arguing for extend-ing the period for which terrorist suspects can be held without charge to 42 days, this extension was necessary not because of any ‘actual’ or exist-ing need but rather because there was a ‘potential risk’ that a longer period of pre-charge detention would be necessary in the future (The Times 2007: 29). In this sense, policy is being proposed and made, not on the basis of what is necessary, or even perceived to be necessary, but rather on the basis of what might be needed at some undefined point in the future. Comments by Tony Blair in 2004 further illustrate this dynamic at work.

Let me give you an example. A short while ago… we received specific intel-ligence warning of a major attack on Heathrow. To this day, we don’t know if it was correct and we foiled it or if it was wrong… We immediately height-ened the police presence. At the time it was much criticised as political hype or an attempt to frighten the public…. But sit in my seat. Here is the intel-ligence… Do you ignore it? But, of course intelligence is precisely that: intelligence. It is not hard fact. It has its limitations… would you prefer us to act, even if it turns out to be wrong? Or not to act and hope it’s OK? And suppose we don’t act and the intelligence turns out to be right, how forgiv-ing will people be? (BBC News 2004, emphasis added)

In this instance, Blair outlines an approach where policy is being guided by precautionary risk; it is uncertain if intervention or action is required,


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but action is taken just in case. Dick Cheney similarly argued, in the wake of 9/11, that ‘if there is even a one per cent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response’ (Susskind cited in de Lint and Kassa 2015: 360).

The point here is that if policy is made on the basis of uncertainty and nothing happens—no bombing at Heathrow—was the policy a success or a failure? Was the information/intelligence wrong (and hence the action mistaken) or did the intervention thwart the terrorist group (and hence was successful)? It might be argued that even if it was demonstrated that the risk was not there in the first place, policy made on the basis that it was would not necessarily be seen as a mistake (and certainly not by those who made the decision) because policy is made ‘just in case’, not on what is or what is not. The logic of the precautionary principle means that policy is akin to insurance. Someone who buys insurance but does not claim does not (generally) think the buying of insurance a mistake. Policy made in accordance with the precautionary principle is not ‘wrong’ if the event does not transpire—error is factored into a safety-first process of decision-making.

Thus, for these related reasons, the somewhat tautological picture of counter-terrorism, and the way in which precautionary counter-terrorism is based trying to prevent things happening, which may not even be hap-pening, identifying errors and mistakes in counter-terrorism policy is per-haps distinctively challenging. Yet, as we argue, there are ways in which we can think about mistakes and errors in this charged and controversial pol-icy area.

Counter-terrorisM: effeCtive and value for Money?As mentioned above, one of the issues around counter-terrorism is how do we know if it has worked. At its broadest level, counter-terrorism is aiming at preventing things (terrorist attacks) from happening. Yet at two levels, this presents challenges. If a terrorist attack did not happen, is this the result of counter-terrorism measures or something else (e.g. a change of tactic or mind by the terrorist group)? Similarly, if the terrorist attack did happen, is this a failing of counter-terrorism or the dying twitches of a declining terrorist organisation (Spencer 2006: 186)? Or even if we do think it is a failing of counter-terrorism, which bit failed? The whole area of effectiveness of counter-terrorism is deeply problematic, not least in


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terms of how we judge effectiveness. As van Dongen (2011: 359) argues, focusing solely on the numbers of attacks could be problematic in a num-ber of ways; terrorist groups on the wane might seek to increase their attacks to show their continued strength, but as he notes, ‘[i]n this case, an increase in the numbers of attacks is certainly not a sign that a counter-terrorism strategy is not working’ — indeed, it could suggest the opposite (see also Spencer 2006; Probst 2005). Also terrorism is, at heart, about the mobilisation of fear (Goodin 2006). This can be effectively achieved through a small number of attacks, and terrorism is not effective simply by carrying out more and more attacks. Surveying a range of other potential measures including casualty figures, material damage, government popu-larity, economic well-being and arrest figures, van Dongen (2011) argues that even if the rise or fall of these indicators could be considered ‘success’ for counter-terrorism (and he argues that there are reasons to believe this is not straightforwardly the case), there remain two further problems. The first is the attribution problem—how do we know it is counter-terrorism (or even which aspect of counter-terrorism) that is responsible for this specific outcome? Counter-terrorism aims at creating non-events, that is, to stop things from happening. Yet the absence of such things from hap-pening is also difficult to attribute to counter-terrorism measures. Were they ever going to happen? Even if they were and did not happen, can we attribute this to counter-terrorism measures or to the wealth of ‘other’ factors that could mean any given event doesn’t take place on a given day? A further issue is, mirroring McConnell’s (2013) distinction between pro-cess, programme and policy, the distinction between operational and stra-tegic successes. Van Dongen (2011) argues that it is possible for counter-terrorism measures to be operationally successful but to be strate-gic failures. For example, the Falls Road Curfew in Northern Ireland in 1970 recovered large amounts of weaponry but was a disaster in terms of the British army’s relationship with the Republican/Catholic community in Northern Ireland (Dixon 2009). Finally, van Dongen (2011) also argues that even if we overcome those issues, we must also be attentive to the potential problem of substitution effects whereby even if counter- terrorism is effective in reducing harm, violence or some other form of metric, what happens if this simply shifts the violence into a different geo-graphic area (e.g. another country) or into a different realm (criminality and other forms of aggression).

Given these problems, it is perhaps not too surprising to observe the long-standing weakness of terrorism studies in evaluating what works in


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counter-terrorism. A number of studies have looked with something close to despair at the existing literature, finding that there is very little rigorous research on what works in counter-terrorism. Research published in 2006 (Lum et al. 2006) found that out of 20,000 pieces on terrorism, only 21 studies conducted rigorous analysis of outcomes of counter-terrorism strategies. Later studies broadly repeat this finding. Um and Pisoiu (2015) suggest that despite an increase in the number of studies which examine effectiveness in counter-terrorism, detailed knowledge of whether it works is still in short supply. As identified above, there remain some inherent problems. Beyond the measurement issues, mentioned above, there is also, as Sageman (2014) identified, the problem of data access for academ-ics and researchers in this sensitive area.

Mueller and Stewart’s (2011) recent work represents one of the main attempts to gain some kind of handle on whether counter-terrorism mea-sures can be considered effective (or successes/failures) through cost- benefit analysis. They note the almost complete absence of this kind of governmental assessment of counter-terrorism measures, summed up by a Department for Homeland Security economist who stated, ‘[w]e really don’t know a whole lot about the overall costs and benefits of homeland security’ (cited in Mueller and Stewart 2011: 3). In order to supplant this, Mueller and Stewart conduct what they refer to as a ‘standard analytic risk management’ analysis to try to get to some sort of sense of whether counter- terrorism is worth the money.

Their broad conclusions are that counter-terrorism is ‘wildly inefficient’ (Mueller and Stewart 2011: 4), when examined through a cost-benefit model. The costs are huge; they estimate that the US government was spending an additional (that is on top of counter-terrorism spending prior to 9/11) $75 billion per year on homeland security/counter-terrorism. This, they also point out, is not the entirety of the cost of counter- terrorism as it does not include figures for private sector expenditure nor the oppor-tunity costs of implementing such measures (e.g. it is estimated that if each air passenger in the United States spends half an hour extra in security the ‘cost’ of this lost time is $15 billion (Congleton, in Spencer 2006: 187)). They take this expenditure and model it against terrorist attacks of differ-ent sizes and severities. Their conclusions are that terrorism would have to be on a scale approaching the unimaginable for the spending on counter- terrorism to pass muster for cost-benefit analysis. For attacks like 7/7 (which they ‘cost’ at $5 billion), their analysis suggests that there would have to be 30 per year to reach a point of cost effectiveness (Mueller and


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Stewart 2011: 85), and for attacks like 9/11 (which are estimated to have cost $200 billion), there would need to be more than one a year. They go on to conduct similar analysis for the UK, where they find there would need to be two ‘7/7’s per year to achieve cost effectiveness (Mueller and Stewart 2011: 91), and for Australia and Canada, where there would need to be one ‘7/7’ size attack every 1–2 years (Mueller and Stewart 2011: 92). They argue that counter-terrorism only approaches cost effectiveness if one makes apocalyptic assumptions about how much terrorist violence is possible/likely (such as the detonation of nuclear weapons in civilian areas) and the harm it would wreak. Considering ‘far more likely’ attack scenarios of ‘property damage and death or injury to a few people and inflicting losses of $100 million’, Mueller and Stewart (2011: 92) argue that ‘the lack of cost-effectiveness reaches ridiculous proportions’:

In this case, 1,667 such attacks would need to be thwarted annually in the United States by enhanced homeland security expenditures for them to be cost effective. Under the same conditions, enhanced homeland security expenditures would be cost-effective only if they could plausibly be held to have thwarted 111 terrorist attacks each year in the United Kingdom, 42 in Canada, and 29 in Australia. Attack frequencies of that magnitude are scarcely found anywhere outside war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan. (Mueller and Stewart 2011: 92–3)

This is, of course, only one way of approaching the issue. It might be argued that calculating the ‘costs’ of terrorist attacks goes beyond the immediate material damage in both material and subjective ways. In terms of the former, for example, how do we ‘price in’ the broader economic effects of a downturn in the airline industry which stems from a terrorist attack (see Spencer 2006)? In terms of subjective factors, how do we assess the impact of counter-terrorism measures on individual and societal fear, which, as noted above, is a key aspect of terrorism (see Sunstein 2003; Spencer 2006)? Whilst for reasons noted above (the difficulty in measuring counter-terrorism), we might not consider cost-benefit analy-sis as the best/most appropriate/only way of evaluating counter-terror-ism, assessing policy in such a way is routine in almost all other areas, except counter- terrorism. Mueller and Stewart’s work suggests that under conventional policy evaluation techniques, the vast increases in counter-terrorism expenditure which followed 9/11 look distinctively like failures or mistakes.


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Despite these concerns, counter-terrorism policies and initiatives have remained bracketed from the strictures of value-for-money measures and cost-benefit analyses that non-security policy domains must typically embed in their policy evaluation cycle. Precaution is tacitly accepted as an appropriate risk-reducing means of managing terror threats to the state (Guiora et al. 2015; see also Sunstein 2005; Goldsmith 2007). As a conse-quence, counter-terrorism policy broadly enjoys a kind of ‘administrative exceptionalism’ for its special precautionary value. Administrative excep-tionalism, we hold, involves the suspension of core precepts of policymak-ing or policy implementation, variously including the avoidance of managerialism-style target-setting, the weakening or wholesale disman-tling of legal safeguards, the commission of drastic powers (with a widened discretion in application of those powers), immunity from legal or profes-sional checks and balances, and exemption from standard policy standards or benchmarking. How precaution manifests through exceptionalism is instructive to our understanding of how ‘mistakes’ are tolerated in coun-ter-terrorism. It is to the analysis of these that the chapter now turns.

Mistakes, MisappliCation and unintended ConsequenCes in Counter-terrorisM prograMMes

Many policing and legislative approaches to counter-terrorism have adopted a precautionary model (Bronitt and McSherry 2010: 982–983). While the precautionary principle has been applied to motivate legislative action to protect the environment, its (mis)application (whilst not perhaps exclusive to the field of terrorism) has the potential to justify laws which undermine fundamental rights, are ineffective or worse still counterpro-ductive (Bronitt and McSherry 2010). We see these precepts emerge across the spectrum of CT initiatives, linked to the rationale that the hor-rors of terrorism—as evidenced by 9/11—are serious enough to require preventative action and because the potential consequences are so egre-gious, emergency, non-standard or exceptional action is therefore war-ranted (Legrand et al. 2015).

Mistakes: Identity, Interpretation, Action

The first illustrative case is one of the most confronting instances of the risks and mistakes inherent to counter-terrorism policing. The death of Charles De Menezes in July 2005 in the midst of a London-wide counter- terrorism


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operation was subject to intense scrutiny from the public, media and, even-tually, an independent enquiry: Stockwell 1. It is a case notable not only for the errors culminating in the tragic death of De Menezes but for the cir-cumstances that expose the contextual conditions that make such errors more likely. On the morning of Friday, 22 July 2005, Jean Charles De Menezes, a Brazilian national, left his home in London SW2 to travel to work. The day before, a group of four men—Muktar Ibrahim, Yassin Omar, Ramzi Mohammed and Hussain Osman—had attempted to detonate four explosive devices on the London transport system. Though unsuccessful, they fled before they could be apprehended, prompting one of the largest manhunts in London’s history. Unbeknown to De Menezes, he shared his address with one of the suspected attackers, and the address had been placed under surveillance by security services. As he left his home, he was surveilled as he took a bus and then boarded a tube at Stockwell. Under the incorrect impression that De Menezes was a suicide bomber, police officers approached and shot De Menezes dead without attempting an arrest.

Various operational failures in the circumstances led to the death of De Menezes, and overall the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) found grave errors of judgement exercised in the operation:

In the context of the events of 7 July and 21 July when, respectively, there had been a successful detonation and an attempted detonation of bombs on buses it was a failure of the management of the operation to permit Mr DE MENEZES to get on the bus at TULSE HILL. If he had been a suicide bomber that event could have been catastrophic. (IPCC 2007: 135, empha-sis in original)

A number of tactical failures were also identified in the operation—the poor positioning and coordination of the surveillance team, the failure to positively identify De Menezes, for example—but here we note the role played by the combination of exceptional circumstances and exceptional police powers that produced the eventual killing of De Menezes.

Available to the police services that day was an exceptional policy for armed officers, operating with legal approval, to tackle suicide bombers before they could detonate their explosives. Dubbed ‘Kratos’, the policy stipulated that suicide bombers could be shot dead—with shots aimed at the brain—without warning. On the day of the manhunt for the failed bombers, special police operatives of the unit SO19 were ‘fully briefed in relation to the possibility that they might have to intercept a suicide bomber’ (IPCC 2007: 122), and they had been issued with special ammunition to use in


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enclosed spaces, such as those anticipated they would encounter in relation to suicide bombers. This policy was developed in response to the July 7 bombings which, just three weeks earlier, had killed 52 individuals in London transport services. Against this backdrop, the team involved in the De Menezes operation were primed with the exceptional resources and excep-tional powers authorised by UK police authorities and were actively engaged in exigent investigation to tackle a group seemingly intent on replicating the 7/7 attacks.

The error we highlight is the product of how SO19 interpreted the exceptional circumstances and discretionary powers available to them. Specifically, in relation to the events leading to the death of De Menezes, the IPCC found fault in the communication between the operation com-mander (Cressida Dick) and the SO19 officers in pursuit of De Menezes. At a critical point in the operation, when it seemed likely that De Menezes was one of the suspected suicide bombers and was heading towards London transport, Dick issued a crucial command to ‘stop’ De Menezes from entering the station and train. Yet the command to ‘stop’ De Menezes was interpreted by SO19 officers to mean the use of lethal force autho-rised by the Kratos policy. And so, several officers intercepted De Menezes just after he boarded the train and shot him several times without warning. The IPCC found the interpretation of the SO19 officers to lethally ‘stop’ De Menezes to be justified in the non-normal (or exceptional) circum-stances, even though that was not the intent of the command:

I do not believe that the use of the word ‘Stop’ can be related to normal policing duties. With the mindset of the SO19 officers believing that a suicide bomber had entered the underground station, to receive such an order to stop him from DSO cannot be related to normal duties. (IPCC 2007: 134)

In the exceptional circumstances, the IPCC found, it was understand-able that the everyday use of language to ‘stop’ would take on a different connotation and lead the SO19 officers to believe that their exceptional powers had been authorised:

The order given by Commander Dick was to stop the suspect getting onto the underground station and subsequently the underground train. When interviewed she was asked to explain the word ‘Stop’ and her response was that ‘Stop’ is a common word in policing terms and it was meant as ‘stop and detain’. (IPCC 2007: 134)


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One of the SO19 officers involved in the shooting observed that they had become collectively convinced of the imminent dangers posed by De Menezes and that at the time felt fully justified in using lethal force with-out warning: ‘You don’t shoot somebody five times if you think you might have made a mistake and may be able to arrest him’ (Evidence to IPCC).

The De Menezes case is thus one of exception: the powers, training and resources given to the policing agencies involved were exceptional insofar as they were geared for the prevention of violence rather than the appre-hension and prosecution. The circumstances warranting the commission of the policing agency resources and powers too were exceptional—the prospect of an active suicide bomber in a metropolitan area was all too real after the attacks of July 7. The erroneous, tragic outcome proceeded from the confluence of exceptional circumstances and powers.

Misapplication: Precautionary Policing and ‘Stop and Search’ Counter-terrorism Powers

It is important to hold these claims about the preventative model to criti-cal scrutiny, and in this section we explore the advent of counter-terrorism ‘preventative’ policing through an examination of section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (UK). Section 44 introduced wide powers of stop and search to prevent terrorism, which departed—again as an exception—from the usual model of police powers: in non-exigent circumstances a police officer could only detain and search an individual if he or she had reasonable suspicion or belief that that person was involved in committing an offence. Section 44 of the Terrorism Act excepted the need for reason-able suspicion: it stipulated that where a senior police officer believes that it is ‘expedient for the prevention of acts of terrorism’, he or she could desig-nate whole areas in which any constable in uniform may stop and search a pedestrian or vehicle for ‘articles of a kind which could be used in connection with terrorism’ without the need for reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminality. There were few effective checks on the use of the police powers under this act to stop and search people and vehicles. The police officer was permitted discretion to stop and search a person subject to just two conditions, namely, that the power (a) may be exercised only for the purpose of searching for articles of a kind which could be used in connec-tion with terrorism and (b) applies whether or not the constable has grounds for suspecting the presence of articles of that kind. The first con-dition is limiting: the power to stop and search without suspicion under


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section 44. Before section 44, the police could only stop and search indi-viduals if they had ‘reasonable grounds’ for suspicion of involvement in specific criminal behaviours and certain criteria were met. That was no longer necessary for section 44.

The exceptional nature of this preventive measure was instrumental in its eventual misapplication. The human rights watchdog, Liberty, pointed out that section 44 powers were used against anti-war, anti-weapons and anti-capitalist protestors, and even anti-government protestors. Ministry of Justice statistics showed that in 2008 there was a threefold increase in the use of the power, but few of those stopped were arrested for terrorism offences or indeed any offence. Statistics demonstrate that as little as 0.6% of stops and searches under section 44 in 2008–09 resulted in an arrest. Even more worryingly, the statistics also reveal that those of black or Asian ethnicity were many times more likely to be stopped than white individu-als. Of the people stopped in England and Wales, 17.7% were identified by the police as Asian, as against 4.7% of the population. Of those stopped and searched, 63.1% were identified as white, as against 91.3% of the pop-ulation (Ministry of Justice 2009). As Liberty has noted in relation to these powers, black or Asian people were between five and seven times more likely to be stopped under section 44 (Liberty 2009).

This data points to the conclusion that black and minority ethnic groups were heavily targeted by the misapplication of this power. Moreover, shortly after the ruling, an internal review by the Office for Security and Counter-terrorism revealed that thousands of people have been illegally stopped and searched under section 44 of the Terrorism Act. The internal review uncovered 40 cases, between 2001 and 2008, where police forces across England and Wales misapplied the legislation. Errors included 35 occasions of forces seeking authorisations lasting longer than the maxi-mum 28 days permitted under the law and a 2004 Metropolitan police operation in which 840 people were stopped even though the police did not get authorisation from a government minister within 48 hours. It should be noted that more than 100,000 stops occurred in 2009–10. Crucially, none of these searches resulted in a prosecution for a terrorism offence, and only 1 in every 200 stops led to an arrest.

The section 44 case study suggests that the overuse of these powers against minorities may have stimulated home-grown disaffection in Muslim communities over the past decade. This example reveals that ‘unintended cost’ of new forms of preventative counter-terrorism policing must be considered into any ‘cost-benefit’ analysis. Elevating stop and


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search to the plane of counter-terrorism by excising key legal constraints had the effect of exceptionalising the application of power and led to racial profiling without discernible national security benefits.

From Precaution to Prejudice: Unintended Consequences and Suspect Communities in Counter-terrorism Policing

Foley offers a useful definition of successful counter-terrorism. He argues that for counter-terrorism to be successful, it should keep track of and suc-cessfully detain and prosecute would-be terrorists, but ‘it must do all this without raising the political temperature in a way that could contribute to radicalization’ (Foley 2015: 317). This injunction is important, and it is often argued that in this regard, irrespective of any successes or mistakes in the former aspects, counter-terrorism is often found wanting. In par-ticular, the discourse around ‘suspect communities’ has been frequently mobilised to point to the way in which counter-terrorism measures may contribute to alienation and potentially even radicalisation. A counter- terrorism policy, which in Foley’s terms, raised the ‘political temperature’ or which, at worst, contributed to alienation/radicalisation would consti-tute a clear ‘programme failure’ by creating unintended consequences and/or failing to have the desired effect.

The term ‘suspect community’—first coined by Paddy Hillyard (1993) to describe the experience of Irish communities under the UK’s Prevention of Terrorism Act—has been widely invoked to describe such experiences. Hillyard argued that measures introduced to combat terrorism, although framed legally in neutral terms, were aimed at a specific section of the population, namely the Irish.

Despite some conceptual questions (Ragazzi 2016), in the post 9/11 era, this concept of the suspect community has been appropriated by many to characterise the treatment of Muslim populations in Britain (e.g. Breen Smyth 2009). Hillyard (1993: 273) had earlier argued that ‘[a] suspect community has been constructed against a backdrop of anti-Irish racism. The community has suffered widespread violation of their human rights and civil liberties’. Yet, as Said (2004: 3) notes: ‘A decade later, substitute “Irish” for “Muslim” and this could easily be read as a description of the impact and operation of the Terrorism Act 2000 and the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001’. Pantazis and Pemberton (2009) similarly argue that the Terrorism Act 2000, with its powers of stop and search, proscription of organisations and criminalisation by association, has been


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instrumental in creating a ‘suspect community’ of the Muslim population in the UK. Further evidence for this might be drawn from the way in which the initial Prevent funding was allocated on the basis of local authorities with high Muslim populations.

Taken together, the institution of state policies, media and public dis-courses that identify, isolate, target and even constitute (see Ali 2015) specific sections of the population seems to be a recurring response to political violence in the UK (also Rygiel 2008: 212). As Gillespie notes in her research with minority groups:

Most interviewees feel that they have become more insecure in recent years and most are more afraid of the consequences of security policy than of ter-rorism. These include ‘casual’ everyday racism, state surveillance, arrest and detention, creeping militarism and threats to civil rights and traditions of democracy and the rule of law …A large proportion of racialised minorities base their fears on personal experience of stop and search, identity checks and temporary detention. (Gillespie 2007: 284)

There is, though perhaps, a sense that the creation of a suspect com-munity is not an entirely unintended consequence. Hazel Blears, in 2005, was forthright that the attention of the security services would be focused on Muslims in general:

Dealing with the terrorist threat and the fact that at the moment the threat is most likely to come from those people associated with an extreme form of Islam, or falsely hiding behind Islam, if you like, in terms of justifying their activities, inevitably means that some of our counter terrorist powers will be disproportionately experienced by people in the Muslim community. That is the reality of the situation… There is no getting away from the fact that if you are trying to counter the threat, because the threat at the moment is in a particular place, then your activity is going to be targeted in that way. (H. Blears, cited in House of Commons 2005: 46)

The mistakes listed above cover a range of areas, from individual mis-takes in the application of measures to wider and broader misapplications and unintended consequences from policy as a whole. Yet, in research conducted with ‘ordinary people’ (see Jarvis and Lister 2015a, b) about experiences of counter-terrorism powers, such mistakes loomed large in their imaginary. Whilst for authorities mistakes might be something to be learnt from and moved on—as aberrations in other words—for some


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‘ordinary people’, especially those from ethnic minorities, such mistakes served as powerful illustrations of how things really are, as if the counter- terrorism mask had slipped and what really lies beneath could be glimpsed.

Jarvis and Lister (2015b) report how two high-profile mistakes, the fatal shooting of John Charles de Menezes in 2005 and the Forest Gate raid in 2005, were taken by some to be not anomalies but paradigmatic of how counter-terrorism functioned. In addition to the de Menezes case mentioned above, the latter episode refers to a counter-terrorism operation that took place in East London in June 2006, in which armed police raided two properties believing there to be a chemical bomb at the premises. Two men were arrested, one of whom was shot during the operation, but both were later released without charge. In terms of the de Menezes shooting, Jarvis and Lister note how it was invoked in quite separate discussions (about the validity or otherwise of the 2001 Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act). ‘That a mistake was made in one case suggests to our participants the possibility of mistakes in others, leading them to be fearful of counter terrorism measures more generally’ (Jarvis and Lister 2015b: 122). In terms of the Forest Gate incident, when par-ticipants invoked this incident, the concern was not analogous—a sense that if mistakes happen in one area, they could happen elsewhere—but direct. One respondent discussed the Forest Gate raid as something that might happen to them. Thus, Jarvis and Lister (2015b: 123) suggest that mistakes, especially high-profile ones, can have long-term spill-over effects:

Therefore it seems that certain decisions or events can cast very long shad-ows and be generalised either as potential futures, or, as above, as reflective of wider state agendas. Thus a single ‘mistake’ can be taken not as a one-off error, but as revealing the larger and broader way counter-terrorism func-tions. This suggests that the errors and mistakes of government and security services can have long and significant legacies.

We suggest here that the mistakes, errors and misapplied powers can be traced from the preventative counter-terrorism model to an underlying exceptionalist paradigm. As with most state institutions, policing and security agencies have developed procedural or legal checks to curb the most egregious possibilities for mistakes: for example, in the 1990s, the London Metropolitan police service (MPS) was adjudged ‘institutionally racist’ after its mishandling of the racist murder of Stephen Laurence. Yet


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the initiatives adopted by the MPS to rid itself of practices that were racist were, in one stroke of section 44, excised from its policing model and resulted—as we have seen—in unambiguous racial profiling.

ConClusion: Mistakes, MisappliCations and unintended ConsequenCes and failure

What sort of failure(s) do the above constitute? One could make the case for the above constituting, to refer back to the concepts of ‘failure’ which we began the chapter with, both programme failures and political failures (at least to certain sections of the UK population). For example, as stop and search powers alienated many ethnic minority communities (and oth-ers), it both became politically problematic and, in so doing, produced effects other than that which were intended. Yet despite this point, defend-ers of the measures—and particularly ones inclined towards precautionary logics—might defend them as successes. This might be done either on the basis of the 1% logic arguing that if there was even a very slim chance that random stop and search powers would prevent a terrorist attack, they should be implemented or on the basis that we don’t know if such powers did prevent or disrupt (potential) terrorist attacks. They could even be justified/defended in terms of reducing fear in the wider population, although this would have to be weighed against the undoubted and clear anxiety that it induced in ethnic minority populations. Thus, whilst there have been clear negative aspects to policies such as stop and search, and for many/most they are considered as a mistake (or ‘things gone wrong’), those inclined to defend the policy might argue that they have not been mistakes. This again returns us to where we began and to the almost inher-ent ambiguity around success/failure in this contentious area.

The aims and outcomes of counter-terrorism are fundamentally shrouded by a secrecy that prevents thorough evaluation of effectiveness, at least in objective terms. Nonetheless, in the span of the current era of coun-ter-terrorism, a range of ‘mistakes’ are discernible, as discussed above, which point to underlying weaknesses in the paradigm of tackling terror-ism. Here we suggest that the precautionary approach has become ascen-dant in counter-terrorism, driven by a highly risk-averse institutional environment in which security and policing officials are more anxious to avoid political violence than any other form of crime. The consequence of this anxiety has been to dismantle the orthodox, tried and tested safeguards


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normally attached to government interventions. And so, as seen in the cases presented here, the police shooting of Charles De Menezes and the section 44 stop and search powers, the loss of safeguards resulted in funda-mental policing errors: a death and systematic racial profiling. These have had further consequences—the emergence of a ‘suspect community’ against whom counter-terrorism measures are misapplied. This is, as we have argued, the exceptionalist logics of counter-terrorism at work: the exceptionalist paradigm is predicated on the rationale that the threat of ter-rorism is so great, and its consequences are so grave that legal, institutional or procedural safeguards must be removed. In this respect, preventive counter-terrorism policy is designed to allow for minimal failures but in so doing provides considerable tolerance for mistakes.

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ChApTer 3

The Social Construction of Mistakes: Germany’s Abstention on UN Security

Council resolution 1973 on Libya

Kai Oppermann and Alexander Spencer

The conduct of the [German] government in the Libya conflict, its absten-tion in the UN Security Council, is a complete debacle, possibly the biggest foreign policy debacle since the foundation of the Federal republic. (Fischer 2011a: 26)

The former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer was only one of the most outspoken of many voices in the German debate, when he criti-cised the Merkel government’s abstention on UN Security Council resolution (UNSCr) 1973, which authorized member states to ‘take all necessary measures’ to protect civilians from the Gaddafi regime in Libya, as a ‘scandalous mistake’ (Fischer 2011b: 2).1 Indeed, most academic and journalistic comments on the German position were equally scathing at the time. As cases in point, heinrich August Winkler (2011: 8), one of

K. Oppermann (*) Department of politics, University of Sussex, Brighton, east Sussex, UK

A. Spencer Institute of Social Sciences and history, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

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Germany’s foremost historians, deplored the ‘self-inflicted isolation and marginalisation of the Federal republic’, and harald Müller (2011: 2), a leading German peace researcher, went so far as to say that he had not come across ‘such a diplomatic disaster’ in four decades.

The focus of the critique against the Merkel government was that its Libya policy marked the first occasion in which the Federal republic stood against all three of its main Western allies—the USA, France and the UK—simultaneously on a major foreign policy issue. This, in turn, was expected to damage Germany’s reputation as a trustworthy member of the Western alliance and to risk isolating the country from its partners. To avert such negative consequences, the widespread suggestion was that the Merkel government should have voted in favour of UNSCr 1973, which would still have left it with sufficient diplomatic room either to refuse becoming involved in the military implementation of the resolution at all or to make only a symbolic contribution to it (Stelzenmüller 2011: 2).

From a positivist perspective, however, the widely held view of Germany’s policy on Libya as a major mistake must remain somewhat surprising since the ‘objective’ grounds for such a judgement appear far less clear cut than the dominant discourse would suggest. First, the deci-sion to abstain on UNSCr 1973 reflected rather than contradicted the stated objective of the Merkel government and, in particular, its junior coalition partner, the Free Democrats, to privilege civilian instruments of foreign policy and to advocate the use of military force only as a means of last resort. Second, realist accounts of the decision have suggested that the abstention made sense in terms of Germany’s geo-economic interests and grand strategy (Miskimmon 2012: 401–403). Third, it is easy to overstate the diplomatic costs of the abstention, given that Germany was actually far less isolated within NATO and the eU than critics of the abstention acknowledge and that the Merkel government was quick to make good for any potential damage to its international reputation by reinforcing its engagement in Afghanistan (hansel and Oppermann 2016: 121–123). Fourth, considering the current chaotic situation in Libya, following intervention, some point out that in hindsight Germany’s decision to abstain in the UN Security Council was ‘in fact’ a correct decision rather than a mistake (Schwennicke 2016). In other words, there was nothing inevitable about the common wisdom at the time to see the Merkel gov-ernment’s approach to Libya as a mistake.

Against the background of this discrepancy between ‘intersubjective’ and ‘objectivist’ perspectives on Germany’s abstention on UNSCr 1973,

K. OpperMANN AND A. SpeNCer

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the chapter follows a constructivist critique of objectivist approaches to policy evaluation and conceptualizes foreign policy mistakes not as facts to be discovered and explained, but rather as social constructs which are con-stituted in political discourse (Bovens and ‘t hart 1996; Kruck et al., Chap. 1, this volume). While the discursive construction of mistakes will always be subject to contestation, the characterization of a foreign policy decision as a mistake or failure depends on the extent of intersubjective agreement in this regard, in particular, among powerful political and social actors. political discourse, in this sense, can be seen as a struggle between competing claims which either attribute the ‘mistake’ or ‘failure’ label to foreign policy decisions or reject such a label. The chapter shows how the decision of the Merkel government to abstain on UNSCr 1973 was socially constructed into a major mistake in the German news media and is the result of a discursive struggle between narratives.

In pursuit of this aim, the chapter explicates how the construction of foreign policy mistakes takes place as a struggle between narrative and counter-narrative and what narrative elements it involves. The first part of the chapter introduces a discourse-analytical method of narrative analysis and show how it can contribute to the study of foreign policy mistakes. The second part applies such a method to our case study and shows how Germany’s abstention on UNSCr 1973 was constructed into a foreign policy mistake by focusing on the narrative elements of setting, character-ization and emplotment in both the dominant ‘mistake’ narrative and the marginalized counter-narrative by the German government.

Narratives aNd the social coNstructioN of Mistakes

It has to be noted that we are by no means the first to look at the discourse and language of mistake constructions. As edelman (1988: 31) argues, ‘a policy failure, like all news developments, is a creation of the language used to depict it; its identification is a political act, not a recognition of a fact’. We hold that the construction of a mistake in language takes the form of a discursive struggle between competing narratives. Narratives are here understood as a ‘mode of verbal representation’ (White 1987: 26) which offer humans a way of comprehending their environment. While narrative analysis is one among many different discourse-analytical meth-ods including Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 2010; Jackson 2005), metaphor analysis (Spencer 2010; Oppermann and Spencer 2013) or approaches adopting discourse theoretical assumptions by ernesto

The SOCIAL CONSTrUCTION OF MISTAKeS: GerMANy’S ABSTeNTION…

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Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (renner 2013; herschinger 2011), we hold that a narrative is a means of structuring discourse. While discourse includes a vast number of different representations and it is unclear where to draw a line delimiting discourse, narratives include a number of key ele-ments which offer anchor points for the empirical analysis of phenomena such as policy mistakes.

So far, the constructivist literature on mistakes and policy failure has predominantly focused on the notion of framing (Goffman 1974; Johnson 1995). The main argument behind frame analyses of mistakes ‘is that the reaction to an event is determined not – or hardly at all – by the event itself but by the way in which such events are interpreted and given meaning’ (De Vries 2004: 596–597). Frame analysis is the attempt to unmask the underlying framework which is used in reporting to make sense of a cer-tain empirical event such as a crisis or policy mistake.

While there are clear overlaps between frame and narrative analysis which are sometimes used in a very similar fashion (Boin et al. 2009: 82–83; De Vries 2004; Brändström and Kuipers 2003), we hold that the concept of ‘narrative’, in particular, has a number of advantages. It offers an opportunity for cross-disciplinary learning by incorporating insights from literary studies, a discipline which predominantly concentrates on textual modes of literature and writing, and Narratology, the theory of narrative, into political science. While the analysis of the arts in the form of poetry, literature or film has made inroads into the political sciences, discourse-analytical methods have generally been adopted from sociology and linguistics rather than literary studies. however, research on narratives in literary studies offers both theoretical and analytical arguments for why narratives can be helpful for the analysis of political events.

From a theoretical perspective, it provides arguments for why narratives are important for the analysis of human behaviour in the first place. essentially, there are two interrelated lines of argumentation one may pur-sue: a cognitive perspective and a cultural perspective (patterson and Monroe 1998: 315). The first emphasizes that narratives are an important part of human mental activity in the sense that the human brain ‘captures many complex relationships in the form of narrative structures’ (Fludernik 2009: 1). The second perspective considers narratives as culturally embed-ded phenomena which are part of every society. Myths and stories of the past including stories about political representatives and nations on the international stage are an essential part of all forms of community building where the constitution of a common identity is sought. Cultural memory


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is above all made up of different narratives which provide ‘us with a fun-damental epistemological structure that helps us to make sense of the con-fusing diversity and multiplicity of events and to produce explanatory patterns for them’ (Fludernik 2009: 2).

Taking these two perspectives together, one can argue that individuals as well as communities make sense of themselves and of the social world around them through narratives which constitute their identities as well as their understandings of other actors. In that view, actors in foreign policy are (co-)authors and ‘subjects’ of identity-constructing self-narratives as well as objects of public narratives which constitute a particular under-standing of states and their representatives. Foreign policy actors, specifi-cally, seek to develop and communicate strategic narratives about the past, present and future of international politics and about their country’s iden-tity as an international actor in order to shape their discursive environment and the behaviour of other actors both domestically and internationally (Miskimmon et al. 2013: 1–11). The analysis of how narratives of mistakes are told and how they establish a dominant position in a struggle for the interpretation of complex events in international politics while other alter-native stories are sidelined ultimately helps to understand the distribution of discursive power (patterson and Monroe 1998: 315–316).

From an analytical perspective, another advantage of narrative analysis is that the definition of ‘narrative’ in literary studies and Narratology points to essential elements which make up such narratives and which can be used as categories to guide empirical research. These categories include the set-ting or context of a story, agents that are characterized in different ways as well as the causal and temporal emplotment of events (Toolan 2001). All of these elements are elaborated on in the narrative discourse in order to give them a more specific character and a certain evaluative implication. The dimensions of setting, characterization and emplotment can be empirically analysed and are representative of an overall narrative (Table 3.1).

With regard to the setting, the idea is that similar to a stage play or film the background or location in front of which the story unfolds is of impor-tance for the narrative as a whole because it gives audiences clues about the kind of story they are about to indulge in. As Toolan (2001: 41) argues: ‘The locations [or settings] where events occur are […] given distinct characteristics and are thus transformed into specific places’. For example, a setting such as the diplomatic realm has important implications for what is considered to be suitable behaviour on the international stage. The rep-resentation of the setting indicates the set of norms and values the reader


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considers to be appropriate for the situation. The constitution of the set-ting of diplomacy as one of hard power politics among untrusting actors or as a realm of cooperative friendship amongst long allies thus has impli-cations for what is and what is not considered a mistake in such a setting.

More specifically, narratives on foreign policy mistakes will likely be more powerful if they involve settings allowing for the possibility of alter-natives, choice and different behaviour. Narratives in which agents are left with no alternative but to act the ways they did are generally not told as mistakes (Tuchman 1984: 5; Ingram and Mann 1980: 14). The very notion of ‘mistake’ is often seen to imply the existence of ‘better’ alterna-tives which decision-makers have failed to identify or implement (Grant 2009: 559). Compared to events which are construed as being beyond the control of decision-makers, the construction of the narrative setting of foreign policy mistakes as avoidable makes it more difficult for decision- makers to escape blame by invoking mitigating circumstances such as mis-fortune or structural constraints (see hood 2002). For example, in the case of US policy towards Iraq, some argue that the Gulf War in the early 1990s was a ‘war of necessity’ making it less susceptible to mistake narra-tives, while the second Iraq war in 2003 was a ‘war of choice’, implying the possibility of alternative behaviour and therefore inviting construc-tions as an avoidable mistake (haass 2009).

The second essential part of narratives is the characterization of the agents involved in a story. While there are a number of ways in which the characterization of actors can be influenced, the most straightforward is

Table 3.1 Narrative elements of stories of failure

Setting Characterization Emplotment

Violation of normal; labelling of the event as a fiasco, disaster, mistake, etc.

representation of foreign policy situation (What is appropriate behaviour here?)

personal characteristics of decision-makers (inexperience, personal ambitions, etc.)

highly negative consequences

Availability of alternatives (Was the fiasco avoidable?)

Institutional characteristics of decision process (haste, secrecy, overlapping responsibilities, etc.)

Causal link to personal or collective decision-makers or decision-making processesAttribution of responsibility to agents


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giving them a name or label rather than referring to them simply by the role they play in the story. The giving of a name or label informs the rela-tionship between the audience and the agent in the story. For example, referring to Margaret Thatcher as the ‘Iron Lady’ or George W. Bush as a ‘cowboy’ constitutes them in a particular fashion, making allegations of mistakes more or less easily stick. Moreover, an agent is characterized by being placed in relation to others. For example, this can involve hierarchi-cal relationships such as in the family (mother/child), in society (govern-ment/public) or in international politics (leader of the free world); it may also point to more equal relations such as business partners, allies or friends (Fludernik 2009: 44–46). A third possibility of characterizing agents is through what they say and how they act (herman and Vervaeck 2007: 227). Ultimately, the words and deeds of characters in a story, such as foreign policymakers, greatly influence our perception of what these char-acters are like.

Narratives of foreign policy mistakes thus crucially depend on the iden-tification and characterization of agents on both the individual and collec-tive level who have been influential in formulating the policy in question (Gray 1998: 8). On the individual level, such narratives are often facili-tated by the personification of foreign policy issues (Bovens et al. 1998: 204). Given their leading position in the decision-making process, the actors who will likely be most prominent in stories of foreign policy mis-takes include the members of the foreign policy executive consisting of the head of government and the departmental ministers responsible for for-eign policy, most notably the foreign minister (hill 2016: 62–69). Specifically, the narrative construction of foreign policy mistakes can be driven by characterizations of decision-makers which cast doubt on their competence, credibility and sincerity. examples include allegations of inexperience, weakness, dishonesty or arrogance, as well as the imputation of personal or domestic political motives for foreign policy decisions. Such characterizations will likely resonate best if they can pick up on low levels of public trust in the government and pertain to agents who command only little political capital (Boin et al. 2009: 96–100; Dunleavy 1995: 61–64). Finally, the characterization of agents may include references to self-declared ambitions. While stated objectives are a problematic bench-mark for policy evaluation, the reminder that these objectives have not been met is still a powerful narrative tool to characterize agents as hubris-tic, out of touch or incompetent. For example, the construction of the european Community’s (eC) foreign policy response to the yugoslav


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crisis in 1991–1992 as a ‘mistake’ was very much aided by the overly opti-mistic and self-confident portrayal which the eC set for itself at the onset of the crisis (Selm-Thoburn and Verbeek 1998).

On the collective level, the characterization can focus, in particular, on deficient process characteristics of policymaking found in institutions such as government departments. prime examples include undue haste, exces-sive informality, biased information processing, ineffective checks and bal-ances, and lack of broader consultation (see Janis 1989: 3–24; Dunleavy 1995: 59–68). A case in point is the ‘mistake’ of the unsuccessful and very costly effort by the Swedish government at avoiding the devaluation of the Swedish Krona amidst intense currency speculation in November 1992, which has been traced, among other things, to overly rapid, secretive and centralized decision-making procedures (Stern and Sundelius 1998).

The third constitutive element of narratives is the event and its emplot-ment: in a narrative, something has to happen (see Fludernik 2009: 5). What is more, the event understood as an action has to lead to more action. So the events in a narrative do not stand on their own, they have to be placed in relation to each other (Baker 2010: 353). here, the causal dimension, commonly termed ‘causal emplotment’, is of major impor-tance as it elaborates the causal relationship between the elements of a narrative. emplotment allows to weigh and explain events rather than to just list them, that is, to turn a set of propositions into an intelligible sequence of connected events about which audiences can form an opinion.

In the case of a mistake narrative, the emplotment starts out with the labelling of an event or action as a mistake, disaster, fiasco or similar con-cept which highlights the significance of the policy in question and the severity of the damage done (howlett 2012: 543–544). A mistake has to be worth telling. In other words, it has to be about a rupture in what is considered ordinary and normal. Thus, a foreign policy is being linked to gross violations of core interests or norms which go ‘beyond the normal “zones of tolerance”’ (Bovens and ‘t hart 1996: 12). The event or policy, which is constituted as a mistake, and its consequences both are described as highly negative. The fiasco is emplotted into a chain of events which have resulted in an event considered undesirable. In particular, mistake narratives may put foreign policy decisions in the context of doing harm to a country’s national interests, of not being effective in addressing the foreign policy problem at hand or of being inappropriate in view of inter-national or domestic norms and expectations.


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What is more, the emplotment of powerful narratives of foreign policy mistakes involves the explanation of why a mistake has occurred (causal emplotment) and who is blameworthy (normative implications). Firstly, narratives of foreign policy mistakes depend on establishing a causal link between the actions or non-actions of one or more agents, and the policies or consequences which are described as undesirable (Gray 1996: 77–78). Secondly, the narrative needs the allocation of responsibility and blame as a crucial ingredient to any social construction of policy mistakes (Gray 1998: 8–9).

Importantly, the causal explanation of mistakes and the attribution of blame are interconnected (Boven and ‘t hart 1996: 129). Mistake narratives are most compelling if they make plausible claims to the effect that the negative implications of a foreign policy were foreseeable and controllable at the time when the policy was formulated (Bovens and ‘t hart 1996: 73–90; howlett 2012: 543). Also, the attribution of blame is facilitated if the selected policy was widely criticized already in its own time and went against the advice of relevant observers or participants of decision- making (Tuchman 1984: 5). For example, the 1995 Srebrenica massacre is often partly ascribed to mistakes in Dutch foreign policy, not least because the decision to contribute troops to the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia passed over the warnings of military experts and failed to sufficiently explore alternative responses to the ethnic conflict in former yugoslavia (Brändström and Kuipers 2003: 286–289).

The emplotment of mistake narratives must thus allow for responsibil-ity to be attributed squarely to individual and collective decision-makers. Linking up to the narrative elements of setting and characterization, the causal emplotment of foreign policy mistakes may not least point to per-sonality traits of the decision-makers or avoidable deficiencies in the pro-cess of foreign policymaking which can be held responsible for negative policy outcomes.

GerMaNy’s absteNtioN oN uN security couNcil resolutioN 1973 oN libya

While the debate about how best to explain the decision of the Merkel government to abstain on UNSCr 1973 is not yet resolved (see Brockmeier 2013; Seibel 2013; hansel and Oppermann 2016), most academic and non-academic observers in Germany and beyond were quick to agree in the immediate aftermath of the decision that the abstention was a serious


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mistake which would come at a significant diplomatic cost. The following analysis applies the method of narrative analysis as outlined in the previous section to the German media narrative about the abstention in order to show how that consensus was constructed. Specifically, the narrative ele-ments of setting, characterization and emplotment are used to structure the analysis of our textual material. In the analysis, this material is dissected into individual words or phrases which fit into the three narrative catego-ries. Following several rounds of dissection, one is able to gain an insight into the dominance of certain representations within each category. having filled the categories, we identify the main elements found in the texts and engage to retell the story by using the quotes as a collage. While there are overlaps in the categories and the placing of some of the phrases into one category or the other is subjective, the analysis nevertheless pro-vides a verifiable representation of existing narrative elements through extensive quotations from our source material which make each of our narrative claims traceable.

We focused on media narratives because the reporting of the media is both a good indicator for the prevalent narratives in public discourse at large and a crucial arena for the social construction of foreign policy mis-takes. The analysis examines both the media narrative through which Germany’s abstention was constructed into a mistake and the counter- narrative proposed by the German government and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle which, however, remained marginal to the media dis-course. We selected the following six large newspapers which represent the mainstream political spectrum in Germany: Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Tagesspiegel, Welt, Tageszeitung (TAZ) and Zeit. Specifically, we employed the Lexis Nexis database to identify the 50 most relevant articles in those newspapers that are included in this database. For the search, we used the keywords ‘Germany’, ‘Libya’ and ‘Security Council’. In the case of the two newspapers that are not in Lexis Nexis—the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung—we used their archives to examine the 25 most relevant articles in each of the two papers. For all six newspapers, our analysis covers the entire time frame of the intervention from 17 March to 31 October 2011.

Setting

In the mistake narrative, the setting of the UN Security Council is consti-tuted as ‘the stage of world politics’,2 the ‘highest UN body’3 or the ‘most


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powerful body of the international community of states’4 where the ‘pow-erful’5 take responsibility to deal with ‘nothing less than the maintenance of world peace’.6 This setting provides the ‘chance to shape ones profile’7 and gain ‘prestige’.8 Correspondingly, this implies high expectations towards Germany to live up to its responsibilities as a member of the UN Security Council and to act in a way that is seen as appropriate.

What is more, the setting of the UN Security Council allows for highly visible agency of its members. Specifically, the vote on UNSCr 1973 con-fronted Germany with an explicit choice between different behaviours. The main alternative to the selected policy of abstention, which was widely discussed in the mistake narrative, was that Germany should have voted in favour of the resolution without committing military troops to its imple-mentation. In particular, the media narrative brings in the views of promi-nent members of Angela Merkel’s CDU and of foreign policy practitioners to challenge the government’s claim that no such alternative existed and that political support for the resolution would have made a military con-tribution to the NATO mission unavoidable.9 According to the president of the German Bundestag, Norbert Lammert (CDU), for example, there is ‘no direct link’ ‘between supporting the resolution and deciding about the participation of German troops’.10 This point was also made, among others, by Wolfgang Ischinger, the Chairman of the Munich Security Conference and a former junior minister in the German Foreign Office:

Since the government has in any case declared that it backs many parts of the UN-resolution, it would have been more elegant, if Germany had voted in favor. […] The German ambassador could have pointed out that the agree-ment holds in principle, but that there is no consideration of contributing troops to a military operation.11

In contrast the German government and in particular Guido Westerwelle tell a very different counter-narrative constituting the setting as unclear and dangerous with a possibility of unforeseen consequences. Specifically, he warned of the ‘risks of a lengthy mission’12 and of a military escalation towards the deployment of ground troops which would make the Bundeswehr ‘a party in a civil war’.13 ‘I want to protect Germany from such a slippery slope’.14 Moreover, Westerwelle denies that there would have been the alternative of voting in favour of resolution 1973 without participating in its military implementation.15 Overall, however, this attempt of the German government to constitute a particular narrative


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setting around the abstention on UNSCr 1973 is not taken up much by the media and remains marginal. The dominant narrative is situated in a setting that highlights the high stakes involved in the German decision on UNSCr 1973 and suggests that the foreign policy mistake would have been avoidable.

Characterization

With regard to agent characterization, one encounters three important actors in the mistake narrative: Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, Chancellor Angela Merkel and the collective agent Germany or the German government. here, Guido Westerwelle is characterized as a ‘clue-less’,16 ‘tired out’17 and ‘weakened foreign minister’18 who had the possi-bility to ‘stage himself as an active formative driver of world politics’19 but who ‘was not willing to take political responsibility’.20 he is constituted as ‘narrow-minded’,21 ‘naïve’,22 a ‘dilettante’,23 a ‘strategic trainee’24 and a ‘catastrophe’.25 After the fiasco, he is considered a ‘minister on parole’26 who is ‘alone with his defiance’27 and whose ‘self-opinionatedness’28 is ‘highly embarrassing’.29 Angela Merkel, in turn, is characterized by some as unreliable, indecisive (‘Mrs. Flip-Flop’30), cowardly and embarrassing as she ‘follows only the augurs of the polling institutes’.31

Angela Merkel’s course testifies to cowardice. If the [German] Federal Government considers the intervention to be wrong, it should say so and bring forward its objections. […] What is embarrassing, however, is the hemming and hawing which is driven by the desire to leave loopholes open in case something goes wrong. There are decisions which have to be made. Those who evade such decisions by trying to have it both ways, give up the claim to be taken serious any longer.32

On the collective level, the German government is characterized as ‘evasive, absent and unpredictable’33 and as suffering from ‘cacophonous leadership’.34 Its policy is described as an ‘emotional act’35 and a ‘panicky about-turn36 which speak to Germany’s ‘unbridled propensity to give itself up to irrational currents’.37 The government is also accused of ‘an element of cowardice’,38 of ‘disappearing into the bushes’39 and of ‘hiding behind’40 the German culture of military restraint. The German behaviour in the crisis is represented as ‘cynical’41 and the question is raised whether Germany ‘knuckles under to a murderous dictator’.42 Government


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decision- making, in turn, is marked by ‘the heated Berlin atmosphere […] in which Germany’s navel-gazing has reached its apotheosis’.43 It is described as ‘opportunism’44 dominated by ‘domestic political considerations’.45

Most commonly, the characterization of Germany focuses on its alleged unreliability as ‘alliance partner’.46 It is suspected of forging a ‘new alli-ance’47 with China and russia at the expense of its traditional partners in the West: ‘Instead of being at the side of NATO, Germany in its policy on Libya embarrassingly sees itself in the company of China and russia’.48 This is considered indicative of Germany’s ‘affectations of a great power’49 and as evidence that, according to former German Chancellor helmut Kohl, ‘Germany lacks a compass’.50

There are again elements of a marginalized counter-characterization. here, Westerwelle emphasizes that he has not taken the decision on resolution 1973 lightly, but that it was the result of an ‘intense, in-depth and also difficult process of deliberation’.51 Germany has a ‘responsible position’52 and ‘has to act cleverly and also act thoughtfully’.53 Furthermore, he emphasizes that other states were also sceptical about resolution 1973, including NATO and eU partners as well as other large democracies such as Brazil and India.54 he thereby places the character of Germany in rela-tionship with other respectable actors which one is able to identify with: ‘please do not forget that also Brazil and India abstained’.55 In comparison to the mistake narrative, however, these characterizations remain mar-ginal. The by far prevalent narrative in the media discourse is a story which emphasizes the shortcomings of actors on both the individual and the collective level, and in which the negative portrayal of these actors is dominant.

Emplotment

Throughout the mistake narrative, the abstention in the UN Security Council is considered a violation of normal legitimate behaviour and labelled as a ‘grave’,56 ‘scandalous’,57 ‘fundamental’,58 ‘fatal’59 or ‘big mis-take of historical dimension’60 and ‘of the highest order’.61 Not only is the event constituted to be ‘strategically’ and ‘tactically wrong’62 and a ‘moral and political failure’,63 but it is told to be a far larger ‘foreign policy deba-cle’64 or ‘diplomatic disaster’.65 The abstention ‘will go down in history as a low point in German statesmanship’.66


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To oppose the closest partners, to ignore the change of mind of the most important ally, to find oneself in a spontaneous value community with russia and China and receive congratulations for that from hugo Chávez—no Federal Government has ever produced such a diplomatic write-off.67

The abstention is made into a mistake with reference to its ‘immeasur-able political costs’68 as well as ‘shame’69 and ‘embarrassment’.70 This involves at best ‘ridicule’,71 ‘mockery’72 and ‘disgrace’,73 and at worst ‘alienation’,74 ‘resentment’,75 ‘outrage’76 or ‘incomprehension and anger’77 among Germany’s allies, the relations with which are now ‘severely dis-turbed’.78 Through its decision, Germany is said to have ‘rebuffed’79 ‘appalled’80 and ‘enraged’81 its ‘old alliance partners’82 and ‘closest friends’83 in the world and has led to a ‘grudge’,84 ‘quarrel’85 and ‘affront against the Atlantic alliance’.86 The mistake narrative tells a story in which Germany has ‘abandoned’87 and ‘does not stand by’88 its friends and has ‘isolated’89 itself in the ‘Western world’.90 Germany has become an ‘out-sider’91 who ‘stands on the sidelines’.92 It has ‘renounced’93 its alliance partners, ‘subverted’94 a common position of the West and has ‘embarrass-ingly’ joined ranks with ‘putin, China’s autocrats, Le pen and Gaddafi’.95

Thereby it has greatly ‘damaged its reputation’,96 ‘image’97 and ‘stand-ing’98 which will ‘have consequences for how serious Germany is taken as a partner’.99 The ‘refusal of alliance solidarity’100 has led to a political ‘loss of trust’101 in Germany as its behaviour has created the impression that it is ‘not reliable’,102 ‘unpredictable’103 and fails to live up to its ‘responsibil-ity’.104 As a result, Germany has done harm to its position on the world stage and is in danger of becoming part of the ‘second tier’105: ‘In the concert of the powerful the country at the most plays the triangle’.106 The negative consequences are seen not only to affect Germany’s reputation and friendships but also its position of power in the world since its behav-iour has ‘not helped’107 or even ‘significantly reduced’108 Germany’s chances for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.

In the media narrative, the cause of the mistake was either attributed to ‘fatal misjudgements’109 which wrongly expected a russian or Chinese veto or an outright rejection of intervention by Arab countries, the ignoring of a ‘late change of policy of the Americans, russian and Chinese in the Libyan question’110 or ‘domestic political reasons’111 linked to a possible negative effect of military intervention for the governing coalition in upcoming regional elections. Some of the responsibility is attributed to ‘orders from Berlin’,112 to the government as a whole who have made the decision


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‘against the advice of their closest advisors’113 as well as to Angela Merkel personally who ‘realized that she had committed a huge mistake’.114

Most of the time, however, the blame for the mistake is primarily placed on Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle as ‘Chancellor Angela Merkel has somehow managed not to be associated with it’.115 ‘The policy on Libya by the Federal Government has triggered harsh criticism and calls for the resignation of Foreign Minister Westerwelle’.116 The mistake is said to be ‘due to the clumsy procedures of the strategic trainee Guido Westerwelle […] who misjudged the situation on every level’.117 ‘he forced his civil servants to abstain in the vote on the resolution on Libya in the Security Council against their advice’.118 Westerwelle is seen guilty of having sur-rounded himself with the ‘wrong friends’119 in the domestic and interna-tional arena and is scolded for giving ‘embarrassing explanations’120 for his policy. ‘It would have been the job of a chief diplomat to spot the danger of isolation, warn the Chancellor and devise a counter strategy’.121 he is made ‘directly responsible’122 and ‘has to take the blame for the trouble’123 as ‘[n]o Foreign Minister has ever let it come this far’.124

With regard to counter-emplotment, Westerwelle unsurprisingly denies that the decision was a mistake. rather, he argues that it was in the best German interest not to support resolution 1973 and that ‘our policy of sanctions was right’.125 The decision to abstain in the UN Security Council is constituted as a ‘responsible’126 and ‘difficult foreign policy decision following deliberation’.127 he argues that Germany’s abstention was driven by his belief that other Arab and African states in the region have a responsibility to react128 and that political means had not yet been exhausted. Specifically, according to Westerwelle, sanctions were a better alternative to a military intervention.129 he also cited the danger of ‘civil-ian casualties’130 and the ‘risk of escalation’131 due to Western military intervention as a reason for the German abstention. Furthermore, he denies the negative consequences of the abstention. Specifically, he rejects claims about the alleged damage this decision has caused: ‘I explicitly do not see this damage which you describe’.132 he emphasizes that it is ‘completely wrong’133 to see Germany as being isolated on Libya and that other NATO and eU states understand why Germany abstained: ‘We are not isolated’.134 With regard to the question of responsibility and blame, Westerwelle acknowledges that it was his ‘most difficult foreign policy decision’,135 but he also states that Angela Merkel played an active role in the abstention: ‘We took the decision together’.136 Despite these attempts at telling a different story, the dominant emplotment of the


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media narrative was that the German abstention on resolution 1973 was a fiasco that will have negative diplomatic consequences for which Guido Westerwelle in particular was made responsible.

coNclusioN

The chapter has introduced the method of narrative analysis to the study of foreign policy mistakes. It argues that such mistakes are socially con-structed in political discourse and that mistake constructions take the form of narratives which are made up of setting, characterization and emplot-ment. In each of these dimensions, mistake narratives consist of a number of essential discursive elements. In particular, the setting represents the context of foreign policy decisions which has implications for what is con-sidered appropriate behaviour. Also, it brings into play alternatives to the selected policy suggesting that a mistake was avoidable. The characteriza-tion of agents in the narrative is marked by negative and derogatory descriptions of influential individual or collective decision-makers and the decision-making process. The emplotment of mistake narratives, finally, involves the labelling of foreign policies as extraordinary failures with highly negative consequences as well as the closely interrelated elements of establishing a causal link between agent behaviour and undesirable out-comes and of attributing blame and responsibility. The case study on the media construction of Germany’s abstention on UNSCr 1973 on Libya as a foreign policy mistake and the attempted counter-narration serves to illustrate key discursive patterns of mistake narratives and how the method of narrative analysis can be applied to the study of foreign policy.

In order to further develop narrative analyses of foreign policy mistakes and to examine their empirical and methodological usefulness, the chapter points to three avenues for future research. First, the empirical scope of analysis needs to be expanded from a single case study to a broader com-parative case study design. Ideally, this should focus on ‘least likely cases’ of mistake constructions that constitute the toughest tests for narrative analysis (George and Bennett 2005: 121–122), in particular, foreign poli-cies which ‘objectivist’ evaluations would not mark out as obvious mis-takes. Similarly, future analyses should involve cases that are empirically ‘most dissimilar’ in that they investigate the narrative construction of for-eign policy mistakes in different countries, at different points in time and in different issue areas. Most notably, such a comparative endeavour would make it possible to establish the extent to which the discursive elements of


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mistake narratives identified in this chapter are common to narrative con-structions of foreign policy mistakes. Second, more emphasis than was possible within the scope of this chapter should be put on studying the relationship between ‘mistake’ narratives and counter-narratives. Future research should pay particular attention to the conditions under which counter-narratives succeed or fail in avoiding the construction of foreign policy decisions as ‘mistakes’ in political discourse. Third, it would be fruitful to investigate cases of attempted but ultimately ‘unsuccessful’ nar-rative constructions of foreign policy mistakes. In particular, the inclusion of ‘near misses’ and ‘non-fiascos’ would promise insights into the discur-sive and contextual conditions under which mistake narratives will likely be most compelling.

Notes

1. This chapter is based on research done in Oppermann and Spencer (2016).

2. Welt, ‘endlich wieder Vorsitzender’, 13 July 2011, p. 9.3. TAZ, ‘Was globale Verantwortung heißt’, 2 July 2011, p. 10.4. Welt, ‘endlich wieder Vorsitzender’, p. 9.5. Ibid.6. Ibid.7. TAZ, ‘Was globale Verantwortung heißt’, p. 10.8. Welt, ‘endlich wieder Vorsitzender’, p. 9.9. Zeit, ‘Der steinerne Gast’, 7 April 2011, p. 4.

10. Norbert Lammert cited in: Welt, regierung rechtfertigt den deutschen Sonderweg’, 21 March 2011, p. 4.

11. Wolfgang Ischinger cited in: Welt, ‘regierung rechtfertigt’, p. 4.12. Guido Westerwelle, cited in: Deutsche Welle, ‘Germany Defends Cautious

Approach to Libya, Denies Isolation’, 21 March 2011, available at: http://www.dw.de/germany-defends-cautious-approach-to-libya-denies-isolation/a-14926360-1. [19 February2014].

13. Guido Westerwelle, plenarprotokoll 17/95, Deutscher Bundestag, 16 March 2011.

14. Interview with Guido Westerwelle, Deutschlandfunk, 17 March 2011, available at: http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/De/Infoservice/presse/Interviews/2011/110317_BM_DLF.html [29 January 2014].

15. Interview with Guido Westerwelle, Berliner Zeitung, 14 April 2011, avail-able at: http://www.bundesregierung.de/statisch/nato/nn_683358/Content/De/Interview/2011/04/2011-04-14-westerwelle-berliner-zeitung.html [29 January 2014].


http://www.dw.de/germany-defends-cautious-approach-to-libya-denies-isolation/a-14926360-1



http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/DE/Infoservice/Presse/Interviews/2011/110317_BM_DLF.html

http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/DE/Infoservice/Presse/Interviews/2011/110317_BM_DLF.html

http://www.bundesregierung.de/statisch/nato/nn_683358/Content/DE/Interview/2011/04/2011-04-14-westerwelle-berliner-zeitung.html



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16. SZ, ‘Die Deutschen und der Krieg in Libyen.’, 27 July 2011.17. FAZ, ‘Die Isolierung des Systems Westerwelle’, 19 March 2011, p. 4.18. Tagesspiegel, ‘Deutsche nach Libyen?’, 11 June 2011, p. 1.19. Welt, ‘endlich wieder Vorsitzender’, p. 9.20. Welt, ‘Diplomatischer Totalschaden’, 21 March 2011, p. 3.21. Tagesspiegel, ‘Die Sanktionen müssen schnell verhängt werden’, 30 April

2011, p. 4.22. SZ, ‘Libyen, Westerwelle und Deutschlands enthaltung’, 18 March

2011.23. Zeit, ‘Vernagelt. Deutschlands Verbündete sind entsetzt über Berlins

Außenpolitik’, 14 July 2011, p. 9.24. Welt, ‘Diplomatischer Totalschaden’, p. 3.25. SZ, ‘Großer Groll auf beiden Seiten’, 31 March 2011, p. 8.26. Welt, ‘Westerwelle nur noch Minister auf Bewährung’, 29 August 2011,

p. 1.27. FAZ, ‘Allein mit seinem Trotz’, 26 August 2011, p. 4.28. Ibid.29. Ibid.30. Welt, ‘Tücken des Timings’, 7 June 2011, p. 3.31. Welt, ‘Die Angst vor dem Sonntag der Wahrheit’, 22 March 2011, p. 4.32. Tagesspiegel, ‘Triangelspieler’, p. 6.33. Zeit, ‘Wir sind dann mal weg’, 26 May 2011, p. 3.34. FAZ, ‘Kakophone Führung’, 22 March 2011, p. 7.35. Welt, ‘Tücken des Timings’, p. 3.36. FAZ, ‘Deutschland doch uncool’, 21 March 2011, p. 4.37. Welt, ‘Tücken des Timings’, p. 3.38. Welt, ‘Nach der entscheidung des Sicherheitsrats’, p. 4.39. FAZ, ‘revolution ist ein risiko’, 30 March 2011, p. 38.40. Zeit, ‘Wir sind dann mal weg’, p. 3.41. Welt, ‘Nach der entscheidung des Sicherheitsrats’, p. 4.42. TAZ, ‘Libyen befreien?’, p. 4.43. Zeit, ‘Vernagelt’, p. 9.44. FAZ, ‘Deutschland doch uncool’, p. 4.45. Ibid.46. Welt, ‘endlich wieder Vorsitzender’, p. 9.47. Zeit, ‘Macht mal’, p. 10.48. Welt, ‘Das Versagen der liberalen Krisenmanager’, 26 March 2011, p. 4.49. TAZ, ‘Gegen alle prinzipien’, 24 March 2011, p. 12.50. FAZ, ‘Allein mit seinem Trotz’, p. 4.51. FAZ, ‘Die Isolierung’, p. 4.52. Interview with Westerwelle, Deutschlandfunk, 17 March 2011.53. Ibid.


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54. Interview with Westerwelle, Frankfurter rundschau, 14 April 2011, avail-able at: http://www.fr-online.de/politik/interview-mit-westerwelle--wir-sind-nicht-isoliert-,1472596,8341026.html [29 January 2014].

55. Interview with Westerwelle, passauer Neue presse, 23 March 2011.56. TAZ, ‘Deutschlands ruf in europa ist beschädigt’, 23 March 2011, p. 3.57. SZ, ‘Deutsche Außenpolitik – eine Farce’, 22 March 2011, p. 2.58. TAZ, ‘Deutschlands ruf’, p. 3.59. TAZ, ‘Afghanistan statt Libyen’, 19 March 2011, p. 2.60. Tagesspiegel, ‘Libysche rebellen auf dem Vormarsch’, 27 March 2011,

p. 6.61. FAZ, ‘Die Isolierung’, p. 4.62. Welt, ‘Krieg in Maßen’, 19 October 2011, p. 2.63. SZ, ‘Vereinte Nationen rufen, Deutschland hört weg’, 29 April 2011,

p. 2.64. Welt, ‘Westerwelle nur noch Minister auf Bewährung’, p. 1.65. Zeit, ‘Macht mal’, p. 10.66. SZ, ‘Libyen: UN-erlaubnis für Intervention’, 18 March 2011.67. Welt, ‘Diplomatischer Totalschaden’, p. 3.68. FAZ, ‘Frankreich freut und ärgert sich’, 19 March 2011, p. 4.69. FAZ, ‘Kakophone Führung’, p. 7.70. SZ, ‘Ich schäme mich’, p. 9.71. Tagespiegel, ‘Fremde oder Freunde’, 14 April 2011, p. 6.72. Zeit, ‘Der steinerne Gast’, p. 4.73. Tagesspiegel, ‘Triangelspieler’, p. 6.74. Tagespiegel, ‘Fremde’, p. 6.75. Ibid.76. Welt, ‘Nach der entscheidung des Sicherheitsrats’, p. 4.77. FAZ, ‘Deutschland doch uncool’, p. 4.78. Welt, ‘endlich wieder Vorsitzender’, p. 9.79. TAZ, ‘Libyen befreien?’, p. 4.80. Zeit, ‘Vernagelt’, p. 9.81. Welt, ‘endlich wieder Vorsitzender’, p. 9.82. Ibid.83. Zeit, ‘Vernagelt’, p. 9.84. SZ, ‘Großer Groll’, p. 8.85. Tagespiegel, ‘Fremde’, p. 6.86. Zeit, ‘Vernagelt’, p. 9.87. Zeit, ‘Wir sind dann mal weg’, p. 3.88. Zeit, ‘Wir hätten zustimmen sollen’, 31 March 2011, p. 8.89. SZ, ‘An der Seite von Diktatoren’, 19 March 2011, p. 4.90. FAZ, ‘Die Isolierung’, p. 4.91. SZ, ‘Bonbon für die Verbündeten’, 22 March 2011, p. 5.


http://www.fr-online.de/politik/interview-mit-westerwelle--wir-sind-nicht-isoliert-,1472596,8341026.html

http://www.fr-online.de/politik/interview-mit-westerwelle--wir-sind-nicht-isoliert-,1472596,8341026.html

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92. FAZ, ‘Deutschland im Abseits’, 16 May 2011, p. 7.93. Welt, ‘Das Versagen’, p. 4.94. FAZ, ‘Deutschland doch uncool’, p. 4.95. Both from: TAZ, ‘Gegen alle prinzipien’, p. 12.96. TAZ, ‘Deutschlands ruf’, p. 3.97. FAZ, ‘Deutschland doch uncool’, p. 4.98. TAZ, ‘Westerwelle will wieder mitmachen’, 16 April 2011, p. 4.99. Welt, ‘Nach der entscheidung des Sicherheitsrats’, p. 4.

100. FAZ, ‘Deutschland im Abseits’, p. 7.101. Zeit, ‘Vernagelt’, p. 9.102. SZ, ‘Saat des Misstrauens’, 25 August 2011, p. 4.103. SZ, ‘Deutschland ist keine berechenbare Größe mehr’, 25 August 2011,

p. 1.104. FAZ, Frankreich freut und ärgert sich, p. 4.105. Welt, ‘Tücken des Timings’, p. 3.106. Tagesspiegel, ‘Triangelspieler’, p. 6.107. Welt, ‘Nach der entscheidung des Sicherheitsrats’, p. 4.108. TAZ, ‘Was globale Verantwortung heißt’, p. 10.109. Zeit, ‘Macht mal’, p. 10.110. Welt, ‘Das Versagen’, p. 4.111. Welt, ‘Krieg in Maßen’, p. 2.112. Zeit, ‘Vernagelt’, p. 9113. FAZ, ‘es soll richtig gewesen sein’, 23 August 2011, p. 4.114. Zeit, ‘Vernagelt’, p. 9.115. Tagesspiegel, ‘Außer der reihe’, p. 2.116. Tagesspiegel, ‘Obama lobt Deutschlands rolle in Libyen’, 6 September

2011, p.1.117. Welt, ‘Diplomatischer Totalschaden’, p. 3.118. Zeit, ‘Der steinerne Gast’, p. 4.119. FAZ, ‘Die Isolierung’, p. 4.120. FAZ, ‘Grüne offen’, p. 6.121. Zeit, ‘Der steinerne Gast’, p. 4.122. Tagespiegel, ‘Fremde’, p. 6.123. Tagesspiegel, ‘Außer der reihe’, p. 2.124. SZ, ‘Das Amt’, p. 2125. FAZ, ‘es soll richtig gewesen sein’, p. 4.126. Interview with Westerwelle, rBB-Inforadio, 25 March 2011, available at:

http://www.brasi l .diplo.de/Ver tretung/brasi l ien/de/07__A u s s e n p o l i t i k / r e d e n _ 2 0 d e s _ 2 0 A u _ C 3 _ 9 F e n m i n i s t e r s /BM-Inter view_20mit_20rBB-Inforadio_20vom_2025.M_C3_A4rz_202011_20zu_20Libyen.html [29 January 2014].

127. SZ, ‘Bedenke das ende’, p. 2.


http://www.brasil.diplo.de/Vertretung/brasilien/de/07__Aussenpolitik/Reden_20des_20Au_C3_9Fenministers/BM-Interview_20mit_20RBB-Inforadio_20vom_2025.M_C3_A4rz_202011_20zu_20Libyen.html




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128. Interview with Westerwelle, Deutschlandfunk, 17 March 2011.129. Interview with Westerwelle, Deutschlandfunk, 23 August 2011, available

at: http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/wir-haben-auf-die-internationale-isolierung-gesetzt.694.de.html?dram:article_id=70470 [29 January 2014].

130. SZ, ‘Bedenke das ende’, p. 2.131. Ibid.132. Interview with Westerwelle, Deutschlandfunk, 23 August 2011.133. FAZ, ‘Westerwelle: Wir sind nicht isoliert’, p. 4.134. Interview with Westerwelle, Berliner Zeitung, 14 April 2011.135. Interview with Westerwelle, passauerNeuepresse, 23 March 2011.136. Ibid.

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http://cicero.de/berliner-republik/guido-westerwelle-deutschland-schuldet-ihm-spaeten-dank


CHAPTER 4

Where Berlin Got It Terribly Wrong: German Foreign Policy Fiascos in the News Media

Mischa Hansel, Henrike Viehrig, and Danae Ankel

Since reunification, German foreign policy has gradually become less pre-dictable and somewhat more controversial. As outlined by Oppermann and Spencer (Chap. 3, this volume), this includes, for example, Germany’s abstention on United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1973 on Libya, a decision that former foreign minister Joschka Fischer por-trayed in retrospect as the biggest foreign policy debacle since the found-ing of the Federal Republic (Der Spiegel 2011). This chapter goes beyond this example and asks which other foreign policy decisions have come to be viewed as major fiascos in German public debates. We argue that non- compliance with salient German foreign policy norms, such as multilater-alism and military restraint, triggers fiasco frames. In addition, the chapter shows whose perspective tends to dominate in such debates and who is blamed for disastrous policy outcomes.

M. Hansel (*) RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

H. Viehrig Europe Direct Information Centre, City of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

D. Ankel University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

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In the following, our analysis in the next sections is guided by three research questions:

(1) Which foreign policy events and topics are presented as a fiasco in the German news media? Is there a relation between violations of salient German foreign policy norms and fiasco framings?

(2) Whose fiasco references are quoted most frequently, that is, who determines what counts as a fiasco?

(3) Who caused the fiasco according to news media coverage?

The first section of the chapter starts by reflecting on the influence of salient norms on the social construction of foreign policy fiascos through media reporting. In the second section, our findings relate to particular actions and events that were perceived as fiascos in the news media. We show that Germany’s Yugoslavia policy in the 1990s, the failed referendums on the European Constitution in 2005, the decision on Libya in 2011 and, finally, the transatlantic crisis over Iraq in 2003 are most often portrayed as fiascos. We argue that these controversial actions and events were under-stood as deviations from principled multilateralism which is regarded as one of Germany’s key foreign policy norms. In the third section, we focus on the issue of authorship, that is, what kinds of actors had the opportunity to frame foreign policy actions and events as fiascos? As expected, journalists and representatives from opposition parties used the fiasco frame far more often than members of the governing coalition. More interestingly, we find that Germany’s international allies only contributed to fiasco framing in a small number of cases. The fourth section entails an analysis of a surprising negative case (an event not framed as fiasco)—the Kunduz incident. The case study points to the possibility that norm collisions (between the norms of multilateralism and military restraint) prevent both decision-makers and journalists from employing fiasco frames even when there are otherwise strong incentives to do so. Finally, our conclusion wraps up our results and indicates fruitful avenues for a broader research agenda on the medialized construction of fiascos and foreign policy mistakes.

Fiascos, Norms aNd media Frames

Alongside official inquiries, the mass media have been identified as a pri-mary arena of framing contests after disastrous policy failures in past stud-ies (Boin et al. 2009: 95). Mass media plays an important role not the least

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because negativity increases news value (Harcup and O’Neill 2001; Galtung and Ruge 1965) and, consequently, bad news is highly rated in the preference structure of editors and publishers. Attributing responsibil-ity for serious policy mistakes and establishing accountability are therefore highly dependent on selective media attention and effective framing. This is why we base our study of German foreign policy fiascos on an extensive media analysis of two leading national newspapers. Emphasizing media as a locus of ‘blame games’ (Brändström and Kuipers 2003: 281), we do not assume that there is any fixed and widely agreed-upon standard for classi-fying a foreign policy event as a fiasco. In other words, our notion of fias-cos is not objectivist but subjectivist (for a comparison see Kruck et. al. Chap. 1, this volume; Howlett 2012: 541–542; Brändström and Kuipers 2003: 280). That is, we conceive of fiascos as concepts that are socially and discursively constructed.

At the same time, the social setting of events certainly influences the probability of its classification as success, mistakes or, at worst, fiasco (Bovens and ‘t Hart 1996).1 In particular, we want to stress the role of norms in specifying ‘the appropriate behaviour for an agent with a given identity’ (Flockhart 2012: 84). We assume that decision-makers’ non- compliance with powerful norms provides blaming opportunities for out-siders, whether or not the decisions in question had factually contributed to perceived negative outcomes. The most salient German foreign policy norms refer to ‘never again’ and ‘never alone’, respectively (Maull 2015). ‘Never again’ actually includes two rather different interpretations: on the one hand, it refers to the lessons learnt from the Nazi past and prescribes the prevention of ethnic cleansing and genocide (‘never again Auschwitz’). In this vein, the norm served as a principle to justify the Kosovo interven-tion in 1999 (Kundnani 2015: 110). On the other hand, the norm could be interpreted as ‘never again war’. According to this second interpreta-tion, Germany should avoid military action and instead prioritize diplo-matic solutions of international crises under almost all circumstances (Malici 2006). Often, this stance is formulated as Germany being a ‘civil-ian power’ (Maull 2001). While many observe a gradual erosion of this identity after 1999 (Wagener 2004; Hellmann et al. 2007), we argue that a deep-rooted scepticism as to the legitimacy and effectiveness of military means still informs recent policy discourses, for example, about Syria and Ukraine. Also, Bundeswehr deployments in the past have been character-ized as stabilization missions by German decision-makers. The political rationale behind this arguably was to deny participation in actual combat

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and warfighting because, despite Kosovo 1999, military peace enforce-ment is far from being accepted as standard policy option by the German public. The fact that recently high-ranking politicians called into question Germany’s commitment to increase military spending to 2% of its GDP may hint at a comeback of anti-militaristic sentiment in German dis-courses. Therefore, we assume that military restraint as corollary of a civilian power identity still is a salient, even if declining, norm of German foreign policy.

The other salient norm, ‘never alone’, specifies a maxim that defines German foreign policy as only appropriate if acting in concert with part-ners and multilateral institutions. Specifically, this norm prohibits ‘acting alone (Alleingänge) or pursuing a special path (Sonderweg)’ (Duffield 1999: 781–782). While some scholars have questioned the compulsive force of multilateralism in German foreign policy decision-making and discourses (Oppermann 2012; Wagener 2004), we still deem it a second salient norm of German foreign policy. After all, Germany’s commitment to multilateral institutions such as the United Nations or the European Union seems solid.2 What is more, decision-makers keep referring to mul-tilateralism as a guiding concept, even if the term might have acquired new meanings after reunification (Hellmann et al. 2008: 114–118; Baumann 2006). In fact, in our analysis, we show that the failure to act in concert with other players comes close to a necessary condition for the news media to portray an event as a foreign policy fiasco.

In order to reveal such linkages between fiasco construction and norm violation, we resort to the well-established concept of media frames. The concept is informed by the idea that news coverage not only provides explicit news content but also implicit frames that structure the news con-tent. Frames—which we conceive of as specific overarching patterns of interpretation—offer a particular ‘reading’ of the reported events vis-à-vis the audience (Schenk 2007: 327; de Vreese and Lecheler 2012: 294). They ‘promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation’ (Entman 1993: 52). However, the concept of frames remains ambiguous with regard to its empirical operationalization (Chong and Druckman 2007: 106), and frames can work on a specific or an abstract level. Therefore, we treat both, the explicit fiasco references and the implicit interpretations of these refer-ences as frames.

As to our methodological choices and data sources, we first identified all fiasco frames by employing a media content analysis, which encompassed

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the conservative as well as the liberal political spectrum of the German news media landscape. Based on the reporting of the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) between 1992 and 2014, we surveyed which foreign policy events were referred to as a fiasco—or as a debacle, disaster, failure or collapse.3 We used these four additional terms as search strings because we consider them to be synonymous for ‘fiasco’. They all connote undesirable outcomes which in their scale very much exceed everyday political errors described, for instance, as a ‘lapse’, ‘mishap’, ‘gaffe’ or the ‘diplomatic faux pas’.4

In order to focus the search for fiasco references in the news media archives,5 we furthermore used the filters ‘Deutsch* AND Außenpol*’, which ensured that the provided articles dealt in some way with German foreign policy. Altogether, our search resulted in 1309 FAZ articles and 856 SZ articles. In a second step, we checked manually whether the fiasco references really did describe a foreign policy event. This applied to 152 cases in the FAZ and to 63 cases in the SZ; thus, our database consists of 215 fiasco references. Of course, the single keywords were not represented equally across the sample. ‘Fiasko’ was only used in seven FAZ articles and in five SZ articles. More common were ‘Scheitern’ (=failure; FAZ: 55 times, SZ: 14), ‘Versagen’ (=collapse; FAZ: 40, SZ: 24) as well as ‘Desaster’ (=disaster; FAZ: 33, SZ: 16). Furthermore, 17 FAZ and 4 SZ articles mentioned a ‘debacle’. Since all of these words have a strong negative con-notation, we assume that different frequencies do not represent a problem with regard to a possible analytical bias.

In a first step, we coded for every fiasco reference which event the fiasco label referred to, who created the fiasco reference and who, according to news media reporting, is to blame for the fiasco.6 While coding these events, we did not evaluate whether the fiasco reference was objectively justified or appropriate. In a second step, we focused on the frames that go along with the reporting and asked whether the fiasco label referred to a norm violation, that is, to a violation of military restraint or multilateral-ism. In doing so, we applied the framing concept to a rather narrow and well-defined set of events.

issues aNd eveNts

The relatively small number of fiasco references—215 over the course of 23 years—shows that, in the German quality press, the government’s for-eign policy is only rarely subject to fierce criticism. There are four years in


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which fiasco coverage accumulates: 1993, 2003, 2005 and 2011. According to these points in time, the German media called the allegedly inappropri-ate responses to the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia a fiasco most fre-quently, followed by the failed 2005 EU referendums (Fig. 4.1). Next, the German Libya policy in 2011 was characterized as a ‘debacle’ by former Foreign Minister Fischer (see earlier), which was often repeated by the media (Bauchmüller and Braun 2011; Oppermann and Spencer, Chap. 3, this volume). Finally, the transatlantic rift during the Iraq crisis was like-wise considered a fiasco at the time—although in the meantime even poli-ticians of the former conservative opposition, who criticized Gerhard Schröder’s Iraq policy in 2002 and 2003, have come to re-evaluate this episode (Kazim 2014). A fifth and minor issue to be designated a fiasco was the ‘red-green’ government’s (1998–2005) general approach to for-eign policy. However, in contrast to the other fiasco descriptions, in this case, the media did not refer to a single event, and the sole initiator of the fiasco references was the opposition.

Since three out of the five stable fiasco depictions we identified refer to foreign military engagements or non-engagements, namely Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya, we wondered why these interventions (or the decision- making and coalition-building that preceded them) were labelled as fias-cos, whereas the operations in Kosovo or Afghanistan were not framed in a similar way. Also, it is interesting to note that the Euro crisis is not referred to as a fiasco, although it was frequently covered by the media and prompted crisis decision-making that resulted in high economic risks and deviated from what many experts and constituencies regarded

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the standards of prudent public policy. In trying to explain why these issues are treated so very differently by the media, we would emphasize, first and foremost, the influence of the perceived social setting. More specifically, we argue that the multilateralism norm best explains this ten-dency: unilateral decision-making and/or a failure to co-ordinate with allies and partners, we find, systematically leads to fiasco references in the media. Our analysis, thus, corroborates earlier findings according to which perceived violations of core values of foreign policymaking in a particular country (in this case: multilateralism) fuel issue contestation and politicization (Brändström and Kuipers 2003: 290–291). Only events that include a violation of the norm of multilateralism are likely to be labelled as a German foreign policy fiasco—while others in which that norm is adhered to (from the perspective of journalists and other com-municators), such as the Afghanistan intervention or the Euro crisis, are not.

Taking a closer look at the most frequently mentioned fiascos, we observed that in the case of the Iraq crisis, 22 out of 23 articles harshly criticized the poor co-ordination between the international partners which resulted in a profound transatlantic disagreement. The multilateralism frame was again employed in the reactions to the German abstention in the Libya crisis in 2011: 21 out of 24 articles explicitly linked their fiasco refer-ences to the fact that the German government did not decide alongside its Western partners. In the same vein, the most salient German foreign policy fiasco, the persistent crisis in Yugoslavia, was characterized as such because the European countries could not agree on a common approach (21 out of 31 articles).

The multilateralism frame appears to strongly influence the coverage of potential foreign policy fiascos, as the articles on Iraq, Libya and Yugoslavia indicate. To a lesser degree, it also influenced the media’s account of the failed 2005 EU referendums. The latter have been occasionally portrayed as a result of Germany’s inappropriate negotiation strategy on the EU Constitutional Treaty amidst differences between those championing a widening versus those in favour of a deepening of European integration. Germany’s insistence on the possibility of a future Turkish EU member-ship despite deep-rooted scepticism in French society on these matters is a case in point.7

Finally, the evaluation of red-green foreign policy as a fiasco can be traced back to the political opposition’s rhetoric during the election campaign of


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2005 when Angela Merkel and others criticized Chancellor Schröder for his inappropriate proximity to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin or for supporting the ill-fated EU referendums. Thus, leading figures of the red- green government were also accused of alienating international partners and mishandling joint endeavours. Some of these fiasco references (6 out of 11) very much rest on the multilateralism frame as a benchmark against which actual foreign policy behaviour and outcomes are judged. In sum, perceived unilateralism, whether by choice or by default, appears to be connected to highly salient fiasco framing in the German media. However, the incidents identified most often as fiascos include both instances where Germany arguably acted in line with the principle of military restraint and others where there was no military option in the first place. The media construction of a decision as fiasco is thus not only limited to instances where this latter norm was violated.

voices aNd BlamiNg

German foreign policy by and large is shaped by political institutions on the federal level, except for the co-decision-making powers of the Bundesländer with respect to European affairs (Hellmann 2006: 43–56). However, in a broader sense of understanding which takes into account informal alongside formal ratification requirements, the societal level is equally included in foreign policy decision-making processes. Thus, mass media and public opinion need to be taken into account. The relation-ship between the political executive, public opinion and the media can, of course, be sketched out in a number of ways. One approach is to explain the coverage of foreign policy events and fiascos in the media by reference to their ‘news value’ (see Robinson 2008: 141–146). Such foreign policy contents, while being independently selected by the media, may serve as a restriction in the decision-making process due to political pressures from public opinion (on the so-called CNN-Effect see Gilboa 2005). Other scholars, like those championing the ‘indexing hypothesis’ (Zaller and Chiu 2000), highlight the government’s gate-keeper role and mass media’s tendency to reflect patterns of consent and dissent among elite opinion. There are thus both top-down and bottom-up models of the relationship between foreign policy decision-making, the media and the public sphere.

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The following argument takes into consideration both the selection criteria of the media and the motivation of political actors. Our assump-tion is that fiasco references by members of the governing coalition carry a high news value (and are, therefore, likely to be picked up by the media) because they combine negativity with hinting at a disagreement within the inner circle of decision-making. On the other hand, those very same political actors will anticipate sanctions from high-ranking party offi-cials—a factor that supposedly works against going public. When it comes to the opposition, incentives and constraints are somewhat reversed: while oppositional parliamentary groups have much more incentives to criticize the governing coalition, this is something everybody will expect them to do, and the news value of such a fiasco declaration is lower than in the case of government members. However, given a high intensity of domestic controversy, it is still likely that such statements will make it into the media.

According to our findings, journalists are the most frequent initiators of fiasco references, followed at some distance by opposition members (Fig. 4.2). Only occasionally do members of the government and guest authors refer to a fiasco. As expected, there is an imbalance between governmental and oppositional voices. There are only few instances where members of the government criticize a foreign policy as a fiasco. For example, Kurt Beck, who served as Social Democratic Party chairman at the time of the Grand Coalition 2005–2009, blamed Chancellor Merkel for failing to achieve effective financial governance arrangements at the international level (SZ 2007). In most cases, however, it was the authors of the article themselves who set the fiasco frame. Taking a closer look at

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those fiascos triggered by a lack of multilateralism, that is, Iraq and Libya, it turns out that the news media had powerful cue-givers from the political opposition. In both cases, the media merely reinforced the fiasco frames which were set either by Joschka Fischer—who no longer held a political office but acted as a surrogate for the political opposition in case of Libya—or by the conservative opposition Christlich-Demokratische Union/Christlich-Soziale Union, who criticized the transatlantic discord that accompanied the Iraq crisis.

Surprisingly, representatives from allied or partner countries such as the United States or France hardly play a role in defining a fiasco. Two expla-nations are conceivable: one is that although Germany’s friends and partners might sometimes issue accusations in line with the fiasco frame, those statements are not picked up by the German media because of inat-tention or anticipated low news value. Such reasoning, however, would somewhat contradict the multilateralism frame, according to which allied concerns and expectations deserve special attention from German deci-sion-makers and opinion leaders. Alternatively, one might point to the influence of diplomatic etiquette and public diplomacy (Signitzer 1993), both of which require much subtler wording even in times of intense for-eign policy disagreements.

What is puzzling from this perspective, though, is that a few ‘undip-lomatically toned’ statements from high-ranking US representatives went almost unnoticed by the German media. For example, US Foreign Secretary Warren Christopher, who opined that Germany nurtured the debacle in Yugoslavia by prematurely acknowledging the independence of the Croatian and Slovenian Republics, is a case in point. That state-ment, although it clearly trespassed diplomatic etiquette, was only picked up twice by the FAZ (see FAZ 1993a, b). Another, more recent example is a public letter by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, pinpointing the ‘permanent failure of some NATO members’ to adequately train and equip troops in Afghanistan (quoted in FAZ 2008). Although the con-text of this statement clearly points to Germany, the media did not fol-low up on it. While the latter incident may confirm the ‘neutralizing’ influence of a culture of military restraint (preventing, just like in the Kunduz case (see below), the triggering of a fiasco reference via the mul-tilateralism frame), the low news value of the criticism of Germany’s Yugoslavia policy is harder to explain. Perhaps the timing offers a clue, given that Germany’s unilateral decision to acknowledge Croatia’s and

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Slovenia’s independence was made one and a half years earlier and the war had since turned from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina. More importantly, there were no explicit counter-framing efforts by German decision-makers in this case. What could have been a highly interesting story about a transatlantic blaming contest appeared as merely a rather isolated side-note since no one took up the gauntlet on this side of the Atlantic.

In a last step, our analysis identified those actors who were declared responsible for perceived fiascos in German newspaper coverage of for-eign policy events and outcomes. Strikingly, a large portion of our fiasco references does not blame anybody at all (Fig. 4.3). This is remarkable since the literature on framing contests in the aftermath of public policy failures has found that ‘blame games’ (Brändström and Kuipers 2003: 281) are the norm rather than the exception (see, for instance, Boin et al. 2009: 87–88; Bovens and t’Hart 1996: 129). The literature on political narratives where special emphasis is put on the function of ‘vil-lains’ and ‘scapegoats’ (see Shanahan et al. 2011) would also suggest intense blaming. Then again, one has to take into account the German political culture, which many still characterize as consensual and rather non-confrontational (see Bovens et al. 2001: 18–19; Sandschneider 2012: 5–6).

As a consequence, fiascos, if they are diagnosed at all, are quite often explained by reference to circumstances and structural conditions rather than individual deficiencies and failures. Such framing, as suggested by Michiel de Vries (2004: 604–606), can be categorized as social as opposed to personalized and/or political framing. While the latter two

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imply mismanagement by individual or collective actors, respectively, the former identifies ill-designed policies as a cause of disastrous outcomes. Social framing, that is, questions the assumptions on which policies were based or the effectiveness of policy instruments (de Vries 2004: 611)—and despite the focus on policy issues, nobody is held accountable.8 As a result, the framing is comparatively lenient on decision-makers in these cases (de Vries 2004: 605–606).

However, a majority of our articles still do attribute responsibility in some way. Thus, ‘political games’ of crisis exploitation (clashes between office holders and outside critics) are played alongside ‘policy games’ (clashes between proponents of policies and advocates for change) (Boin et al. 2009: 88). Where blaming happens, the focus can be on collective entities (Germany, Federal Government) or individual deci-sion-makers (such as several chancellors). Unsurprisingly, and corre-sponding to de facto decision-making power, it is the executive and not parliament—let alone the judicial branch—at which the spotlight is directed. Not a single individual Member of Parliament (without cabi-net position) or parliamentary faction is held responsible for a foreign policy fiasco in our analysis. Only one case refers to political parties, and only two entries blame the inner administration of the German federal foreign office.

With regard to cases of fiasco framings that were most obviously trig-gered by the multilateralism norm (Libya and Iraq), we observe that in the case of Libya, all specific responsibility attributions were directed at the German government, whereas in the case of Iraq, some of the blame was shed on other EU member states as well. We nevertheless observe that the multilateralism frame serves as a convenient entry point for newsworthy attacks from the opposition benches.

Of all individuals, Guido Westerwelle was the most controversial fig-ure according to our data. No other single politician was made respon-sible for disastrous outcomes more often than the former foreign minister and FDP party chairman. However, Germany’s abstention on UN Security Council resolution 1973 almost exclusively provides the background for these negative judgements (Oppermann and Spencer, Chap. 3, this volume). In contrast, Westerwelle’s predecessor as foreign minister and Vice- Chancellor Joschka Fischer was blamed for a whole range of perceived fiascos, including the ‘visa affair’,9 the transatlantic rift over Iraq as well as the fact that the foreign ministry had to hand over EU competencies to the Chancellor’s office at the beginning of

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the red-green government in 1998. The way in which Westerwelle and Fischer were treated by the press deviates from the traditionally very respectful treatment of German foreign ministers who are often per-ceived to stand somewhat above the political arena.10 At the same time, such instances of personalization are concomitant to scandalization processes in various contexts. Thus, one should not be overly surprised by the naming and shaming of individuals in the news coverage. What did surprise us, though, is that only some decision-makers are blamed, and only on a few occasions, while a large percentage of the articles we analysed do not raise the question of who is responsible for foreign policy fiascos.

NoN-Fiascos: the KuNduz iNcideNt

Our analysis so far revealed that multilateralism as social expectation played a crucial role in framing events, such as Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya, as major disasters. But why do quite a few other events, which we would have expected to account for major foreign policy fiascos, fail to do so? In order to explain such a lack of fiasco references, we selected a particular event for deeper qualitative analysis: the ‘Kunduz incident’ of 4 September 2009 is a crucial case because it seemed to lend itself perfectly to scandal-izing Germany’s military engagement in Afghanistan: large numbers of civilians were killed apparently because of military misjudgement, plus there was a public controversy between German and allied decision-mak-ers. Yet despite these ‘ingredients’, the episode was hardly ever framed as a fiasco or debacle in the German media. As we show, the Kunduz inci-dent evoked two opposing principles of German foreign policymaking that clashed and neutralized each other. Hence, it could not be as easily portrayed as an unambiguous foreign policy failure. What is more, report-ing on the incident took a turn after an elite consensus had been reached and became much less critical of the government’s actions after that point.

The so-called Kunduz incident describes an air raid in the Kunduz prov-ince of Afghanistan. The attack was aimed at two fuel tanker trucks hijacked by the Taliban. Although these air strikes were executed by American pilots, the responsibility lay with a German commander, Col. Georg Klein, who had requested them. Media and policymakers were highly alarmed when they discovered that a German officer had ordered air strikes which killed approximately 30 civilians and more than 50 insurgents (NYT


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2009)—the number of casualties could not be verified beyond doubt. The subsequent media coverage focused on whether Col. Klein had acted according to International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) intervention rules or whether the air strikes had been a mistake.

We chose this event because it stirred a debate about the goals of Germany’s engagement in Afghanistan. It took place amid the US discus-sion about a new Afghanistan strategy—as suggested by General Stanley McChrystal, who favoured a less combative approach and siding with Afghan civilians—which was extensively covered by German news media. Also, the Bundestag elections were only three weeks away. The character-istics of the event and its circumstances thus made it very newsworthy for the German press, and our selected newspapers widely covered the inci-dent for seven days after the attack (SZ: 54 articles, FAZ: 45 articles containing the word ‘Kundus’ from 5 to 11 September 2009). In analys-ing these articles, we attempted to determine what aspects were criticized during the media coverage and by whom.

The media reports on the Kunduz incident and its consequences fol-lowed a pattern of five waves. During the first one, the journalists were critical of the Bundeswehr because of the many civilians suspected to have died in the attack; Afghans who lamented the death of their relatives fig-ured prominently in these articles. Next, German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung, referring to the current state of investigations, declared that only Taliban combatants were among the victims—a claim that was quickly refuted. Therefore, in a second wave, the German opposition seized the opportunity to criticize the government for denying civilian casualties and demanded a broader discussion of the intervention’s goals. Suddenly, the debate acquired an international dimension when Gen. McChrystal pub-licly criticized the German commander Col. Klein for not complying with the ISAF rules (third wave). Then, other NATO members picked up this critique and repeated it (fourth wave). The situation now seemed to match the classic template for a German foreign policy debacle: Germany found itself surrounded by close allies who echoed the American criticism. Now, however, the German opposition remained largely muted and did not reinforce the international critique. During the fifth wave, at the end of the week, the German government reacted to the criticism. It condemned the international ‘premature’ reaction, focusing on procedural aspects, such as not waiting for official results.

Interestingly, while the international condemnation of Germany’s erroneous air strike was widely reported, no typical fiasco frame was

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employed in doing so. Rather, the reports diverted into procedural details, for instance, by accusing McChrystal of voicing his critique not only directly to the German commander but also to an American jour-nalist who accompanied him—a clear case of misconduct in the eyes of the German press (SZ 2009). The criticism by European allies—most prominently by Bernard Kouchner (France), Carl Bildt (Sweden), Jean Asselborn (Luxemburg) and José Luis Zapatero (Spain)—was fre-quently interpreted as being a tit-for-tat response because Germany had refused to commit more troops to Afghanistan and hitherto managed relatively secure provinces (Schmiese et al. 2009). The criticism by its NATO partners was deemed unfair by all German parties except for the Left Party.

Why did the Kunduz incident not appear in our sample? Why was it characterized neither as a fiasco nor as a disaster or debacle, and so on, in the FAZ or SZ, respectively, even though it seems to qualify for this label in so many ways? Our answer is twofold: first, the media mirrored the scope of opinions within the German policy arena. Thus, in accor-dance with the ‘indexing hypothesis’, that is, that journalists adapt their commentary to the range of opinions being expressed by political elites (Bennett 1994), the media would rather defend the Bundeswehr and Germany’s Afghanistan policy in general than declaring it a disaster.

During the first days, there were a lot of critical analyses about Col. Klein’s decision. However, once McChrystal had publicly voiced his con-troversial critique, the domestic debate turned into defending Germany’s engagement in Afghanistan and deviated from the common pattern of government versus opposition. Against this backdrop, it was highly unlikely that the media would resort to a fiasco frame, even if they would have been tempted to do so earlier.

Second, there is an overlooked background condition in this case. The media coverage triggered two clashing principles of German foreign policy at once: the importance ascribed to the country’s international standing—damaged in the week after Kunduz, which could have led to a typical fiasco frame such as debacle and disaster—versus the German tradition of civilian power (Maull 2001) and its culture of military restraint (Longhurst 2004; Malici 2006), which was at the time criticized by NATO partners who demanded more military commitment from Germany. The Kunduz incident, coincidentally, speaks to both of these principles in that the inter-national standing deteriorated mainly because Germany did not engage


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militarily to the extent that its allies had hoped for. In other words, the criticism from international allies linked the incident to Germany’s prior refusal to step up its military commitment. Thus, the case is different from the reporting on both Libya and Yugoslavia because these were primarily focused on issues of diplomatic coalition-building, whereas Kunduz was concerned with the escalation of an ongoing military operation including ground troops.

If American and European allies had accused their German counter-parts of using excessive military force, if they had demanded a more cau-tious military approach, German decision-makers would have found it difficult to counter such notions and to escape a fiasco framing by their domestic opposition and the media. Yet to the contrary, allied criticism, if anything, implied that civilians died because of, not despite, German risk avoidance and its half-hearted military engagement in Afghanistan. If there was a lesson to learn from this, it was to prepare for a more robust military campaign. Because of these implications, opposition leaders and domestic critics hesitated to use the episode and allied criti-cism as an opportunity to question Germany’s policy in Afghanistan in a more radical way. Since German decision-makers, for their part, felt unable to meet the expectations of their allies and could not accept their criticism without violating the commitment to military restraint, the Kunduz incident did not trigger a fiasco frame. Amongst other things, the case study reminds of the subtleness of political framing and how this both results from and reproduces a social context in which fiasco report-ing is made (im-)possible. More generally, it indicates that perceived vio-lations of the norm of multilateralism do not under all circumstances trigger a fiasco framing.

coNclusioN

In this chapter, we set out to identify German foreign policy fiascos by means of a quantitative and qualitative media analysis of two German newspapers. Conceptually, we started from the assumption that foreign policy fiascos are socially and medially constructed and reproduced phe-nomena. This ontological assumption notwithstanding, foreign policy fiascos lend themselves to systematic classification. What is more, their diffusion and discursive persistence can be objectively assessed through the application of quantitative and qualitative methods.

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One of our results most likely reflects the still rather consensual and non-confrontational culture of foreign policy debates in Germany: in many cases, the media did not engage in blaming and shaming at all. When they did so, members of the executive branch figured most promi-nently as targets of blame. As to the framing power of different actors, it is primarily the journalists themselves who are able to define foreign policy fiascos. To a lesser degree, the voices of members of opposition parties were picked up by the two newspapers. What came as a surprise was the near-absence of references provided by Germany’s international allies. By way of explanation, we pointed to the lack of deliberate coun-ter-framing efforts by German decision-makers and opinion leaders as well as to an elite consensus as reasons why harsh critiques by partner countries were unable to spur domestic public controversies in some cases.

Interestingly, it seems that social settings predict the social construction of foreign policy fiascos much better than issue-area characteristics in the case of Germany. While one would have expected fiasco references to the Eurozone crisis or the war in Afghanistan, both issues resulted in very few entries. Instead, the fiasco frame was used first and foremost whenever Germany failed to meet the expectations of her American and European partners—either by being unable to mediate or by going it alone. While Europe’s passivity during the Yugoslavian civil wars and the transatlantic and trans-European rift over Iraq 2003 are examples of the first, Germany’s abstention on UNSC resolution 1973 best exemplifies the second sce-nario. In other words, in such a multilateralism frame (Mayntz 2008: 107), German foreign policy is likely to be perceived as a fiasco if it runs counter to the expectation of multilateral embeddedness. German military engagement, however, seems to be somewhat exempted from this logic. As the Kunduz incident indicates, fundamental policy disagreements with partners and allies do not trigger fiasco framing if they seem wedded to Germany’s culture of military restraint.

Furthermore, our analysis does not support the notion of an ongoing normalization process of German foreign policy (see Oppermann 2012: 506–507; Wagener 2004: 113), in which national interests are increasingly prioritized over the expectations of traditional partners and allies—at least not with respect to the media system. That being said, more studies would be needed to compare media coverage of foreign policy events across differ-ent decades. Based on such studies, one could possibly assess whether or


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not the salience of the multilateralism frame has increased or decreased over time, and particularly after 1990. Equally promising would be a comparison of the characteristic issues and frames of ‘routine’ critique versus fiasco sto-rytelling along the lines we followed in the case of the Kunduz coverage. Finally, more effort is needed to probe into the conditions under which fiasco framing attempts are successful, be it temporarily or permanently. As all these unanswered questions show, there is much we still do not know but hope to find out about the social construction of fiascos in the future.

Notes

1. In our understanding, fiascos are extreme subcases of mistakes. By charac-terizing an event or outcome as a fiasco, authors usually imply exceptional and arguably long-term programmatic or reputational consequences.

2. With respect to the Euro crisis, Germany has sometimes been accused of behaving quite unilaterally. In fact, it did act against the preferences of its European partners, for instance, by resisting the establishment of Eurobonds. In the overall scheme of things, however, Germany’s unfalter-ing support for the common currency can be said to corroborate its multi-lateral foreign policy tradition.

3. The terms in German were ‘Fiasko’, ‘Debakel’, ‘Desaster’, ‘Versagen’ and ‘Scheitern’.

4. Again, we need to emphasize that fiascos, in our understanding, represent an extreme subcase of mistakes. Because of extremely negative connota-tions they have a particularly lasting impact on foreign policy discourses. Germany’s policy towards Yugoslavia or the US intervention in Somalia might be cases in point.

5. Frankfurter Allgemeine Archiv and Süddeutsche Zeitung Archiv/Library Net, accessed via http://faz-archiv-approved.faz.net/intranet/biblionet/r_suche/FAZ and http://librarynet.szarchiv.de/Portal/restricted/index.jsp

6. Our three-people coder team achieved an intercoder reliability rate of 0.67 which we were able to improve to 0.9 after a revision.

7. See the criticism of Michael Glos and other Christian Democrats who accused Chancellor Schröder to contribute to the failure of the EU refer-endums by promoting a Turkish EU membership (SZ 2005).

8. This is not to say that fiascos were necessarily unavoidable. Human agency still matters for social framing, but in different ways as compared to per-sonally or politically framed narratives. Once ill-designed policies are firmly in place, it takes critical voices and bold measures to prevent negative out-comes. Since, however, dissident perspectives are unlikely to be able to

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influence policies, there is a high probability that fiascos, even though they are not determined, are going to happen.

9. The so-called German visa affair refers to the systematic misuse of visa, allegedly for the purpose of prostitution and human trafficking, which were issued by the German embassy in Kiev.

10. The fact that both Fischer and Westerwelle kept commenting on contro-versial domestic policy issues during their terms in office might well have contributed to this tendency. Another reason derives from their respective biographies and their image as typical representatives of very specific social milieus (liberal upper-class versus alternative-urban). As a consequence, their ability to reach out to and to gain respect from other milieus was comparatively modest.

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Bovens, Mark, Paul ‘t Hart, and B. Guy Peters. 2001. Analysing Governance Success and Failure in Six European States. In Success and Failure in Public Governance: A Comparative Analysis, ed. Mark Bovens, Paul ‘t Hart, and B. Guy Peters, 12–29. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

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Theories, Actors, Cases, ed. Steve Smith, Amelia Hadfield, and Tim Dunne, 78–93. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Hellmann, Gunther, Christian Weber, and Frank Sauer. 2007. “Selbstbewusst“ und „Stolz“: Das außenpolitische Vokabular der Berliner Republik als Fährte einer Neuorientierung. Politische Vierteljahreschrift 48 (4): 650–679.

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CHAPTER 5

Policymaking in the Pub: New Labour’s European Policy Failure

Oliver Daddow

I think it’s one of the things he would leave office feeling most unhappy about really, that he hadn’t managed to change things. (Interview with Sally Morgan, Tony Blair’s Director of Government Relations 2001–2005; conducted 7 January 2009)

After rather reluctantly joining the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, a decision taken principally to shore up its flagging econ-omy, Britain quickly assumed the mantle of Europe’s ‘awkward partner’ (George 1994). Britain has been described, variously, as ‘a stranger in Europe’ (Wall 2008), ‘semi-detached’ from the continent (Jenkins 1983) and home to a nation of ‘reluctant Europeans’ living ‘on the sidelines of integration, politically, geographically and emotionally (Gowland and Turner 1999; Gowland et al. 2010). A hegemonic ‘outsider’ narrative (Daddow 2015), resting on an at best weak public and media consensus behind a wholehearted approach to Britain’s membership of what in 1993 became the European Union (EU), has been a potent factor militating against the development of an organic pro-membership position. Successive governments of all political hues were more content to suppress

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national debate and discussion than to tackle the question of Britain’s place in Europe head-on. The weaknesses of that approach were ruthlessly exposed in the 2016 membership referendum, when the British people narrowly voted to leave the EU, by 51.9–48.1%. For a political class mostly dedicated to keeping Britain inside the EU, this is a failure seemingly on an extraordinary scale.

Whilst a lot of the research will no doubt focus on the decisions of Prime Ministers David Cameron and Theresa May, earlier periods in this story may in fact tell us more about the Brexit vote than has previously been recognized. The New Labour years are particularly interesting in this regard. Under the New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010, there was a concerted attempt to develop a ‘new consensus’ on Britain’s identity as an engaged player in Europe, post-Empire (Brown 1997). In the early New Labour years, there were even serious preparations for joining the European single currency, the euro. This outpouring of Europhilia (by UK standards) came from a newly elected Labour Party which had advocated EEC ‘withdrawal’ in its 1983 election manifesto. Wishing to consign ‘New’ Labour’s past to ‘old’ his-tory, on coming to power in May 1997, Prime Minister Tony Blair said he wanted to inculcate in British political and public life a closer psychologi-cal connection to the EU. New Labour wanted to place British European policy on a surer footing by imbuing elites and public alike with ‘strength and confidence in leadership at home and abroad, particularly in respect of Europe’ (Blair 1997).

The now popular view is that New Labour did not achieve this European policy objective. By the end of the New Labour years, the British public was as ‘sceptical’ about the EU in 2010 as it had been in 1997 (see the review of poll findings in Daddow 2011: 17–20; Leconte 2010: 70 and 113). This can evidently be classed as a ‘programme failure’ (Bovens and ‘t Hart 2005: 34), albeit in a policy realm that did not harm New Labour’s capacity to win elections or, apologists might argue, its capacity to manage the wider political agenda of government (a ‘programme’ dimension covered in McConnell 2010: 350). Former Blair advisers and Downing Street insiders are well aware of the depth of this failure. For example, Roger Liddle, Blair’s European policy adviser from 1997 to 2004, has written that New Labour wanted to excise ‘the cancer of Euroscepticism’ from the body poli-tic by transforming ‘how the British feel in their guts about Europe’. However, he concedes, ‘we failed’ (Liddle 2014: xxii–xxiii). Tellingly for this chapter, Liddle writes about the ‘“Red Lion” fiasco’ of October 1997,

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‘an extraordinary failure in policy-making’ (Liddle 2014: 59 and 78 [the Red Lion is a public house in Whitehall, London]). Another figure from the heart of the New Labour governments was Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, or right-hand man in government, before and through-out his period as prime minister: ‘What we managed to do was shift Britain’s [diplomatic] position in Europe. What we failed to do was change British public opinion about it’ (interview with Powell, 10 September 2008). The historiography of the New Labour governments written by academics has echoed the sense of optimism followed by a feeling of let-down. Initially nuanced and relatively balanced evaluations of New Labour’s European policy (e.g. Sowemimo 1999) have given way to the search for the causes of ‘policy failure’ (for instance Daddow 2011: 12–15; see also Boulton 2008: 214).

Long overdue dialogue between scholars of foreign policy on the one hand and public policy on the other (see the introduction to this volume; Oppermann and Spencer 2016a; Bovens and ‘t Hart 2016; McConnell 2016) has opened the way for a serious and sustained re-examination of this supposed policy ‘failure’. That is the goal of this chapter. If ‘short-comings or failings permeate virtually all policies’ (McConnell 2010: 346) and ‘non-failure’ can in some cases be construed as ‘success’ (Marsh and McConnell 2010: 578), then the nature, extent and politics of New Labour’s alleged European policy failure are all ripe for re-evaluation. The chapter takes particular inspiration from the interpretivist leaning of Mark Bovens’ and Paul ‘t Hart’s (2005) work on the need to construct fiascos and failures as far as possible by understanding the policy process from ‘within’. The opening part investigates the ontology of New Labour’s European policymaking to identify the agents involved: cast identification is a significant part of the fiasco mapping enterprise. The second part sur-veys the interpretations of New Labour’s European policy on offer in the extant literature, emphasizing the constructed and politicized nature of the largely but not exclusively negative evaluations that dominate the field. The final part homes in on the crucial decision by the Blair govern-ment in 1997 to delay making a decision on euro membership. The focus on this policy choice, it is argued, reflects a growing tendency through the New Labour years to highlight governance failures as being the product of flawed decision-making. Not only but most obviously in Iraq, the nar-rative goes, New Labour’s alleged foreign policy failings were the prod-ucts of restrictive decision-making processes and ‘government by spin’ (Routledge 1998: 325).

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The chapter puts the case that judgements about ‘success’ and ‘failure’ cannot be objectively determined, but instead flow from different forms of narrative contestation about ‘what really happened’ and why. The hege-monic interpretation of New Labour’s European policy record, to use Michael Howlett’s typology (2012: 544), is that it was a ‘diffuse failure’. Contested by some—not least Blair himself as documented below—this is a critique most often levelled by pro-European journalists, commentators and academics in and outside Westminster policy circles. Looking for the source of the blame for this perceived negative outcome, the Red Lion episode has been interpreted as a very short-lived but programmatically significant decision-making failure. For those unfamiliar with what trans-pired, a brief recap is in order. In autumn 1997, one of Gordon Brown’s Treasury special advisers was overheard in the Red Lion Public House—carrying a pint in one hand and his mobile in the other—briefing journal-ists that the government had ruled out joining the single currency until at least 2001, the lifetime of the first Blair government. In fact, that policy was under discussion and had yet to be agreed. Whelan was going way beyond his remit and media reporting of the Whelan conversations threw New Labour’s European policy into disarray at a formative stage in Blair’s premiership. The Iraq Inquiry has reignited attention to the decision- making failings at the heart of the New Labour governments. Similarly, the Brexit referendum decision of 2016 is likely to reignite the search for agents to blame for the failure of Britain’s pro-European political classes. The Red Lion episode, it seems, was a good indicator of things to come.

Methodological challenges: identifying agency in foreign PolicyMaking

When examining policy outcomes, it is essential to identify the actors involved at the apex of decision-making as a way of ‘pinpointing the locus of failure’—and indeed success. This involves opening up the ‘black box’ of policymaking to ‘look at the ways in which decisions are made and actions planned and executed’ (Bovens and ‘t Hart 2005: 54). The reason for delving into the ontology of policymaking is that the stronger the con-trol decision-makers could exert over a policy, the greater the level of their accountability for the outcome of that policy when blame is apportioned or credit given. If, by contrast, they experienced bad luck or encountered sets of circumstances they could not have foreseen, then more nuanced

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judgements about their relative levels of culpability have to be arrived at. Methodologically, however, the challenges of identifying agency and establishing chains of causation in making and executing British foreign policy are very severe.

Put simply, it is difficult to pinpoint who was responsible for particular decisions and how those decisions shaped overall policy outcomes. Foreign policy decision-making is a secretive business that often goes on behind closed doors, a fact often excused on national interest and security grounds (on the covert action dimension of this wider methodological problem, see Cormac and Daddow forthcoming). Increasingly, prime ministers have been centralizing key foreign policy decisions in Downing Street and exerted con-trol via the Cabinet Office, and this does not make access to information about the dynamics of foreign policy decision-making any easier. In this chap-ter, the apparent fiasco came to light only by luck, as detailed below, showing that contingency can play a decisive role in lifting the veil on government blunders that might otherwise remain secret or below radar. In the absence of archival evidence or interview testimony, political diaries, auto/biogra-phies and memoirs are all vital sources: these feature prominently below.

To make due recognition of these methodological challenges, this chapter assumes that European policy under New Labour was largely coordinated not by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)—either by the for-eign secretary or the relevant minister for Europe (on the incapacity of the latter for this role, see Daddow 2011: 56–59)—but out of Downing Street, usually in tandem with what was a very powerful Treasury, dominated by the figure of Gordon Brown. Symbolically, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook was not invited to the first big European strategy meeting under New Labour. Cook was seen as untrustworthy and was outside the golden ‘trio’ (Radice 2010) of Blair, Brown and Peter Mandelson. Other members of the inner circle included the powerful Director of Communications Alastair Campbell (Liddle 2014: 76) and steadying hand on the tiller, Jonathan Powell (Blair’s Chief of Staff in Downing Street). As time went by, advice and opinion was increasingly sought from European-focused civil servants in the Cabinet Office. Nevertheless, during its first two years in office, gov-ernment ministers and advisers were responsible for the overall develop-ment of European policy strategy (on the marginalization of the civil service and FCO, see Liddle 2014: 64). The main actors whose decisions need to be accounted for in the context of the October 1997 euro deci-sion discussed in this chapter are, therefore: the Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Brown’s spokesman


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at the time, Charlie Whelan, made a very memorable walk-on appearance, as outlined below.

The focus on these key figures is justified by Stephen Wall, Blair’s EU adviser between 2000 and 2004, who has indicated that it was politically dangerous for any minister to speak out on sensitive topics such as the EU ‘for fear of offending either the Prime Minister or the Chancellor’ (Wall 2008: 180). Wall had a closer view than most of New Labour’s European policymaking. He oversaw the European secretariat in the Cabinet Office at a time when its resources were being enhanced to push through Blair’s European policy agenda: ‘Its European expertise was such that by the time of Blair’s departure, No.10 was “pretty close” to the point at which it could bypass the FCO altogether for policy advice and strategic thinking on Europe’ (James and Oppermann 2009: 293). New Labour’s European policy decision-making therefore remained the preserve of Downing Street and the Treasury, both because European policy was a salient (and in Wall’s description ‘sensitive’) element of New Labour’s self-identity which needed careful image management, and because an activist European policy was a core component of its modernization programme for the governance of Britain. Having identified the key members of the cast in the drama, we can now study how their actions have been emplotted into narratives about what happened in the Red Lion pub and the impact this had on New Labour’s European policy programme.

fraMe contestation over new labour’s euroPean Policy record

For a fiasco narrative to take hold, it has to come to be widely accepted as the received wisdom about what happened after a period of frame contesta-tion with other counter-narratives that question or challenge the claims that a mistake has occurred (Klotz and Lynch 2007: 55; Oppermann and Spencer 2016b). This section of the chapter casts light on the many differ-ent criteria which affect observers’ evaluations of an alleged policy failure (on which McConnell 2014: 3–7), in this case New Labour’s European policy record. Ultimately, it is suggested, there are two distinct sets of writ-ers: a very small set is supportive of New Labour’s European policy record, while a much larger set is critical. Their respective judgements have formed on the back of different ontologies of European policy and distinct normative propositions about Blair and Brown’s room for manoeuvre at vital points

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in the chain of events running through events as they unfolded in 1997–2010. In the frame contestation that has been playing out over New Labour’s European policy, the camp putting forward the narrative of fail-ure, it is shown, is in the ascendancy, although there are powerful political voices putting the counter-narrative that the policy was a success.

The first and by far the smallest set of observers is sympathetic to New Labour’s European policy record, accepting the version of events Blair tried to impose on the collective memory before he left office and later repeated in his memoirs (Blair 2010: 536–37). For example, in a speech on the future of Europe in 2006, Blair argued that in European affairs, most of his targets were met:

We achieved enlargement. We took over, with France, the shaping of European defence. We formulated the economic reform programme from Lisbon onwards. Even where we divided from others, we did so with allies. Finally, we put through a budget deal that most thought couldn’t be done. (Blair 2006)

Blair clearly evaluated his European policy in terms of an activist British diplomacy on issues close to his heart, such as defence, EU enlargement and neoliberal economic reform.

Several Blairites have accepted the former prime minister’s assessment. For example, David Miliband, who worked in the Downing Street Policy Unit under Blair before becoming Gordon Brown’s Foreign Secretary, judged in the midst of the global financial and Eurozone crisis in 2009 that Britain had made the ‘correct decision not to join the Euro’ and that despite some controversy at the time this refusal had ‘not left Britain at the margins of Europe’ (Miliband 2009). Here we see the role that time and hindsight can play in evaluating public policy, with current difficulties in the Eurozone used to justify decisions taken a decade earlier. Another com-mentator who stresses the diplomatic dimension of British European policy is Tim Garton Ash who, in a 2007 chapter on Blair’s foreign policy record, wrote that even after the Iraq invasion and the rupture between the UK on the one side and France and Germany on the other, ‘Britain’s relations both with the US and our partners in the European Union are better than they were in 1997’ (Garton Ash 2007). Clearly, the European policy one ‘sees’ has a major influence on the verdict about its quality one arrives at.

Also in this camp is Robin Cook, who as Foreign Secretary in Blair’s first term was mostly excluded from European policymaking (see above).


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He wrote in his memoirs during his first term Blair ‘transformed Britain’s relations with Europe’ (Cook 2003: 131). In Cook’s view, European pol-icy achievements to 2003 should not be obscured by imposing a blanket, Iraq-centred narrative of ‘failure’ on Blair’s foreign policy record before that time. Other writers who take seriously the agenda Blair set for himself when coming to judge how far he achieved his European policy objectives include Paul Williams (2005: 71) and Blair’s biographer Anthony Seldon et al. (2007: 572). Neither Williams nor Seldon suggest that Blair’s European policy was an unqualified success, however, because of the real test of that policy, which was to give the British people in general the same level of ‘confidence’ as the diplomats in supporting an engaged European policy. This reinforces the theme of this section that the passing of time affects judgements, as does the ontology of European policy used as the benchmark for assessment.

On the one hand, then, is a small set of writers seeing European policy as the preserve of elites in Britain looking for respectability in the EU via the ‘normalization’ (Sowemimo 1999) of relations between London and foreign policy communities in Paris, Bonn and Brussels, to name just the three most important targets for the New Labour charm offensive. On the other hand, there is a set of writers who are harsher on New Labour’s European policy record. They argue either that New Labour relegated European policy principles below a focus on winning elections or even more tersely that there was no New Labour European policy strategy at all. It is the latter group that base their fiasco narratives on what went on in the Red Lion pub, so they are covered in the next section of the chapter.

Two features of the sociology of this critical set of writers are worth highlighting. First, they are united by sympathy for Britain’s involvement in European integration and a sense of disappointment that New Labour did not create a ‘new consensus’ on Europe as promised when it came to power. Broadly speaking, politically, it is a Europhile grouping (in Britain, especially post-Brexit, this has come to mean supportive of continued EU membership rather than actively ‘federalist’ in outlook). They are politi-cians, journalists and academics. Second, on the ontological question of ‘what are they criticizing?’, these writers are at odds with the first (more sympathetic) school, inasmuch as they see European policy goals as being about changing public attitudes on the EU as well as enhancing Britain’s reputation inside the organization. Most significantly, they judge the pol-icy record against the initial goal on European policy New Labour set

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itself: giving the country as opposed to an already Europeanized diplo-matic elite a more comfortable place as an active member of the EU by improving public and media attitudes to matters ‘Brussels’ related.

A good example of this interpretation of New Labour’s European pol-icy record is Julie Smith, who at the end of Blair’s second term in office observed that ‘however deeply committed the Prime Minister and his col-leagues were to the European Union, they were ultimately more commit-ted to ensuring that the Labour Party remained in power nationally’ (Smith 2005: 704). Brendan Donnelly, former Conservative member of the European Parliament and director of the pro-European think tank The Federal Trust, similarly saw European policy ambitions subverted to the electoral goal of using Europeanist discourse to damage an increasingly Eurosceptically inclined Conservative Party on the one hand and steal a major plank of the Liberal Democrat agenda on the other (Donnelly 2005). This camp fits the New Labour years into a longer narrative which sees British politicians weighing European policy considerations against what ‘plays’ best domestically in the court of media and public opinion (for instance, Crowson 2007: 2; Daniels 1998: 74). The important contri-bution made by this camp is to help us understand New Labour’s ‘double speak’ on the EU, whereby it could simultaneously proclaim a Europhile agenda while on more than the odd occasion tapping into strongly Eurosceptical narratives more familiar to the fringes of Conservative Party conferences and the pages of the tabloid media (see Daddow 2015).

This, it is said, was done to appease a heavily Eurosceptical UK media. From New Labour’s perspective, it was happy to have the support of media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch, whose News International group owned influential agenda-setting national newspapers such as the Sun and The Times. However, they were also known to be hostile to the point of withdrawalist when it came to their coverage of European affairs (see Daddow 2012; Smith 2017: 51). In their audit of New Labour’s successes and failures in power, journalists Polly Toynbee and David Walker note that Eurosceptic rhetoric had even begun to permeate the European cov-erage by notionally ‘objective’ institutions such as the BBC (Toynbee and Walker 2001: 150–51).

New Labour movers and shakers, in particular the Director of Communications and former tabloid journalist Alastair Campbell, judged it important not to risk losing votes on the Europe question by making any radical integrationist moves such as joining the single currency against the hardening opposition of much of the mainstream print media. Price, for example, recorded in his diary in February 1999 that on Europe Blair


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was ‘nervous about taking on the press in a big way. He knows what a huge battle it would be’ (Price 2005: 79). Some writers in this camp even speculate on the existence of a Faustian Pact between New Labour and Rupert Murdoch: no sudden moves on the EU in return for his press’ continued support for the New Labour project (for instance Wallace 2005: 63). Price certainly believes that key people at News International believed they would be consulted prior to any such policy shift (Price 2005: 45). In the frame contestation that has gone on over New Labour’s European policy record, we can see how fiasco narratives emerged because of the lingering sense of disappointment about the limited attempts by the gov-ernment to change British public opinion on Europe and/or to take on the Eurosceptical media. Since fiasco narratives develop on the back of a perceived failure, it is evident that someone or something must be blamed for this allegedly negative state of affairs. In this context, events in the Red Lion pub have been latched on to as a source of the problems and as a route to the apportionment of blame.

the red lion fiasco

This section begins by investigating the foreign and, by extension, the European ‘policy vacuum’ (Peston 2005: 201) which existed in the New Labour governing project in 1997. It shows how this led to policy ‘drift’ (Price 2005: 114) resulting in a lacuna which, for those cleaving to the fiasco interpretation of New Labour’s European policy, became filled by a press briefing which ruled out UK membership of the euro and threw government policy into confusion. The section then identifies five condi-tions which needed to be met for the successful development and enact-ment of a proactive European policy on the part of the first Blair government. The nature of the single currency decision in October 1997 is said to have violated all of these conditions, which supports the idea that apparently ‘innocent’ and relatively time-bound decision-making fiascos can set governments on paths to longer-term programme failure.

An understanding of the policy context within which the alleged fiasco took place is vital. Under the leaderships of Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Labour Party was mod-ernized and rebranded around what was essentially a domestic agenda on the economy, crime, social justice, health, education and so on (detailed in Mandelson 2002). A positive stance on Europe did feature in this process, but investment in foreign policy thought was distinctly thinner on the

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ground. Blair himself was not a foreign policy expert by education, train-ing or during his relatively short political career before he achieved power. As John Sawers, one of Blair’s foreign policy advisers, has recalled, whilst New Labour people knew they wanted to modernize British foreign pol-icy, update the public’s view of Britain’s role in the world and be seen to be strong on defence, they did not nail down a coherent foreign policy programme to deliver these objectives: ‘Blair’s foreign policy record devel-oped as time passed. I don’t think he came in with a clear set of ideas that he then delivered’ (interview with Sawers, 26 January 2009). Clare Short, a former Cabinet colleague and head of the Department for International Development from 1997 to 2003 has agreed that ‘Blair had no record of any interest in foreign policy prior to becoming leader of the Labour Party’ in 1994 (Short 2005: 76). Blair’s biographer Philip Stephens writes of Blair’s ‘innocence’ and ‘inexperience’ in this area of government busi-ness (Stephens 2004: 107–8). Even in his largely self-justificatory mem-oirs, Blair is moved to admit that ‘I knew a lot about history before becoming prime minister; but about contemporary foreign affairs, I knew little’ (Blair 2010: 224).

This backdrop has particular relevance for this chapter, for as Blair’s eco-nomic adviser, Derek Scott, also recalls: ‘when Tony Blair arrived at No.10, as he admitted himself, he had been too busy reforming the Labour Party to engage in serious thought on Europe’ (Scott 2004: 207). New Labour was single-mindedly focused on winning the 1997 election, and this took prece-dence over planning for what to do with power once achieved. ‘As an area of policy, there was nothing atypical about Europe in its level of vagueness prior to 1997’ (Liddle 2014: 56). There was, however, the British presidency of the EU in 1998 to prepare for, accompanied by a burst of EU-related activity on the part of the Blair governments between 1997 and 1999. First, during its initial days in office, New Labour signed the European Social Chapter guaranteeing workers’ rights. Second, Blair tried to improve the tone and substance of British diplomacy at the Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference at the end of May 1997 (Smith 2017: 47). Finally, from Amsterdam via the Pörtschach Summit in October 1998 and then to the Saint Malo initiative in December 1998, Blair sought to heighten Europe’s capability to sort out security and defence issues arising on its own doorstep. While it might not always have achieved the results desired (for instance, the Kosovo crisis in 1999 exposed Europe’s continued reliance on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), raising questions about the success of Europe’s defence policy, at least in this field, Blair got as far as designing and imprinting


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something approaching a ‘blueprint’ for the future of the UK inside a chang-ing EU (Whitman 1999: 5).

Looking at these activities, we could argue that Blair was at his most energetic, consistent and successful at devising and executing British European policy when the following conditions were met. Each condition is illustrated with examples from European defence policy:

(1) When there was perceived to be clear benefit to the national interest. There was evident need to upgrade Europe’s defence capability in the increasingly volatile post-Cold War era, and for Blair, this was linked both to the maintenance of British security and to enable to New Labour to project British influence as a ‘force for good’ in the world.

(2) When there were well-defined objectives with hard evidence available about what progress was being made on policy delivery. Signing the Social Chapter was a very simple and decisive way of symbolizing the New Labour commitment to an engaged posture on the EU. On defence, timelines and targets on the expansion of European military capabilities could be agreed between member states, progress could be measured and further steps towards meet-ing targets agreed as necessary.

(3) When there was benefit to the Labour Party, in either attracting votes or—on European affairs—not losing them. Historically, defence was a Labour Party weakness image-wise. Blair wanted to be seen to be defending the national interest as a competent, strong and decisive prime minister. A proactive European stance also put clear water between Labour and what was widely seen to have been the dither-ing and ‘little Englander’ Euroscepticism of John Major’s outgo-ing Conservative administration, together with the Conservative Party in Opposition under William Hague and after.

(4) When there was no obvious opposition from the Eurosceptic media, whether Conservative-supporting such as the Telegraph and Daily Mail or from Blair-backing but not necessarily New Labour- enthusiastic outlets such as the Sun. Despite press concerns about ‘sovereignty’ and sporadic criticism about the possible creation of a ‘European Army’, the press was relatively quiescent on European Security and Defence Policy because the intergovernmental nature of the process was always heavily stressed by national politicians (for instance, Coughlin 2009). Press contestation over European

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policy grew in tandem with calls for a referendum as trust in Blair ebbed away post-Iraq, but this was a later challenge rather than being something that was evident all along.

(5) When policy could be agreed and decision-making tightly controlled by Downing Street. On European defence, Blair could exercise his interpersonal skills with other European leaders free from the con-straints imposed on him at home by having to share decision- making with Gordon Brown at the Treasury (see Daddow 2009).

If we assess how far the single currency decision of 1997 has been judged to have met the above conditions, we find that none of them are said to have held, or certainly not to the same degree. This has been cru-cial in the construction of the fiasco narratives about New Labour’s European policy. Instead, the ‘big beasts’ at the top of the New Labour machine dithered and jostled to impose on proceedings their divergent courses of action—‘there was no worked-out European strategy or single currency timeline’ (Liddle 2014: 56). There were splits and power- grabbing between Downing Street and Treasury, and even within the Blair team itself (Liddle 2014: 60).

The roots of the ‘shambles’ (Bower 2004: 250) are, in short, said to have lain in the lack of firm European policy strategy in the first months of the 1997 New Labour government. Over the summer, there was a huge pressure building from big business and in the media for clarification of what New Labour proposed to do about joining the euro in the first wave, due to be launched in 1999. The problem was that, despite several meet-ings between Blair, Brown and their respective teams: ‘The ministers were unanimous only in disagreeing’ what to do (Bower 2004: 249). In an attempt to clarify the government’s position and dampen expectations, Brown suggested an ‘interview’ with The Times, in the shape of a series of lines faxed to its political editor Philip Webster. The ‘interview’ did not rule out euro membership. However, on the evening of 17 October the Chancellor’s spokesman Charlie Whelan at the Red Lion pub ‘was heard [by a Liberal Democrat press officer—Bower 2004: 250)] bawling down his mobile to journalists that British membership of the single currency had been ruled out for the current parliament’ (Liddle 2014: 78). Without consulting Campbell, the same briefing had gone to the BBC’s Newsnight and Independent Television Network news (Mandelson 2011: 238).

In a 2011 study, the present author pieced together from biographies and journalistic accounts the concatenation of events involved in the Red


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Lion fiasco: The Times headline on 18 October duly followed the Whelan spin put on the interview: ‘Brown rules out single currency for lifetime of this parliament’, while the Sun ran with ‘Brown says no to the euro’. That same day, Mandelson alerted Blair to the apparent reversal of the govern-ment’s open door policy on the euro, but both Brown and Campbell were (suspiciously) non-contactable; on 19 October, newspapers began to run with stories that Blair and Brown had ‘meticulously’ agreed the policy the previous week; on 21 October, the key protagonists finally met in Downing Street; over the next few days, a policy statement was agreed amidst much disagreement; on 27 October, the Chancellor made his Commons state-ment on the single currency, the gist of which was ‘prepare and decide’ (see Daddow 2011: 49). Brown was attempting to construct a counter- narrative, but as we have seen in the plethora of fiasco narratives above, in this process he was only partially successful.

It is easy to see how the above evidence about the 1997 euro decision has been drawn upon in fiasco narratives about New Labour’s European policy: the sense at the time and since was that ‘something was not right’. First, there was no Cabinet- or government-agreed European policy pro-gramme which could be implemented when New Labour came to office, and which could support the rhetoric about ‘leadership’ in Europe that had come to be the stock in trade of New Labour’s European policy dis-course. In foreign policy, it is dangerous to throw out too many hostages to fortune, but it seems there were no hostages to be thrown out at all. Second, the elected politicians supposedly in control of the policy were, it seems, not in control of events at this vital early stage. Alastair Campbell indicates that this was exacerbated by a communications breakdown: ‘CW[helan] and I both believed we were doing what TB[lair] and GB[rown] wanted us to, they having discussed it earlier, it seemed they had not really gone over the line in any detail’ (Campbell 2007: 253). Prime Minister Blair had agreed with Campbell that Chancellor Brown could brief the press on the single currency. But he had not agreed the line to be taken: the spin doctors were left to fill in the gaps. Third, the New Labour machine was intentionally ignoring the instruments of govern-ment (the civil service and input from ministers notionally in charge of the relevant government departments such as the FCO and the Department for Trade and Industry) and instead making policy through the media.

Using the public policy evaluation literature, events in the Red Lion could be said to indicate an extreme form of ‘process failure’ because the policy process that led to the decision was ‘illegitimate’ (McConnell 2014: table 3, 19). Furthermore, the mechanisms by which the direction on Britain’s euro

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policy was hastily cobbled together to cover up the government split, led by Brown and his Treasury advisers, were to impinge upon many core dimen-sions of New Labour’s European policy for the remainder of the Blair-Brown years. Most obviously, as one witness close to events has remarked, ‘it was difficult to see how in the long term the UK could sustain the position of a leader in Europe while it remained outside the EU’s biggest project’ (Radice 2010: 112). Even in 1998 and 1999, after the single currency policy had supposedly been shored up, Downing Street diarist Lance Price was bemoan-ing that there was ‘no coherent strategy’ and asking himself ‘[w]hat are the objectives of our foreign policy?’ (Price 2005: 14 and 88).

conclusion

Even today, writing this one day after the event, I cannot piece together exactly how we reached the point we did. (Alastair Campbell, diary entry for 18 October 1997 (Campbell 2007: 253))

The main empirical conclusion from this chapter is that the chances of a public policy fiasco occurring are heightened when there is a policy vac-uum, and especially when a government machine apparently malfunctions to such a degree that a spin doctor can make strategic decisions on behalf of the government over the telephone in a pub. Mistakes and process fail-ures around day-to-day decision-making do not always lead to policy failures—but they can do, especially when the policy programme unfold-ing on the back of the decision becomes contested. The political conse-quences for the government of the Red Lion episode were severe across the board, in domestic and foreign policy alike. The fiasco dramatically heightened media and public unease—and attention to—New Labour’s ‘secretive’ decision-making processes. Dissatisfaction with New Labour’s governing ‘style’ would haunt Blair and Brown throughout their periods in Downing Street, and come to assume an especially strong form during the Iraq invasion of 2003. Several official inquiries did little to quell the disquiet, tainting Blair and Brown alike.

Blair’s policy-making style was a consistent focus for criticism in the Report of the Iraq Inquiry (2016), unanimous press condemnation cementing the narrative in the public mind: ‘In winning a war he has lost his reputation’ (Greenslade 2016). The euro decision would never have had the same immediate or visible consequences as the invasion of Iraq, but this chapter has shown it to be well worthy of investigation for the light it can shed on


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the narrative construction of policy fiascos. For the country, the Red Lion fiasco ruled out the kind of national debate about the EU which was needed to help clarify the huge uncertainty surrounding Britain’s place in Europe (portended in Oliver, 2015). By the time of the membership ref-erendum in 2016, nothing serious had been done by British governments to address the UK public’s information deficit on the EU. Over-confidence on the part of Cameron and the Remain camp that the public could be won over by the interest- based case for remaining in the EU proved mis-placed, on an issue where sovereignty and immigration had come to be the main debating points (see the parting shot in Daddow 2015: 88). It is remarkable how such seemingly tiny episodes as that which unfolded in the Red Lion pub can, over time, come to be constructed as pivotal moments in history. On the evidence of this chapter, the attention to them seems more than warranted.

Given this, the main theoretical conclusion from this chapter is that, in order to deepen our understanding of policy failures, it is worth adding ‘low-level’ mistakes such as the Red Lion episode into the mix. Relative to fiascos such as the Suez crisis, the Vietnam War or Iraq, it was much more limited in terms of duration, profile and global shock waves, because it was a behind-the-scenes decision-making fiasco that surfaced only through chance. No one died, nothing fell out of the sky and the country was not invaded as a result. Defective decision-making did, however, transform the strategic management of the European issue in British government and ultimately led to its failure to shift British public opinion on the EU in an upward direction. Rarely in foreign policy do we get to open the black box of government decision-making in the way it was opened by Charlie Whelan in the Red Lion. It was sheer contingency that Whelan’s pub con-versation reached the public domain. Without it, we might still believe the government’s staged cover story that the announcement of the ‘five tests’ on euro membership was the result of detailed planning and strategizing. What this episode corroborates in the extant public policy literature is that fiascos contain elements of comedy but also have darker sides to them, involving secrecy and in some cases barefaced lies.

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PART II

International Political Economy


CHAPTER 6

Private Governance Failures and Their Consequences: Towards Enhanced Legal Control of Private Authorities in Finance

and Security?

Andreas Kruck

Private-sector agents such as credit rating agencies (CRAs) and private mili-tary and security companies (PMSCs) have become powerful actors in global governance. CRAs such as Standard & Poor’s (S&P) or Moody’s define a global standard of credit worthiness; their ratings shape the market access and financing conditions of public and private borrowers, including firms, banks and sovereign states (Kerwer 2002; Sinclair 2005). PMSCs conduct a broad set of security-related activities in conflict zones, ranging from logistics to the support of combat. They contribute to the creation and implementation of security orders beyond the state, undertaking tasks which in modern Westphalian understandings of sovereignty had been con-fined to states’ armed forces (Avant 2005; Krahmann 2010). CRAs’ and PMSCs’ own material and ideational resources as well as delegation, recog-nition and empowerment from states have turned them into incumbents of private authority1 (Cutler et al. 1999; Kruck 2016, 2017; Nölke 2004).

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Their rise to power was initially not accompanied by a concomitant increase of legal accountability and control. Regulation and judicial over-sight of private authorities was weak. However, more recently, as private governance failures such as misguided ratings precipitating financial crises (in the case of CRAs) and financial waste and fraud, low-quality security services, human rights abuses and the killing of civilians (in the case of PMSCs) have amassed, private authorities’ position of ‘a lot of power with little accountability’ has come under stress. Focusing on the particularly powerful and controversial examples of PMSCs and CRAs, this chapter explores when and to what extent private governance failures subsequently lead to enhanced legal control of private authorities which had been empowered and relied upon by state actors.

I conceive of private governance failures as instances where private authoritative acts are widely seen to have gone wrong leading to harm for the targets of their activities, the state actors that had previously empow-ered them and possibly also affected third parties—that is, negative conse-quences which could have been avoided by less negligent or reckless behaviour on the part of the private governors (see Kruck et al. Chap. 1, in this volume). As their activities and failures are highly consequential, the introduction of adequate control mechanisms for PMSCs and CRAs seems desirable from a normative point of view—and might also be expected empirically. However, the cases of CRAs and PMSCs indicate that in fact the link between private governance failures and (effective) regulatory reform is less direct and more complex.

Severe private governance failures may provide an important impetus for attempts to expose private authorities to enhanced legal control, mea-sured in terms of the precision and obligation of oversight rules as well as the extent of independent judicial review (see Abbott et al. 2000). The mistakes of previously empowered private authorities lead to a functional demand for public re-regulation. However, to understand the onset and trajectories of regulatory reform after private failures, a power-political perspective is necessary that is aware of instrumental, political rationales of policy-makers and historical path-dependencies. The key argument of this chapter is that the impact of private governance failures on enhanced legal control is shaped and mediated by political costs and pressures as well as structural dependencies of public policy-makers on private authorities.

The establishment and extent of enhanced legal control rather than other responses such as the radical disempowerment of private authorities or the persistence of the regulatory status quo are contingent on (1) the

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political net benefits that more legalised private provision of governance entails for public policy-makers in the aftermath of private governance failures and (2) public policy-makers’ (continued) dependence on failing but essential private authorities. This approach captures why regulation and legal oversight of CRAs and PMSCs have increased after their gover-nance failures but are plagued with limitations and entail unintended consequences.

In the following, I first elaborate on my theoretical argument. I then sketch the previous status quo of ‘a lot of power with little accountability’ and highlight that major governance failures of PMSCs and CRAs occurred and created a functional demand for institutional change. I go on to show how political costs and pressures as well as structural dependencies have shaped and constrained states’ regulatory response to these failures. Although their activities and failures differ, the dynamics and complica-tions of (re-)regulating PMSCs and CRAs after their governance failures display similar patterns. I conclude with some reflections on the unin-tended consequences of enhanced legal accountability for the authorita-tive status of flawed private governors and draw some broader lessons for the study of failures.

The PaTh-dePendenT Power-PoliTical resPonse To PrivaTe Governance Failures

In very general terms, the development of legal control regimes for private authorities evokes a functional-evolutionary narrative which runs from the ‘positive’ to the ‘regulatory’ to the ‘litigation(-facilitating)’ state. State actors have promoted or at least endorsed privatisation processes and the rise of private authorities, propelling a retreat of the ‘positive’, public goods-providing state (Cutler et al. 1999; Genschel and Zangl 2014; Mattli and Büthe 2005). The public empowerment of private authorities sooner or later creates a demand for regulation and oversight of these actors. This demand will be particularly strong after private governance failures, which demonstrate the inadequacy of previous approaches to (non-)regulation and oversight and highlight the need for institutional change. The ensuing shift to a meaningful ‘regulatory state’ regulating, managing and overseeing private governors rather than providing collec-tive goods itself (Genschel and Zangl 2014; Levi-Faur 2011; Majone 1997) will also entail increased judicial review. Public rules for private

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authorities are often not self-enforcing, and (more) rules lead to disputes over their correct application and compliance with them, spurring the legalisation of private governance by judicial means.

This is a plausible, albeit quite abstract, account of how private gover-nance failures may lead to enhanced legal control of private authorities. However, it overlooks how considerations of instrumental and structural power shape and mediate the impact of private governance failures on regulatory reform. Even widely recognised private governance failures do not automatically and smoothly translate into the establishment of effec-tive accountability mechanisms; whether and to what extent private gover-nance failures lead to enhanced legal control depends (1) on whether the political benefits of enhanced legal control for public policy-makers out-weigh their political costs and (2) on the extent to which public policy- makers are dependent on the governance contributions from private authorities.

First, political costs and pressures shape the supply of (non-)regulation of private authorities and efforts to expose private authorities to judicial review. Exposing private authorities to (enhanced) legal control may both create and mitigate political costs for regulators and state litigants. Especially if privatisation helps governments pursue controversial policies or evade accountability for them, regulators have incentives to avoid strict and transparent regulation of private actors in favour of more informal controls. The appearance of a distance and the absence of immediate con-trol between governments and private agents may shield the former from disgruntled distributional losers of privatised policies, which for govern-ments is an important political benefit of non-transparent and indirect modes of governance in general and unregulated privatisation in particular (see Büthe 2010; Deitelhoff 2010; Kruck 2014).

Accountability evasion and blame shifting via privatisation get more difficult in a regulated and formalised setting as intrusive regulation con-tributes to exposing societally controversial privatised policies and, more fundamentally, state reliance on private authorities. In a power-political view, tight parliamentary regulation and close oversight of private authori-ties would cost the government opportunities for reaping political gains from reliance on private agents. On the other hand, when governance failures of private authorities get exposed and contested, this politicisation of failures raises the costs of unregulated privatised governance for state regulators which are ultimately deemed responsible for holding account-able the private authorities they have empowered and relied on. The

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higher the political pressure to curb private authorities’ power, the more likely and the more determined regulatory efforts to disempower private authorities or to impose legal control will be. After all, politicised private failures render the institutional status quo of ‘a lot of power with little accountability’ politically costly to sustain for state actors—pushing them to either take powers away from previously empowered private authorities or expose the latter to enhanced legal control.

At this bifurcation, private authorities’ structural power, that is, public actors’ dependence on their governance contributions, plays a key role in shaping regulatory reform. Long-term and large-scale reliance on private authorities leads to growing state capacity gaps and a lack of resources that could substitute for failing private authorities (Kruck 2016, 2017). As states’ structural dependence increases over time, post-failure disempow-erment of private authorities by means of re-centralising governance tasks with the state gets complicated and painfully, if not prohibitively, costly. Historical path-dependencies (see Mahoney 2000; Pierson 2000) struc-ture and narrow down state responses to private governance failures. If pathways towards the de-privatisation of previously privatised governance tasks are blocked, because state actors are still dependent on private authorities, regulators will respond to the political pressure by shoring up regulation and legal control rather than revoking previously granted authority. Moreover, high levels of dependence, that is, a large amount of structural power of private authorities, can reasonably be expected to con-strain the stringency of re-regulation.

‘Power wiThouT accounTabiliTy’, PrivaTe Governance Failures and The demand

For insTiTuTional chanGe in Finance and securiTy

In the cases of both CRAs and PMSCs, states contributed to their rise to power by transferring governance tasks to them and boosting their sources of authority. States’ reliance on CRAs for regulatory purposes, that is, the incorporation of ratings into financial regulation, has been a major source of CRAs’ authority. This practice has allowed regulators to impose flexible, risk-sensitive investment restrictions, disclosure requirements or capital reserve requirements (Bruner and Abdelal 2005: 192–3; Nölke and Perry 2007: 124; Sinclair 2005: 42–6). Rather than conducting risk assessments needed for risk-sensitive regulation themselves, regulators transferred this


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task to CRAs when using credit ratings in regulation. Regulatory use implied a delegation of regulatory authority and a reinforcement of CRAs’ genuinely private sources of epistemic authority (Kruck 2016; see Bruner and Abdelal 2005). While this regulatory use originated and remained most extensive in the USA, a global trend towards the use of private rat-ings for regulatory purposes gained traction in the 1990s and 2000s.

Similarly, the ascent of PMSCs as powerful and recognised actors of security governance was largely driven by the postmodern trend of priva-tising warfare and the provision of security—a trend most vigorously pur-sued by the USA and the UK. In the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars of the early 2000s, the British and US armed forces relied on services contracted from PMSCs in an unprecedented scale and scope. This is evidenced by both the historically unparalleled ratio between security contractors and regular troops—1:1 in Iraq and 1.5:1 in Afghanistan—and the broad scope of contracted services ranging from logistics support to some mili-tary core functions (Avant 2005; Krahmann 2010; Kruck 2014; Petersohn 2010). Western states’ use of PMSCs implied the delegation of policy- implementing authority to PMSCs and sometimes even put them into the position to shape military decision-making and the construction of secu-rity threats and policies (Leander 2005).

Both CRAs and PMSCs were only lightly regulated entities until the late 2000s. The credit rating industry evolved over a period of almost 100 years without being regulated in any meaningful sense in the USA or else-where (Darbellay 2013: 66–7). Moreover, CRAs have continuously stressed that their ratings are merely ‘opinions’ about comparative credit risk. Referring to the US constitutional right to free speech protecting their utterance of ‘opinions’, CRAs successfully fended off litigation calls for a long time. Until the latest global financial crisis, hardly any verdicts of civil liability were passed against CRAs in national courts (Darbellay 2013: 76–8; Kubota 2010: 257; Kerwer 2005).

Similarly, PMSCs were only lightly regulated in most countries. The US approach to regulation until the 2003 Iraq War was first and foremost aimed at retaining control over the sale of military and security services from US firms to foreign clients. Regulatory arrangements only applied to contracts with foreign clients and only for clearly military services (Deitelhoff and Fischer-Lescano 2013: 63) but did not cover security services contracted by the US government (Schneiker 2007: 407–8, 413). Judicial review of criminal behaviour of US PMSCs active in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s was feeble. The US transitional

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administration in Iraq even issued an executive order granting immunity to PMSCs before Iraqi courts (Deitelhoff and Fischer-Lescano 2013: 62–3; De Nevers 2012: 63). The British approach was even more infor-mal. Public regulation of PMSCs was virtually absent (Avant 2005: 169–72; Cusumano 2015). There were only symbolic anti-mercenary laws in France and Germany, whereas the activities of PMSCs operating in military missions abroad were not subject to specific legislation in either of the two countries (Krahmann 2013: 175–6). Finally, a binding legal framework on the international level was also lacking (Deitelhoff and Fischer-Lescano 2013: 59–60). Thus, at the heyday of the PMSC gold rush in the 1990s and 2000s, regulatory control of PMSCs and, consequently, judicial review were weak.

Both CRAs and PMSCs were widely considered responsible for private governance failures, especially from the late 2000s onwards. Especially in the wake of the US subprime mortgage crisis (2007), CRAs were singled out as one of the main targets of criticism by politicians, market profes-sionals, researchers and journalists. CRAs greatly underestimated the credit risk of complex structured finance products, most notably mortgage- backed collateralised debt obligations. Investors around the world relied on the excellent (AAA) ratings for these packaged securities and bought them without being aware of the credit risks implied in them. CRAs were blamed for failing to identify risks and value of those complex mortgage- backed securities properly (Brunnermeier et al. 2009: 54; see Paudyn Chap. 7, in this volume). They promoted an enormous growth of sub-prime lending and contributed to both the intensity and the geographical reach of the global financial crisis (Financial Stability Forum 2008: 32–3).

Sovereign ratings in the European debt crisis put CRAs further into the centre of political contestation. European politicians accused CRAs that they failed to predict the crisis and then precipitated it by downgrading sovereign ratings of Eurozone countries too far and too fast (Ryan 2012: 5). CRAs were scolded for reinforcing pro-cyclical behaviour and herding effects, causing credit crunches in times of crisis and triggering acute liquid-ity problems for ailing European states. CRAs were viewed as active driving forces during Europe’s crisis as the markdown of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain resulted in significantly higher interest rates on government bonds which in turn aggravated the European debt crisis (Gärtner et al. 2011). S&P erroneous downgrade of France in 2011 further highlighted CRAs’ proneness to mistakes.


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With PMSCs, a whole range of issues, including financial waste and fraud, quality issues with privately provided services, human rights abuses and violent incidents have led to PMSCs—and state reliance on PMSCs—being viewed as prone to failure (Commission on Wartime Contracting 2011; Stanger 2009). There are numerous instances of PMSCs delivering bad quality or defying hopes of saved costs from outsourcing (see Commission on Wartime Contracting 2011; Petersohn 2010: 535). For example, Halliburton/KBR was repeatedly accused of bad quality as well as overbilling and fraud (Leander and Spearin 2013: 207). A 2008 report of the Government Accountability Office found that although 6.2 billion US dollars were spent between 2001 and 2008 on training and equipment for the Afghan National Police, none of the 433 evaluated privately trained police units were fully capable of conducting missions on their own, with 76% being not capable at all. This failure was attributed to the quality of training from DynCorp (De Nevers 2012: 67; see Avant 2005: 153; Kinsey and Patterson 2012: 2 for further examples of quality and effi-ciency deficits).

Beyond issues of lacking effectiveness and cost-efficiency, several secu-rity failures involving the wrong and abusive use of violence occurred. The most prominent instance was the 2007 shooting on Baghdad’s Nisour Square in which employees of the US PMSC Blackwater (now: Academi) killed 14 Iraqi civilians (Deitelhoff 2010: 200). PMSCs were also involved as security guards in severe abuses of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, after the US government had hired PMSCs to provide interrogation and translation services at military prisons in Iraq.

In both the CRA and PMSC cases, severe and widely recognised gov-ernance failures created a functional demand for institutional change. With CRAs defining a global standard of credit worthiness and co- determining the financing conditions of corporate as well as sovereign borrowers around the world and PMSCs contributing to the preparation and conduct of warfare, their power either warrants legal control or needs to be reduced. The specific failures of CRAs and PMSCs have revealed fundamental issues compromising effective and legitimate privatised gov-ernance: Rating failures have highlighted structural pathologies of CRAs such as persistent flaws in rating methodologies and models (see Paudyn Chap. 7, in this volume), the oligopolistic market structure undermining market discipline, the pro-cyclical effect of ratings and especially the conflict of interests CRAs faced due to their ‘issuer-pays’ business model according to which rated entities pay for their (solicited) rating

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(Brunnermeier et al. 2009: 54; Financial Stability Forum 2008: 33). Similarly, the failures of PMSCs pointed to more general issues of military effectiveness and functional control, cost-efficiency, compliance with the rule of law in military operations and parliamentary control over the use of armed force—that is, aspects that all suffered from governments’ turning to PMSCs for vital security services and leaving them lightly regulated (Avant and Sigelman 2010; Deitelhoff 2010).

sTaTe resPonses To PrivaTe Governance Failures: enhanced leGal conTrol oF PrivaTe auThoriTies

in Finance and securiTy

However, as the empirical evidence on regulatory reforms with regard to CRAs and PMSCs—as well as earlier failures that did not lead to signifi-cant re-regulation (see Kruck 2016)—demonstrates, private governance failures and the resulting functional demand for institutional change do not automatically and smoothly translate into enhanced legal control of private authorities. Rather, this is a deeply political process which is driven, shaped and constrained by instrumentalist, power-political considerations of regulators and their structural dependencies on private authorities.

Post-crisis Moves to Enhance Legal Control of CRAs

States’ erroneous belief in the disciplining force of (in fact hardly existent) market competition certainly contributed to CRAs’ lack of legal account-ability. However, light regulation was also attractive for regulators because it made it easier to keep states’ heavy reliance on CRAs a low-key matter that was hardly discussed beyond financial elite circles. This was politically convenient because regulatory use and public empowerment of CRAs were not merely technical, politically neutral affairs. As CRAs have favoured and promoted a certain neoliberal, ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model of financial capi-talism (Nölke and Perry 2007), their empowerment generated winners and losers and held the potential for quite some controversy.

In the post-crisis years, the political imperative to punish and constrain one of the perceived culprits of the financial turmoil overrode any ide-ational or political reasons for regulatory restraint. CRAs’ rating failures and the ensuing global financial crisis provided a strong impetus for regu-lators to rethink their approach since CRAs’ powerful but unaccountable


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role in the crisis and in financial governance more generally got exposed and politicised. Heavy reliance on CRAs without adequate legal control turned into a political liability. Especially, as the taxpayers’ money was used to bail out financial institutions, financial regulatory politics got politi-cised, the profile of elected policy-makers was raised and it became politi-cally imperative for them to take a firm stance vis-à-vis one of the main culprits of the financial turmoil, that is, CRAs (Pagliari 2012: 52). Public regulators in the USA and in the EU felt politically pressured to demon-strate that they were in the position to curb the power of CRAs to which they had previously contributed by the regulatory use of credit ratings (Brunnermeier et al. 2009: 54; Kruck 2017).

However, while public pressure created political will for institutional change, persistent dependence on CRAs shaped and constrained regula-tory reforms in a way that radical disempowerment of CRAs was fore-closed and a more incremental increase in legal control of CRAs was pursued. Reducing the centrality of CRAs in financial markets proved complicated, costly and largely futile since public and private actors were still dependent on CRAs’ services as easily available alternatives to credit ratings were hard to find for regulators and investors (Kruck 2016, 2017). Over time, heavy reliance on CRAs’ analytical resources had created strong path-dependencies. Regulators’ and market actors’ capacity gaps with regard to credit risk assessment had progressively grown because state regulators and investors alike had neglected the maintenance or build-up of adequate risk assessment capacities which could substitute for CRAs’ analytical resources. The costs of exiting the path of continued reliance on CRAs were therefore high. Disempowerment of CRAs by means of states’ revoking the initial transfer of regulatory authority to CRAs was hardly feasible and ineffective due to the continued dependence on CRAs.

As a result, in the USA, the decision to remove regulatory references to credit ratings was taken in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act but was implemented in a belated, incomplete and ineffective way by the responsible federal agencies (Kruck 2017), while the EU, under the impression of the USA’s difficulties in implementation, took a more cautious approach to reducing regulatory reliance on CRAs from the beginning (Kruck 2016). Taking seriously the ‘systemically important’ function of CRAs in the current financial architecture, regulatory reformers in the USA and EU presumed that CRAs were here to stay and continue to make authoritative judgements of credit worthiness (Hill 2011: 143). In that situation, and given the high political pressure to act on CRAs, it was very plausible, if not compelling,

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for policy-makers to respond with tighter regulation and efforts to expose CRAs to enhanced legal liability. After all it was ‘highly unlikely that mar-ket pressure alone is sufficient to discipline the CRAs to change their con-duct’ (Pagliari 2012: 55).

In the USA, the Dodd-Frank Act introduced a mandatory registration system with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for all CRAs (Kubota 2010: 253). A specialised SEC Office of Credit Ratings was endowed with greater oversight and monitoring competencies. The Dodd-Frank Act also provided for expanded procedures of CRAs to deal with conflicts of interest; more independence in CRAs’ corporate gover-nance; greater internal controls; and more extensive disclosure of data and assumptions underlying credit ratings, rating methodologies and CRAs’ performance statistics (Hill 2011: 144). The SEC was also charged with prescribing rules and standard requirements regarding rating procedures and methodologies (Darbellay 2013: 71). However, and crucially, the Dodd-Frank Act did not address the core of CRAs’ conflict of interest, that is, their ‘issuer-pays’ business model (Hill 2011: 145–6).

Similarly, EU regulators responded to CRAs’ rating failures with re- regulation. In a series of three CRA Regulations (2009, 2011 and 2013) the EU devised relatively tight rules (Darbellay 2013: 72–3). The newly created European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) was entrusted with exclusive registration and supervisory powers over CRAs registered in the EU, including European subsidiaries of US-headquartered firms. It was given powers to administer the registration process, request informa-tion, launch investigations and perform on-site inspections. Regulatory requirements imposed on CRAs included measures to prevent conflicts of interests through in-house rotation and a ban on an analyst’s rating an entity in which she/he has an ownership interest; disclosure requirements concerning CRAs’ risks models, rating methods and basic assumptions; a ban on rating consultancy services for companies that are to be rated; and the issuance of transparency reports that list large customers and outline the measures taken by the CRA to ensure the quality of its ratings, for example, through ongoing monitoring procedures (European Commission 2013: 2). The EU regulations stipulated that rating methodologies must be, inter alia, ‘rigorous’ and ‘systematic’ leaving it to ESMA to specify, monitor and implement this requirement (ibid.).

In order to expose CRAs to legal liability in court and to give the new oversight regime some judicial ‘bite’, US and EU policy-makers have also introduced liability regimes which aim at facilitating litigation against


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CRAs. The US Dodd-Frank Act introduced a liability regime for CRAs through changes to existing securities laws (Darbellay 2013: 78–9). Similarly, the EU set up a civil liability regime for CRAs in its CRA III Regulation of 2013. Article 35a renders CRAs liable for cases in which a CRA infringes intentionally or with gross negligence the EU CRA Regulations, thereby causing damage to an investor (European Commission 2013: 10). To claim damages, an investor must establish that he/she has ‘reasonably’ and ‘with due care’ relied on a CRA for an invest-ment decision (Darbellay 2013: 79–84).

Apart from that, there have also been some gradual changes on the juridical level which question the legal status of ratings as mere opinions. In some cases, CRAs’ argument about their ratings being mere opinion protected as free speech was rejected by US courts. For example, in 2009, a US court (in Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank vs. Morgan Stanley) held that First Amendment free speech immunity does not protect CRAs from claims by investors ‘where a rating agency has disseminated their ratings to a select group of investors rather than to the public at large’ (Kubota 2010: 259).

Moreover, US authorities have acted as litigants themselves (Robinson and McLaughlin 2015) to check and challenge CRAs’ power in courts by juridical means. In late 2012, the Justice Department began settlement talks with S&P over the company’s inflated ratings of subprime mortgage- backed bonds. The discussions were derailed when S&P refused to admit wrongdoing. In February 2013, the government then sued S&P, alleging it awarded investment-grade ratings to those securities in a bid to win business and accused it of lying about its ratings being free from conflicts of interest (ibid.). After vigorous legal and political battles, in February 2015, S&P agreed on a 1.5 billion US dollar settlement with the US Department of Justice and some 20 states. Before that it had come to a smaller agreement with the SEC in January 2015, paying 80 million US dollars to state and federal authorities over claims that it misled investors in 2011 about ratings of commercial-mortgage-backed securities. S&P sealed the deal without admitting legal wrongdoing. However, it did admit that its ratings decisions were affected by business concerns. The settlement also reflected substantial concessions from the government, which had initially sought as much as 5 billion US dollars in civil penalties for losses by federally insured financial institutions that relied on S&P investment-grade ratings for mortgage-backed securities and CDOs. In 2017, a similar settlement including an 864 million US dollar penalty was

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reached for the second major US CRA, Moody’s, indicating once more that litigation pursued by the state can now lead to meaningful financial consequences for rating failures.

However, despite these legislative and judicial efforts to enhance legal control of CRAs, reasonable doubts about their effectiveness in terms of ensuring the reliability and integrity of the rating process are in order (Darbellay 2013: 89; Hill 2011: 145–6). Regulators have not cut the link between CRAs and issuers by encouraging the replacement of the ‘issuer- pays’ model with an ‘investor-pays’ model or the establishment of a ‘com-mon pool’ financed by issuers from whom CRAs would be selected. As to the attempts to hold CRAs liable in courts, US public authorities have let CRAs get away without admitting legal wrongdoing while also making financial concessions compared to their initial claims. More generally, suc-cessfully claiming damages will still be anything but easy for private liti-gants under the new liability rules. For example, definitional elements of ‘damage’, ‘intentionality’ and ‘gross negligence’ will often be hard to prove. More fundamentally, US public authorities backed down from exposing CRAs to even stricter legal liability and accountability after the CRAs reacted on such plans by refraining from rating certain types of debt, thereby causing major market disruptions. This illustrates how previ-ous extensive reliance on, and recognition of, CRAs and resulting path- dependencies have put CRAs into a position of structural power allowing them to mitigate if not prevent painful public encroachment. CRAs’ struc-tural power thus did not only shape the choice of re-regulation rather than radical disempowerment, it also constrained the intrusiveness of re-regulation.

Post-Iraq and Afghanistan Moves Towards Enhanced Legal Control of PMSCs

The status quo of light regulation and absent judicial control of PMSCs was politically convenient for state clients of PMSCs, as long as PMSCs and states’ contracting practices remained under the radar of public atten-tion and contestation. As the failures of PMSCs were hardly noted in the broader public in the 1990s and early 2000s, governments faced large incentives to renounce strict, transparent and formal regulation. Weak legal oversight allowed for non-transparent contracting, helped avoid con-troversial debates and increased governments’ leeway vis-à-vis parliaments and societal constituencies (Deitelhoff 2010). For example, PMSCs hired


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by the USA as guards were frequently involved in violent clashes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Until the end of 2009, 1800 PMSC employees had been killed and 40,000 had been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. In contrast to regular soldiers, a broad-based societal debate on PMSC casualties did not take place (Avant and Sigelman 2010). Governments in the USA and elsewhere thus reaped political gains, in terms of increased autonomy and less parliamentary and societal control, from weakly regulated security pri-vatisation; at the same time, they feared that the large-scale use of PMSCs from which they benefitted and to which they grew accustomed would no longer be feasible, should security privatisation become legally regulated and constrained (Leander 2013).

However, the political cost-benefit calculus shifted and the situation of heavy use with little regulation of PMSCs came under pressure in the wake of the numerous failures, abuses and scandals involving PMSCs in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The widely reported private security failures in Iraq and Afghanistan exposed PMSCs to a new level of public contestation and forced state clients of PMSCs into a political debate about the justification of outsourcing and the need for regulatory oversight (Commission on Wartime Contracting 2011; Stanger 2009). There was extensive media reporting on the dark sides of PMSCs (see Kruck and Spencer 2013), numerous parliamentary inquiries took place, commissions about the state and prospects of security contracting were formed and members of the executives and the military now faced societal and parliamentary criticism about non-transparent and excessive outsourcing. Political contestation and pressure to do something about—or rather against—PMSCs was strongest in those states that heavily relied on PMSCs. As a result, policy- makers in countries such as the USA or the UK have been compelled to rethink their approach to PMSCs, whereas countries with low levels of security privatisation such as Germany or France did not see any need to consider changes of their laws since societal debate on security contracting by those countries was virtually absent (Krahmann 2013; Leander and Spearin 2013).

Facing the two options of insourcing privatised security functions or re-regulating their private agents, the heavy users of PMSCs such as the USA and UK have mostly pursued the latter, that is, they have sought to enhance regulation, oversight and contract management. While several insourcing initiatives have been started in the USA, they have been blocked due to financial constraints and lack of substitutable public capabilities for outsourced tasks (Cusumano and Kinsey 2015). The one service that was

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insourced was military interrogations. For the rest of the services contrac-tor support has remained substantially unaltered. PMSCs’ functional non- substitutability by state capacities was a significant obstacle inhibiting the move from political pressure to actual insourcing outcomes. Without con-tractor support the US military can no longer conduct military operations of significant size (Cusumano 2015; Kinsey and Patterson 2012: 1; Stanger 2009: 97–104).

The USA does no longer even keep open the option of achieving mili-tary self-sufficiency by devising adequate back-up plans for state provision of services in issue areas such as logistics, maintaining enough troops to fulfil its global security objectives or, alternatively, scaling down its military ambitions. As a result, the Department of Defence (DoD) as well as the armed forces have self-consciously acknowledged a growing dependence on contracted services. Large-scale outsourcing has led to a hollowing out of elementary capabilities and core competencies of the armed forces (Avant 2005: 134–5; Deitelhoff and Fischer-Lescano 2013: 58; Krahmann 2010: 202–3). A similar dependence on PMSCs exists in the UK, espe-cially with regard to logistics (Cusumano and Kinsey 2015).

In countries with high levels of security privatisation, the failures of PMSCs have therefore not led to a reassertion of the ‘positive’ state in security but rather propelled the shift to the ‘regulatory’ security state. The dominant strategy is for the government to catch up with privatisa-tion primarily by improving oversight and contract management rather than reclaiming privately performed tasks (Leander and Spearin 2013: 204). At least in the USA, PMSCs’ failures and abuses have been inter-preted as indications that some hard and public legal control is needed whereas the UK still favours soft modes of industry self-regulation.

In the USA, there have been regulatory changes in terms of more bind-ing regulation and judicial oversight of PMSCs. US policy-makers have added public national laws and oversight bodies. PMSCs contracted by the USA are now subject to a fairly complex set of laws and regulations with more than 20 federal oversight bodies, including Congress, agencies and special committees, reviewing and reporting on the activities of PMSCs (Private Security Monitor 2014). In the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008, Congress required greater coordination among the DoD, State Department and USAID on contracting issues, including keeping track of contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq, addressing hiring practices, defining rules of engagement and enhancing coordina-tion with the military (De Nevers 2012: 61–2).


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Several investigations and hearings in Congress following the Abu Ghraib prison scandal prompted the US administration to put PMSCs that accompany US soldiers in zones of conflict under military jurisdiction. The USA has amended legislation relating to its military forces by extending its application to private contractors overseas, if there is a situation of ‘declared war or a contingency operation’ (see Corn 2012: 166–75). Congress revised the post-World War II Uniform Code of Military Justice in 2006 to ensure that military commanders could exercise greater control over PMSCs on the battlefield (De Nevers 2012: 62). Concerns about the scope of existing laws governing PMSCs also led to the expansion of the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act in 2005. This revision made appli-cable to civilian contractors accompanying the armed forces abroad those offences applicable to any civilian in the Special Maritime or Territorial Jurisdiction of the USA, including civilian-type offences such as homicide, sexual assault and so on (Corn 2012: 168–72; De Nevers 2012: 62).

As British PMSCs have a more diverse array of domestic and foreign clients and are less focused on contracts from the British government, the relationship between the government and the PMSCs in the UK has tra-ditionally been less hierarchical, and informal controls through social ties, industry support and encouragement of private self-regulation have played a larger role. Consequently, after private security failures, the evolving regulatory system in the UK aimed almost exclusively at promoting and supporting industry self-regulation, with the government encouraging PMSCs to join government-endorsed national and transnational self- regulation schemes (Cusumano 2015). Perhaps the most prominent example is the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers (ICOC) which was created in 2010. More than 500 PMSCs from over 60 countries are signatories, with the UK being home to roughly a third of the signatories. The ICOC mandates the development of audit-able standards for PMSCs developed in consultation with experts from around the globe including representatives from the UK government, the security industry and civil society.

Besides regulatory developments, there have also been changes on a juridical level. Employees of PMSCs have been sued and sentenced in US courts. After the Nisour Square incident (2007) the US government first sought to undermine legal accountability of Blackwater. It even pressured the Iraqi government to lift its prohibition on Blackwater’s operation in Iraq since the state department had no back-up plan for the protection of

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its diplomats in Iraq and was dependent on Blackwater’s services (Deitelhoff 2010: 200). However, the US government later took a more distanced stance towards scandal-tainted Blackwater. Then US Vice- President Joe Biden even expressed his support for a fresh prosecution, after a US court had dismissed the charges. After additional setbacks to the trial several employees of Blackwater were eventually sentenced for mur-der in 2015. Notably, the US government filed a sentencing memoran-dum with the court (Woolf 2015). The government called on the judge to impose ‘substantial sentences’. By doing so, the memorandum argued, ‘this court would hold the defendants accountable for their callous, wan-ton, and deadly conduct, and deter others wielding the awesome power over life or death from perpetrating similar atrocities in the future’ (quoted in Woolf 2015).

With regard to PMSCs’ involvement in the Abu Ghraib scandal, former prisoners sued two US PMSCs whose employees allegedly directed and participated in torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity, sexual assault as well as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. While the legal dispute before US courts is still ongoing, assessments of the US Department of the Army stating that private contractors were involved in one-third of proven incidents at Abu Ghraib were convinced of the firm’s guilty behav-iour and underlined US officials’ readiness to expose PMSCs to legal lia-bility for its most egregious and politically costly abuses.

Nonetheless, despite these post-failure advances in the regulation, over-sight and prosecution of PMSCs, the effectiveness of regulatory and judi-cial control of PMSCs still seems limited. This is because PMSCs often operate in non-transparent and complex transnational settings which ren-der monitoring and enforcement of national rules difficult. At the same time, binding international rules applicable to PMSCs are still very scarce, reflecting little political will of governments to pursue meaningful interna-tional regulations. What is more, executives relying on PMSCs still have strong incentives to avoid or water down legal control of and transparency about what their PMSCs do in theatre. In case of absence or weakening of public pressure, risks of highly inconsistent and opportunistic implemen-tation loom large. Finally, the pressure on PMSCs to align their behaviour with state rules has been weakened by contractor oligopolies in some issue areas, and the USA’s and UK’s more general dependence on private security contractors. As state actors are dependent on (some) firms with lots of structural power, effective oversight, sanctioning and re-contracting are compromised.


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conclusion: learninG From Failures?This chapter has made the case that under certain conditions private gov-ernance failures may indeed lead to enhanced legal control. At the same time, political reservations about all-too intrusive and transparent re- regulation, path-dependencies as well as the structural power of private authorities constrain the depth and effectiveness of enhanced legal con-trol. Perhaps even more fundamentally, enhanced legal control of private authorities may have unintended (and inadvertent) consequences: Once legalised, private authorities just do not disappear (any more)—as ‘author-ities’. More precisely, regulation and judicial review contribute to re- articulating and consolidating the status of private actors such as CRAs or PMSCs as authoritative, indispensable and fundamentally legitimate (albeit imperfect and failure-prone) governance actors. As visible in the cases of both CRAs and PMSCs, the reform discourse shifts from ques-tioning these actors’ basic claim to authority to improving their effective-ness and legitimacy as private governors (even though this shift might not have been intended by state regulators). Enhanced legal control may legit-imise private governors/governance and re-create trust in them, under-mining attempts to disempower private authorities and to challenge the authoritative nature of their activities. Legalisation of private authority has performative effects in the sense that it may paradoxically reinforce the authority of controversial private governors after their failures rather than downgrade their power and status.

The chapter thus highlights that political interests of policy-makers as well as path-dependencies and the structural power of private authorities can be major impediments to effective learning from costly (private) policy failures and their future prevention through adequate (re-)regulation. Even if and when policy-makers’ political reservations against formal and trans-parent regulation can be overcome by public pressure, their ability to impose meaningful control and avoid the unintended consequences of entrenching private authority/ies may be lacking, which is the more likely, the more and the longer state actors have relied and become dependent on private third parties to govern (Kruck 2017). This may lead to the ironic situation that state actors which reaped political benefits from lightly regulated and non-transparent private governance actors/modes are pub-licly held responsible for ‘cleaning up’ after private actors’ failures; they consequently do show political will to regulate and constrain private author-ities, but their capacities to effectively correct and prevent the failures of

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private actors have atrophied as the self-reinforcing reliance on and empow-erment of those private governance actors have progressed.

After all, this analysis of PMSCs and CRAs has identified a set of factors that seem particularly relevant for understanding the complex politics of accountability and the limits to learning from failures in privatised schemes of governance (see Howlett 2012). Future research might investigate to what extent these explanatory factors may also apply to other indirect modes of governance and their failures.

noTe

1. Authority refers to recognised, albeit not necessarily legitimate, power. The concept of authority implies that addressees recognise that an actor can make competent judgements and binding decisions. Actors can be (put) ‘in authority’ and/or they can be ‘an authority’. Political actors, including pri-vate commercial firms, exercise authority in that they successfully claim the right to perform governance functions like the formulation of rules and rule monitoring, implementation or enforcement (Zürn et al. 2012: 70, 86; see Cutler et al. 1999).

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Avant, Deborah. 2005. The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Avant, Deborah, and Lee Sigelmann. 2010. Private Security and Democracy: Lessons from the US in Iraq. Security Studies 19 (2): 230–265.

Bruner, Christopher J., and Rawi Abdelal. 2005. To Judge Leviathan: Sovereign Credit Ratings, National Law, and the World Economy. Journal of Public Policy 25 (2): 191–217.

Brunnermeier, Markus, Andrew Crocket, Charles Goodhart, Avinash D. Persaud, and Hyun Shin. 2009. The Fundamental Principles of Financial Regulation. Geneva: International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies. Geneva Reports on the World Economy, No. 11.

Büthe, Tim. 2010. Private Regulation in the Global Economy: A (P)Review. Business and Politics 12 (3): 1–38.

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http://psm.du.edu/national_regulation/united_states/index.html

http://psm.du.edu/national_regulation/united_states/index.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-03/s-p-ends-legal-woes-with-1-5-billion-penalty-with-u-s-states



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/13/former-blackwater-guards-sentencing-baghdad-massacre




CHAPTER 7

The ‘Get Out of Jail Card’: The Immunity Risk Provides Financial Markets

and Regulators from the Consequences of Their Mistakes

Bartholomew Paudyn

Typically, the degree to which the status quo has been discredited helps determine how fundamental any subsequent policy change will be (Baumgartner 2013). Given the precarious role of financial expertise and modelling in precipitating and exacerbating repeated crises (e.g. the 1997 Asian crisis; the Enron bankruptcy; the 2007–08 credit crunch), oddly, so much of this risk management still remains taken for granted and pro-moted as the propitious approach to economic conduct. A decade after the gravest threat to Anglo-American capitalism since the Great Depression, however, rather than any paradigmatic shift or ‘third-order’ change (Hall 1993), it is still largely business as usual in the operations and oversight of some of the most egregious areas of neo-liberal finance, such as credit rat-ings or derivatives (Helleiner 2014; Kruck Chap. 6, in this volume; Münnich 2015).

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Neither have governments enacted regulation that effectively addresses the reflexive/self-referential character of financial valuation routines. Nor have market participants been the catalyst for real reform, which would diminish their appetite for the scientific objectivity supposedly afforded through techno-scientific risk management. With evermore complex, quantitative risk calculus outstripping average professional acumen (Krippner 2011), it is baffling how the distortions and inconsistencies in this predictive positivism blamed for fuelling excessive and overleveraged speculation, plus repeated failures, are still tolerated and endorsed. Not only does it precipitate and aggravate crises but just as puzzling is how risk management shields financial entities from being held accountable for their mistakes or how it hinders learning from them. Answering these questions, this chapter reveals what consequences this conundrum has for the increasingly antagonistic relationship between private epistocracy—knowledge-based expert rule—and public democracy.

Although it is odd that the lessons from reoccurring major mistakes have failed to translate into a substantial transformation of the neo-liberal globalised financial regime, nevertheless, it is understandable. There is merit to constructivist notions that credible paradigmatic alternatives have been lacking and ‘it is politics, not economics, and it is authority, not facts, that matter for both paradigm maintenance and change’ (Blyth 2013: 210). Epistemic authority may provide a more refined understanding of the problem of failure than conventional, state-centric political economy. But to restrict the discussion of how the ‘sociological can trump the scien-tific’ in the ‘struggle over the meaning of anomalies’ (Blyth 2013: 211), to mere ideology or institutional inertia is also incomplete.

It says little about how the politics of economic ideas and the hege-monic discourse of risk/uncertainty underpinning this status quo are con-stituted, sedimented and reproduced. Lacking such knowledge, it is difficult to develop and implement appropriate alternatives (procedures and counter-narratives) to correct the most dubious elements of financial risk management. Unless market participants and regulators learn from their mistakes, measures to reduce the overreliance on a model-centric preoccupation with certainty equivalence, by encouraging more endoge-nous forms of due diligence and governance, will neither be introduced nor be successful (Lépinay 2011). In other words, it is vital to dis- incentivise the automatic overreliance on management through risk (probabilistic estimations) and explicitly acknowledge and incorporate value from management through uncertainty (discretionary judgement) (de Goede 2005; O’Malley 2004; Paudyn 2015).1 By re-politicising the debate, such government through uncertainty may enhance accountability

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for mistakes. Instead of readily outsourcing due diligence through risk or shifting the onus for consequences and change, as a procedural rationality, this strives to validate an allocative process that aligns expected portfolio value maximisation with subject responsibility, thereby mitigating the sus-ceptibility to crisis. If this helps reorient the ‘locus of authority’, to which Blyth (2013: 211) alludes, from capital to labour, then it may rebalance the increasingly asymmetric relationship between private, techno- scientific epistocracy and public democracy (Paudyn 2014). The regular deploy-ment of hegemonic risk discourse within neo-liberal capitalism concen-trates capital by privileging the imperatives of financial markets (and their technocratic regulators) at the expense of democratic constituencies and politics (Moschella 2012). Excessive reliance on external, often erroneous, risk valuation assessments heightens mechanistic herding tendencies, ‘cliff effects’ and systemic risk. As witnessed when the credit crunch morphed into the sovereign debt crisis, market failures do not just threaten profits, but can diminish fiscal sovereignty, and thus the capacity for democratic self-determination.

Drawing on the ‘social studies of finance’ scholarship (Callon 1998; Knorr Cetina and Preda 2005; Langley 2008; MacKenzie 2006), this chapter problematises how embedded in a broader period of corporate risk-based financialisation, evermore sophisticated processes of disinter-mediation and securitisation subscribe to a false dichotomy between (quantitative) risk and (qualitative) uncertainty (Best 2016; de Goede 2004; O’Malley 2004). Rather than unearth the properties or laws by which markets operate automatically, in accordance with self-systemic/self-regulating logics of Anglo-American versions of capitalism, however, I argue that the operationalisation and commodification of this mentality triggers market failure, as its authoritative knowledge becomes social fac-ticity. Fragmented regulatory frameworks only expose us to further ‘schis-mogenetic’2 imbalances. Notwithstanding, the performativity of risk management/discourse creates and legitimises the conditions and subjec-tivities that help validate its continued utility and normative authority over economics and politics.

To demonstrate this contention, the argument proceeds along the fol-lowing tracks. First, an examination of mainstream accounts of market failure exposes inadequacies in their understandings of financial mistakes. Second, conventional risk management is analysed through the categories of market/systematic, operational/business and credit risk to reveal their inconsistencies and distortions. Discussed here is the post-crisis regulatory

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response targeting these categories and how successful such policies are in redressing their most egregious elements. Finally, the chapter addresses how the performativity of risk management/discourse insulates market subjects from serious public contestation and reform to depoliticise the constitution of authoritative knowledge underpinning the political econ-omy of finance. Unfortunately, post-crisis, an adherence to this flawed mentality, which prizes utilitarian risk calculus as the best managerial approach to capture and control uncertain socio-economic futures, contin-ues to entrench the same mistakes that expose us to market and political instability. Business as usual, however, is not sustainable.

Market Failures

Financial failures often unfold according to a familiar scenario. First, post- correction efforts to stimulate an economic recovery involve central banks keeping interest rates unusually low for a prolonged period and implementing unconventional money supply policies like quantitative easing (QE). Fuelling income hunting and squeezing margins, market risks become underestimated. Next, ‘excessive deleveraging in falling asset markets’ further exacerbates collapsing credit channels to heighten herding conduct (IMF 2010: 69). ‘Cliff effects’ are the consequences of these ‘procyclicality-induced feedback effects’ (ibid.); which finance’s self-confirming reflexivity/self-referentiality bolster. Accordingly, con-ventional accounts predominantly subscribe to three primary sources of market failure: large macroeconomic externalities, agency problems and poor judgement (Gamble 2009; Reinhart and Rogoff 2010; Stiglitz and Heymann 2014: 12; Turner 2009).

Macroeconomic Externalities

Misguided monetary policy’s potential to induce crisis is considered one of the most flagrant macroeconomic externalities. By increasing lending and liquidity, in attempts to rejuvenate the economy, central banks may create conditions of excessive leverage through ultra-low (nominal) inter-est rates during the recovery phase. If prolonged unnecessarily, which itself is contestable and uncertain, negative rates across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) economies lure investors towards riskier assets in opaque emerging markets, many of which cannot manage the influx of capital. Near-zero interest rates (0.25–0.5%), since December 2008, only changed on 14 December 2016,

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with one modest 0.25% rise in the US Federal Reserve (Fed) funds rate—repeated 15 March 2017. Given the panic during the 2013 ‘taper tantrums’, fears remain that rates will rocket once central banks begin significantly divesting their QE assets—Fed’s US$4.5 trillion balance sheet.

Acknowledging that central bankers cannot take into full account how their actions (prolonged rates or premature hikes) may hinder a recovery, complete prescience in such a complex financial system is impossible. Neither does monetary policy produce any tangible (negative) externality nor is forecasting how Fed or European Central Bank (ECB) guidance translates into authoritative knowledge and shapes market conduct feasi-ble with any precision. Obviously, hindsight yields perfect vision. Limited to ex post facto, arguments how monetary policy encouraged reckless financial behaviour in the hunt for yield abound.

Without discounting the potential effects of loose monetary policy, an enhanced analysis considers the various dimensions of how mistakes occur, namely the underlying mentalities and mechanisms. Leverage becomes ‘excessive’ and ‘dangerous’ when asset-allocative decisions are erroneous. An analysis of the performance of 25,000 active funds by S&P Dow Jones Indices’ S&P Index Versus Active (SPIVA) Scorecards (2016) reveals that 99% of active US equity funds sold in Europe have failed to beat the benchmark (S&P 500) over the past decade. Similar dismal results plague emerging market funds, of which virtually 97% underperformed (ibid.). Arguably, a selection bias towards high-beta3 stocks, or securities whose systematic risk exceeds the benchmark, may account for such poor perfor-mance. Loose monetary policy, however, only squeezes margins to the extent that proprietary risk formulas determine that few profitable, lower- beta alternatives are available. Thus, as opposed to the ‘one-size-fits-all’ monetary policy of mainstream narratives, a more revealing account focuses on how policy affects the assessment and articulation of future profits through modes of risk/uncertainty, and becomes entangled with the reflexive/self-referential character of finance to shape calculative cog-nition and agency.

The hybridisation and blending of investment approaches prevent a strict binary juxtaposition between speculation/investment or passive/active management. Whereas passive managers subscribe to the efficient market hypothesis (EMH),4 active investors generate alpha primarily through bottom-up analysis and rate variations to exploit arbitrage oppor-tunities for short-term gains or total return investing. With over US$10


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trillion of OECD (2017) sovereign bonds trading at negative yields,5 ultra-low interest rates across the major markets that account for more than two-thirds of this sum like Japan (US$3.65 billion—16.1% of public debt) and Europe (45% of public debt)6 have hampered this approach. Yet, given their lacklustre performance, active management fees are being charged for (less than) passive outcomes.

Loath to tolerate such poor value for money, investors are marketed an expanding catalogue of new indexed products. Morningstar’s Active/Passive Barometer (2016) and the S&P SPIVA (2016) scorecard confirm that such poor performance has accelerated a strong trend towards passive instruments like exchange-traded funds (ETFs).7 Compared with the 54% growth in assets under management (AUM) of active funds, passive secu-rities have ballooned by 230% since 2007. Rather than some mistaken active arbitrage positions, it is the blind adoption, by this growing cohort of passive managers, of external valuations and their dubious risk model-ling that jeopardises Europe’s €13.3 trillion asset management industry. Compounding this problem is the substantial reduction in research being conducted by banks and brokerages as the new EU Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) II regulations prevent bundling research costs with trading fees. Outsourcing due diligence to credit rating agen-cies (CRAs) on an increasing scale, herding and procyclical cliff effects become more common (Paudyn 2014: 158).

Agency Problems

The second conventional account of market failure focuses on agency problems. Known as the principal-agent dilemma, conflicts of interest may arise when the incentives or risk aversion of financial intermediaries (agents) fail to align with those of the investor (principal). As agents, fund managers undertake selective and allocative decisions with the assets of many principals in order to maximise returns. Fiduciary relationships breakdown when portfolio managers privilege their own objectives and profits at the expense of the client’s interests. ‘Rogue’ traders take exces-sive risks to hit targets or make unauthorised transactions that jeopardise the principal’s investment. Notably infamous is Nicholas Leeson, the derivatives trader whose leveraged positions of Nikkei 225 index futures and options precipitated the demise of the 233-year-old Barings Bank in 1995. Jerome Kerviel’s trading loss on European index futures cost Société Générale €4.9 billion (US$7.2 billion) in 2008.

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Completely eliminating the principal-agent problem is not possible. Methods that incentivise common objectives and interests, such as clear and explicit contracts or performance-based compensation, may mitigate its failures. Nevertheless, as with the incomplete accounts of externalities above, informational asymmetries, ontological questions about intentions, causality or how to incentivise ‘correct’ conduct burden us. Central explanatory elements also remain taken for granted in this mainstream account. Especially distressing is how the interests and risk appetites of principals and agents are treated as pre-given without any serious prob-lematisation of how such risk aversion is constituted or transforms. Likewise, the fetishisation of utilitarian risk calculus, which accords with pre-established interests, often leads to an analysis of (neutral) method verification. Divorcing techno-scientific epistocracy from its messy polit-ico-economic contexts is inattentive to how risk management creates the conditions and subjectivities that validate its social facticity.

Poor Judgement

Inefficiencies that produce disequilibrium may also be attributed to imper-fect information and poor judgement. Economic orthodoxy presumes perfectly rational self-interest and utility maximisation. Lacking complete information, actors compensate by making (often erroneous) assump-tions. Of course, this idealised version of homo economicus with the capac-ity for ‘practical omniscience’ has been frequently discredited by both scholars (Keynes 1921/1979: 34; Knight 1921/1964: 197) and in reality. Overall, again, all the subjective impulses and temperaments that define the human condition lead us to act ‘irrationally’. Because humans escape easy capture through a metric, and since our conduct is not ergodic,8 care-lessness and misguided judgement produce mistakes. Evermore sophisti-cated and complex techno-scientific epistocracy overwhelms market subjects (Krippner 2011), thereby undermining the confidence necessary to assess and account properly for an indeterminate future.

To compensate for our forecast fallibility, through a model-centric pre-occupation with quantitative analysis and defendable validation, market participants routinely strive to transform uncertainty into risk (de Goede 2004; Lépinay 2011; Paudyn 2014). Notwithstanding these efforts to misrepresent contingency as a probabilistic calculation, discretionary con-duct keeps eluding capture and control through quantitative means. Although it is at the core of key economic practices like bank stress tests or


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the back-testing of criteria underpinning rating methodologies, the sys-tematic operationalisation of discretion relies on the imposition of strict ceteris paribus conditions on its function. Yet even these parameters are only as good as the informal, qualitative judgements that construct them. Management through uncertainty is pivotal since ‘model users account for unrealistic assumptions and neglected factors by applying their own judge-ments’ to synthesise the quantitative/qualitative (Svetlova 2012: 422). Rather than ‘an ultimate determinant of decision and action […] a model is either a channel to transmit the analyst’s judgement into a number or it provides soft guidance in the decision-making process’ (ibid.).

Of course, as central bankers, neither investment banks like Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers nor Moody’s or S&P are blessed with complete prescience. Lacking such foresight, their actions often amplify systematic risk rather than mitigate risk in the pursuit of profits. Perfect information is an economic abstraction, not a feasible objective. Undoubtedly, errone-ous judgements do occur. If one is to believe the CRAs, ratings are merely ‘informed opinions’. Such a line of enquiry, however, burdens us with explaining intentionality, and thus having to read minds and account for why agents choose to behave in a certain manner and, subsequently, why those reasons cause particular financial outcomes (Aitken 2007: 44). Not only does this presuppose that one ‘correct’ conduct exists, which to unearth and incentivise, but it fails to explain how authoritative knowl-edge is constituted and gains traction as social facticity.

Seeking causal explanations of what consistently eludes such positivistic calculus, itself, can contribute to failure. A more insightful approach, therefore, reveals how mistakes occur through the deployment of the rationalities and techniques deigned to render finance intelligible as a problem of management. This problematisation of deliberate frames and practices through risk/uncertainty provides a more comprehensive account of how their composition, execution and effects produce mistakes. Accordingly, the next section discusses conventional risk management through the operationalisation of its three main categories.

Conventional risk ManageMent

Modern finance has increasingly become aligned with the scientific ‘dis-course of transcendental rationality’ (Thrift 1996: 13), the ‘rational lan-guage of probability’ (Power 2007: 124) and therefore profitability. Political economy and socio-economic relations are ‘refurbished’ through methods

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of statistical actuarialism—dubbed ‘machineries of knowledge’ (Knorr Cetina 1999: 5)—so as to be considered an objective account of (metaphysi-cal) reality amenable to risk calculation (Lépinay 2011). This ontological bias and fetishisation of utilitarian risk calculus has facilitated the ‘develop-ment of a causal knowledge of deviance and normalization’ (O’Malley 1996: 189).Subsequently, both monetary and normative valuations may be assigned to financial instruments, services and government policy. Deploying such predictive positivism, asset managers satisfy client and regulatory demands for quantitatively sophisticated and defendable validation.

Underpinning this infrastructure of referentiality is a (false) dichotomy between qualitative uncertainty and quantitative risk. By treating the latter as an exogenous, self-evident phenomenon, expertise extends this positiv-istic bifurcation to the fields of (qualitative) ‘politics’ and (quantitative) ‘economics’. Idiosyncratic and unique political economies become re- encoded in accordance with self-systemic/self-regulating logics of neo- liberal capitalism (Hay 2004; Roy et al. 2007). The remote calculative capacity of risk’s predictive and prescriptive positivism provides a platform through which to discover capitalism’s supposed self-equilibrating mechanics. To help unearth these universal economic properties, methods common to the mathematical/physical sciences are borrowed and applied to socio-economic relations (Best 2008). Reinforcing the effect that uncertainty can be transformed into risk, this grants epistocratic leverage to the financial subjects qualified to perform such alchemy (Carruthers 2013). But rather than any absolute subversion of indeterminism, or the actual elimination of impediments that prevent the automatic correction of capitalist dynamics, this renders neo-liberal political economy a social fact (MacKenzie 2011). Unfortunately, its foundation is an artificial nor-mality whose legitimacy is produced through distortive practices.

Increasingly, this constitution of authoritative knowledge becomes predicated on an arsenal of evermore sophisticated and techno-scientific (risk) modelling/methodology—accessible to only a few ‘quants’. Lépinay (2011) explores how these highly educated mathematicians and physicists—‘quants’—are routinely imported into corporate finance in order to help engineer this array of complex financial products. Their expert predictive positivism helps conceptualise and structure finance. Yet as the constitution of authoritative knowledge becomes more concen-trated, high frequency and computer automated, this exposes us to the inefficiencies of monopolies and the shocks of their failures. Even more distressing is that the technical knowledge necessary to make the informed


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decisions and execute business strategies fundamental to mitigating imbalances from profit maximisation, regularly, eludes the owners of capi-tal or executives in the C-suites. Consequently, this monopoly over epis-tocratic discretion has depoliticising effects—whereby qualitative, political judgement is marginalised and censured (Paudyn 2015). This renders what Foucault (1980: 81) refers to as ‘subjugated knowledges’, which ‘have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elabo-rated: naïve knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity’.

But rather than the complete elimination of discretionary conduct, there is a concerted effort to disguise it through quantitative techniques. Indicative of what Cochoy (2008) refers to as qualculation, risk’s ubiquity virtually transforms quantitative financial mechanics into qualitative judge-ments about value and normality. First establishing, and then collapsing, the distinction between the qualitative (uncertainty) and quantitative (risk), qualculation works to mask the contingent liabilities of the portfolio man-agers or rating analysts making that risk assessment. Irrespective of the tremendous attempts to endow finance with ‘material’ and ‘statistical sig-nificance’, discretionary conduct remains necessary to accommodate and incorporate the ‘polyvalence of social life’ underpinning economic relations (Best 2008: 356). This helps to compensate for the quantitative inconsis-tencies linked to risk, such as a lack of representative data samples necessary for back-testing or transitional matrices, and avoids justifying judgements.

Similar to the outsourcing of due diligence with ratings, risk’s qualcula-tive effects help shift or absolve responsibility for mistakes. Insulated from serious public scrutiny and political interference, financial subjects acceler-ate the conversion of (uncertain) speculative bets into more defendable (read ‘legitimate’) risk investment (de Goede 2005). In fact, the more that unique, singular uncertainties are transformed into pools of risk, the greater the semblance of control this claims to afford expertise over mar-kets, and thus private epistocrats over public democracy. Since ‘the power of a qualculation depends on the number of entities that can be added to a list, to the number of relations between those entities, and the quality of the tools for classifying, manipulating, and ranking them’ (Callon and Law 2003: 720), implicating more socio-economic elements through risk strengthens, yet disembeds, finance’s techno-scientific epistocracy.

Reiterated ubiquitously, risk qualculation is reinforced by the broader managerial discourse of ‘enterprise risk management’ (ERM). The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) defined ERM as:

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a process, effected by an entity’s board of directors, management and other personnel, applied in strategy setting and across the enterprise, designed to identify potential events that may affect the entity, and manage risks to be within its risk appetite, to provide reasonable assurance regarding the achievement of entity objectives. (COSO 2004: 6)

Since each corporate entity has its own culture and risk aversion, plus operates in a particular context facing unique challenges, the exact defini-tion of ERM remains contestable. Nevertheless, a common thread of ERM is its model-centric analysis that routinely oversimplifies economic relations. More cynical about its actual mitigation of risk, Power (2007: 68) considers ERM ‘an imagined organization-wide process of handling uncertainty and a category which mobilizes a number of projects of writ-ing directed at standardizing the foundations of organizational control and governance’. Unfortunately, by underestimating the vulnerability to rare but severely damaging events, otherwise known as ‘tail risks’, ERM may exhibit a procyclical bias which merely aggravates crisis. With various versions being operationalised, ERM provides the overarching framework within which the three main categories of market, business and credit risks are managed.

Market/Systematic Risk

First, market or systematic risk refers to the potential losses to a portfolio of assets resulting from the overall performance of the market (Power 2005: 582). Although investment diversification cannot eliminate market risk, it can be hedged against through risk modelling techniques. Unfortunately, such approaches are often much more problematic than their popularity would suggest. For example, in 1993, J. P. Morgan pub-lished its pioneering treatise (Risk Metrics) establishing the industry-wide standard for calculating ‘Value-at-Risk’ (VaR). VaR is the quantile to the distribution of aggregate risk. Together with ‘risk-adjusted return on capital’ (RAROC), VaR has become the industry standard for the statisti-cal calculation of the degree to which a business is susceptible to financial loss (Jorion 1997). Banks regularly use VaR to assess the maximum dam-age to a portfolio owing to the volatility in key market variables, such as prices, over a specific time frame (de Goede 2004: 209). Its core assump-tion is that investment returns follow a normal distribution at a particular confidence level (Power 2007: 74).


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VaR simulation scenarios claim to calculate portfolio distress from exposure to identified correlations and standard deviations of return on assets. Adequate capital reserve ratios may then be devised to prevent illi-quidity/insolvency. However, such hypotheticals are based on a tenuous ergodicity, which may represent the value of simplicity—executives fancy VaR’s relative comprehension. Yet accuracy suffers, since VaR imposes static cognitive frames on a political economy constantly in flux. Only as good as the inputs driving its modelling, the back-testing of specific crite-ria is performed under strict ceteris paribus conditions. Given that ‘VaR techniques are heavily dependent on the availability of high frequency data sets’, such analyses tend to privilege variables that are more common and repetitive, often at the expense of more extreme but damaging events (‘Black Swans’) (Power 2007: 74–5).

Accordingly, based on information aggregated during periods of stable growth, VaR models may induce a sense of complacency that feeds the formation of bubbles. Especially problematic is that the perceived master-ing of risk, which such qualculative internal controls supposedly afford, compels firms to squeeze margins to the greatest extent possible. Lulled into a false sense of security by ergodic estimates of the future, as the Great Recession illustrates, they then breach into excess. VaR negates the chance of ‘Black Swans’ like the financial crisis. Furthermore, recent history has confirmed that ‘VAR also has another rather nasty effect on the system: once the bubble bursts and the VAR increases significantly, it can actually amplify the resulting volatility by triggering further sell-offs, which force the VAR higher, creating a vicious cycle’ (Best 2010: 36). In other words, VaR exhibits certain performative properties as evidenced by various major failures, such as the 1997–98 Asian Crisis or the 1998 demise of Long- Term Capital Management (LTCM).

The broad-based application of VaR potentially exacerbates rather than mitigates systematic risk. Its ubiquity as an industry standard has entrenched VaR’s qualculative effects to exert isomorphic pressures across financial organisations. As qualculation constrains the informal elements of assessing market risk, or management through uncertainty, it induces a conformity bias with proprietary modelling leading to a homogenisation in valuations and investment decisions.

Lacking perfect knowledge about the future variables incorporated into VaR simulations, market participants often make erroneous estima-tions which, as MacKenzie (2003) demonstrates in reference to LTCM, are mimicked. Herding conduct, subsequently, ‘can affect the statistical

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distributions of price changes, causing distributions to become danger-ously “fat-tailed” (that is, the probability of extreme events is far higher than implied by standard normal or log-normal distributional assump-tions)’ (MacKenzie 2003: 372). In the case of LTCM, this accelerated the liquidation of arbitrageur positions, as VaR models ‘magnified adverse market movements, which reached levels far beyond those anticipated by these models’ (MacKenzie 2005: 183). Thus, rather than representing a pre- given future cost, VaR techniques help constitute market reality by fostering a problematic organisational isomorphism.

Operational/Business Risk

Like the hybrid of market risk, operational risk (OR) management is a continuously evolving field. Defined by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) as ‘the probability of loss arising from inadequate or failed internal processes, people and systems or from external events’, OR ‘includes legal risk, but excludes strategic and reputational risk’ (BCBS 2011a: 3). Human or technical errors are usually to blame. Nicholas Leeson may have the dubious distinction of being ‘the true author and unwitting inventor of “operational risk”’, because of all the attention he has garnered as an ‘[iconograph] of regulatory failure’ (Power 2005: 579). But Bruno Iksil’s (aka the ‘London Whale’) credit default swap (CDS) trades, which cost J.P. Morgan Chase US$6.2 billion (2012), show that OR ‘is inherent in all banking products, activities, processes and sys-tems, and the effective management of operational risk has always been a fundamental element of a bank’s risk management programme’ (BCBS 2011a: 3).

Sound internal governance of OR usually comprises three principal lines of defence. First, the identification of the inherent risks in a firm’s activities, processes and systems demands qualified and competent direct oversight by business line management. Key measures of internal perfor-mance often scrutinised include volume, turnover, error rates and income volatility (BCBS 2011b). Second, a functionally independent corporate operational risk function (CORF) is responsible for the design and implementation of a financial institution’s OR management framework (ORMF). The ORMF consists of a bank’s:

(a) Risk organisational and governance structure (b) Policies, procedures and processes


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(c) Systems used by a bank in identifying, measuring, monitoring, con-trolling and mitigating OR

(d) OR measurement system (BCBS 2011b: 54)

Finally, the third line of defence is an independent review including verification and validation procedures. Performed on a periodic basis by an internal and/or external audit, verification assesses the overall effective-ness of ORMF and validation process independence. Validation examines risk measurement methodology and quantification robustness, plus mod-elling process integrity.

The calculation of OR regulatory capital is the prerogative of a financial institution and should be tailored to the unique idiosyncrasies of its busi-ness models and risk profiles. Underpinning this estimation is the ‘Advanced Measurement Approach’ (AMA), which has become the de facto standard for the internal measurement of OR. Similar to VaR, how-ever, major doubts exist about AMA effectiveness. Typically calibrated to the bank’s historical losses, AMA has been plagued by the drawbacks inherent in its statistical loss distribution methodology. Not only would (forward-looking) AMA estimates be insufficient to account for the unprecedented government fines and settlements imposed upon banks following the recent financial crisis, but AMA ergodicity distorts a bank’s actual risk-weighted profile. It prolongs the legacy of the heavy losses pre-viously incurred. Lacking adjustments to mitigate the impact of severe losses, their disproportionate influence skews capital figures significantly and permanently once entered into the data set, even well after their root causes are redressed. As a consequence, data series are manipulated through statistical wizardry to get a high-density picture sufficient enough to satisfy regulators and clients—plus lower capital requirements.

Disparate modelling of data also makes AMA vulnerable to excessive levels of variability. Of the four main data elements that AMA calculations rely on—internal loss data, external data, scenario analysis, and business environment and internal control factors—diverse scenario construction contributes the most to diminishing comparability and transparency. Rather than a ‘robust scenario analysis’ in the production of ‘reliable sce-nario outputs’, which such flexibility to individual risk sensitivity should afford, OR modelling has become more research intensive, unduly com-plex and assumption-laden than initially intended (BCBS 2011b). One of the most disappointing components of AMA, variegated modelling, has

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undermined confidence in risk-weighted capital ratios. Thus, contrary to Basel II OR convergence expectations (BCBS 2011b: 2), the ‘excessive variability in risk- weighted assets and insufficient capital levels for some banks’ spelled the failure and demise of AMA (BCBS 2014).

To remedy and simplify the framework, on 4 March 2016, the BCBS issued proposed revisions for consultation in the form of the new Standardized Measurement Approach (SMA). Although a comprehensive analysis of the SMA is outside the scope of this chapter, its proposal has received a sceptical welcome. SMA introduces a size-based Business Indicator (BI) as a new proxy for OR exposure based on absolute net income and incorporates an internal loss multiplier (ILM). Unfortunately, while it may diminish discrepancies in modelling outcomes, its ergodic bias makes the SMA primarily backward-looking. Severe loss events remain excessively penalising. Consequently, the European Banking Federation (EBF 2016: 2) foresees higher capital requirements for 75% of banks,9 with European banks facing 79.6% mean and 63.5% median increases in OR capital buffers—the highest of all banks. Coupled with a crude calibra-tion of the SMA that lacks transparency and is considered exceedingly high, the revised formula continues to privilege averages, whereas extreme but rare OR events have dominated the past decade.

To grapple with the consistent stream of threats that behavioural mis-conduct poses to financial organisations, the OR managerial approach has adopted the convention of identifying and capturing these potential haz-ards as quantifiable risks to assign them a relative cost. As nebulous and difficult to quantify uncertainties become repositioned within an ERM nar-rative of OR, its epistocratic techniques re-encode these idiosyncratic vari-ables to appear more tractable to utilitarian risk calculus. No matter how sophisticated our technical modelling, however, the fluid and contingent alignment between creative entrepreneurialism and freedom that makes business, and especially financialisation, dynamic and profitable, is too elu-sive to be captured in this standardised way (de Goede 2005). Aggravating anxieties, and this dubious misrepresentation of uncertainty as risk, is the preoccupation with ‘event types’ of OR. In an era of international radical jihad and climate change, broadening the definition of OR to include ‘damage to physical assets’ as a result of calamities, such as terrorism, van-dalism, earthquakes, fires and floods, merely accentuates how arduous it is to get a solid grip on such operational contingencies. If 2016 taught us anything, it is how much ‘political’ ‘event’ risks, such as the UK Brexit or US Trump presidential election, can completely discredit sophisticated


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forecasts to remind us of how very difficult it is to calculate uncertainty as a probabilistic risk. Nevertheless, this qualculative risk ‘fetish’ persists.

Credit Risk

Economic orthodoxy claims that effective credit risk analysis should satisfy three objectives:

1. Identify existing balance sheet mismatches. 2. Incorporate uncertainty inherent in balance sheet components since

uncertain changes in future asset value relative to promised payments on debt obligations ultimately drive default risk.

3. Translate uncertainty into quantifiable risk indicators that measure risk exposures to reveal whether balance sheet risks are building or subsid-ing (Gapen et al. 2005: 4).

Communicated as an ordinal ranking of creditworthiness through a readily identifiable ratings scale (‘AAA’ to ‘D’), arguably, the ‘risk of default’ captures and quantifies the propensity towards failure to repay outstanding debt (Reinhart and Rogoff 2010). Sophisticated and defend-able econometric modelling is privileged over ‘judgmental analyst input’ in this effort to translate uncertainty into the ‘physical probability of default’ (Fitch 2012/14).

Continuous-duration estimation techniques like Moody’s Analytics’ (2010) Expected Default Frequency (EDF) platform extend the Black- Scholes- Merton framework10 to calculate ‘distance-to-default’ (DD). DD is defined as the trend plus cyclical components or the standard deviations by which assets exceed liabilities. Following a similar Brownian motion approach,11 Moody’s ‘through-the-cycle’ (TTC) EDF is a proprietary function of DD and considered a fraction of all the entities with an identi-cal DD that defaulted the previous year. Over one year horizons, Moody’s (2008: 2) employs a ‘statistical algorithm to estimate senior rating histo-ries for issuers by deriving notional, issuer-level ratings from each issuer’s outstanding rated bonds and loans’. Arguably, this smooths out the rating over the cycle because TTC-EDF modelling claims to filter transient, cyclical and discretionary components of credit risk to enhance rating sta-bility. Qualitative factors and accuracy may be sacrificed for the sake of comparability and speculative utility as capitalising on arbitrage drives profits.

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Like the rating methodologies of Moody’s Steps or S&P’s (2014) Rating Analysis Methodology Profile (RAMP), Fitch’s ordinary least squares (OLS) calculation of 19 economic and financial variables produces comparable EDF-type results. Determined to minimise any deviation between the mod-el’s linear predictions and the observed account, such regression analysis exerts a qualculative influence to grant the entire process the effect of mate-rial, ‘statistical significance’. Typical of model-centric assessments, qualcula-tion compensates for the generalised subjectivity of the (CRA) stress scenario imposed on the cyclical component to legitimise it (IMF 2010: 116). Weaker accuracy, unfortunately, makes EDFs more prone to ‘cliff effects’. Waiting to determine if credit quality degradation is permanent or tempo-rary, and more than one notch, a lagged reaction contributes to the tremen-dous sell-offs triggered by abrupt, multiple- notch downgrades.

Few will forget the 2007 massive implosion of highly rated ‘AAA’ but toxic subprime-backed securities blamed for triggering the financial crisis. The meltdown accelerated as thousands of ‘residential mortgage-backed securities’ (RMBS) and complex ‘collateralised debt obligations’ (CDO) were suddenly slashed into ‘junk’ (below ‘BBB−’) territory. As S&P downgraded 75% of ‘AAA’ RMBS below investment-grade, it triggered a valuation crisis and the collapse of the secondary markets for these securi-ties—plus the most severe economic correction since the Great Depression. Isomorphic pressures align investors with CRAs to circumscribe their capacity to reject dubious rating analytics. Ratings qualculation constrains the informal judgement and critical faculties of market participants to mit-igate deviation from the proprietary standard (Paudyn 2014: 41).

Derived from monthly data for over 35,000 public firms, Moody’s TTC-EDFs and CDS-implied EDF measures are essentially reproduced for sovereigns. Repeated rating failures, however, raise doubts whether technical sophistication actually yields a ‘better’ outcome. In 75% of cases, CRAs have failed to downgrade a sovereign before the onset of a correc-tion (Haldane et al. 2000). As the 1997–98 Asian Crisis demonstrated, CRAs first failed to forecast the looming currency emergencies or adequately incorporate short-term liabilities like over-extended property market lending in their models. Lagging the market, next, they slashed scores beyond what economic fundamentals justified. Multiple-notch downgrades by Moody’s (48) and S&P (48) during the Asian crisis, and similar abrupt cuts of 37 and 64, respectively, during the 2007–08 credit crunch (Gaillard 2014: 128), attest to CRAs’ inability to measure and forecast adequately fiscal variance through utilitarian risk calculus.


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Without a pre-given ontological reality to unearth and measure, this codification of credit risk helps construct and commercialise an artificial uniformity and normality of creditworthiness. Since this social facticity of the political economy of creditworthiness materialises through the deploy-ment of discursive practices like ratings, given the reflexivity of finance, it is susceptible to distortions that misrepresent uncertainty as a tangible and quantifiable risk (Paudyn 2014). After all, as Bruce Carruthers (2013: 530) confirms:

It was not because of superior predictive performance that rating agencies became the chief information brokers in mid-twentieth-century sovereign debt markets. Rather, bond-rating agencies helped create the perception that uncertainty could be turned into risk.

While monitoring the degree of exigency involved in political economy ‘would not be possible using a purely quantitative, automated, or model- driven approach’ (S&P 2010: 4), this preoccupation with defendable risk calculus serves to disguise the discretionary judgement involved in the synthesis of (qualitative) uncertainty and (quantitative) risk. This immun-ises private epistocracy from serious public scrutiny and reform. Despite repetitious failures, this allows CRAs to concentrate and retain their authoritative capacity to define the political economy of creditworthiness, and emerge relatively unscathed from consecutive crises.

regulatory response

Reckless profit-generation fuelled by the unproblematic application of risk methods from the mathematical/physical sciences is only part of the story. Mistakes also occur because reactionary and ad hoc regulatory policies routinely sanction such financial conduct as ‘legitimate’ or produce adverse unintended consequences. Although satisfying technocratic governmental imperatives, repetitive risk calculus promotes a primarily exogenous con-ceptualisation of risk. By diminishing the value of qualitative input, politi-cal discretion becomes increasingly marginalised and censured, and regulatory passivity is legitimised (Best 2016; Paudyn 2015).

No matter the disdain for discredited financial entities, especially CRAs, their contestation seems rather superficial. Afraid to re-politicise market processes, which demands government through uncertainty, bureaucrats in the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the European

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Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) prefer to remain neutral (read effectually passive) when confronted with financial reflexive/self- referential valuation routines; they thus exacerbate their intractability. Indeed, these are complicated matters without any easy solutions. But instead of unpack-ing these ‘black boxes’ to reveal their inconsistencies and paradoxes neces-sary for remedial action, too often, what we witness is the unproblematic institutionalisation of the very distortions that produce such consequential mistakes (de Goede 2005; Helleiner 2014).

A self-regulation approach has been visible in the governance of the above three categories of risk management. So broad became its applica-tion that VaR modelling was at the heart of the 1996 BCBS decision to officially sanction bank’s ‘in-house models’. With ‘Pillar 1’, the conserva-tive ‘command-and-control’ approach to banking oversight was replaced to accommodate more ‘enforced self-regulation’ (Power 2007: 106). Entrusted with their own internal VaR modelling, banks relied on over-simplifications and strict model parameters to devise schemes for mini-mum capital requirements. Manipulated to produce favourable figures, VaR gives the illusion that quantification of risks facilitates their regula-tion. Official recognition merely cements the widely held, but flawed, ergodic mentality that the future tends to mirror the past; this diminishes risk aversion and fuels excessive speculation.

Bank stress tests, such as the 2009 US Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP), also rely extensively on quantitative inputs and formal modelling in their hypothetical and baseline scenarios. Similar resilience tests by the European Banking Authority (EBA) define the ‘adverse sce-nario’ in terms of systematic risks. Regular risk management may reinforce its perceived utility, but its routine application to socio-political phenom-ena produces ‘disembedded and disembodied accounts of finance’ (Langley 2008: 6).

Efforts to ‘re-embed’ finance in its specific operational contexts, in order to enhance its sensitivity to changing dynamics and thus increase accountability for its mistakes, should promote greater due diligence and prudence rather than deter them. Hence, it is odd that EU attempts to ‘improve the functioning of financial markets making them more efficient, resilient and transparent’ may, in fact, jeopardise such ambitions. The new EU MiFID II and Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation (MiFIR) regulations due to come into effect in member states in January 2018 seek to separate research costs from trading payments. ESMA is also convinced that portfolio managers and independent advisers must directly pay for the


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investment research they receive from their own accounts or designated research funds. Although the full disclosure of fees is desirable, the unin-tended consequences of unbundling commissions may be a reduction in the research conducted and the accelerated outsourcing of due diligence to discredited entities like CRAs. As knowledge levels decline, ill-informed decisions grow and OR competencies suffer, whereby more failures result.

the perForMativity oF risk DisCourse

Repeated crises have exposed the false positivism underpinning risk management and neo-liberal capitalism’s self-equilibrating dynamics. This (economistic) mentality skews the dialectical relationship between risk/uncertainty and their constant virtuality (Knight 1921/1964). Rather than being synthesised or displaced, as modalities of framing an indeterminate (financial) future, risk and uncertainty condition a qualculative cognition and agency, which embeds their social facticity as material reality (Paudyn 2014). Rendering finance intelligible as a ‘problem of government’ through socio-technical devices like ratings, techno-scientific epistocracy devises a neo-liberal infrastructure of referentiality, which is internalised by subjects who create the conditions that validate it (MacKenzie 2006).

Penetrating virtually every space of existence to help constitute what counts as authoritative knowledge, hegemonic risk management’s deploy-ment of defendable calculus in finance parallels how risk is operationalised in the mathematical/physical sciences. This association with risk’s techno- scientific proficiency affords its practitioners the credibility and leverage to privilege the imperatives of financial markets (and technocrats) over dem-ocratic ones. Endowing these processes with effects of transparency, syste-maticity, rigorousness and comparability, this satisfies what clients and officials demand, and mutually shields them from the consequences of mistakes.

Performativity’s utility and value-added lies in enhancing our under-standing of how risk ‘economics’ (models, methods, etc.) helps consti-tute the market realities it describes as ‘normal and taken-for-granted business practice’ (Carruthers 2013: 542). Though ‘to say that the mar-ket is performatively produced is not to say that it is produced ex nihilo at every instant, but only that its apparently seamless regeneration brings about a naturalized effect’ (Butler 2010: 149). Through the repeated deployment of market devices like equity benchmark indices or the ratings scale, techno-scientific epistocracy assigns meaning in the

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normalisation of key calculative subject/object positions (Aitken 2007: 12; Paudyn 2014). Here finance’s reflexive/self-referential character shapes expectations and conduct to validate qualculative valuations as authoritative social facts (MacKenzie 2006).

Irrespective of being implicated in numerous crises, however, the per-formativity of risk management/discourse creates and legitimises the con-ditions and subjectivities that help validate its continued utility and normative authority over political economy. Action and authority com-bine as risk’s qualculation transforms quantitative finance into qualitative judgements to constitute an authoritative normality and valuation, which shape market conduct and materiality (Callon and Law 2003; Cochoy 2008). By masking contingent liabilities, for example, of CRAs and inves-tors, this helps justify and concentrate the capacity for epistocratic discre-tion, and depoliticises the constitution of authoritative knowledge.

As qualculation detaches ‘the substantive authority of expertise from the apparatuses of political rule’ (Rose 1996: 41), risk reinscribes ‘government- at-a-distance’ to immunise market participants. This works to internalise forms of governmentality that invalidate human judgement in the development of a neo-liberal political economy of finance. Diminishing the value of qualitative input, (political) discretion becomes marginalised and censured, due diligence and responsibility get out-sourced and regulatory passivity is legitimised. As the asymmetry between epistocracy and democracy grows, this further immunises private expertise from serious public contestation and reform, and the consequences of its mistakes. Over time, the neo-liberal capitalist normality and rectitude are reproduced and sediment as social facts. Yet the more that the manage-ment through risk/uncertainty helps entrench this status quo, the closer crisis looms.

ConClusion

Recent emergencies demonstrate how vulnerable governments are to being dragged down by market failures. In contrast to the privatisation of profits, costs were socialised when toxic liabilities were transferred to the taxpayer through corporate welfare and bailouts (Moschella 2012). Erroneous risk management endangers not just profits, but fiscal sover-eignty, and thus political stability. However repeated financial failures may have damaged the credibility of principal entities of global neo- liberal finance, especially CRAs (Paudyn 2014) and investment banks


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(Münnich 2015), such contestation is quite superficial. I argue that the performativity of risk management/discourse responsible for said mistakes also creates and legitimises the conditions and subjectivities that help vali-date its continued utility and authority, with immunising effects.

Arguably, the success of risk discourse performativity to translate neo- liberal capitalist mentalities into material reality depends on how legiti-mate and authoritative it renders expert knowledge. As social facts, risk’s normative authority combines cognition with action to create powers and obligations that shape conduct to transform material conditions, which depoliticises the political economy of finance. The more automated and outsourced those valuation routines become, the harder it is to take own-ership over the mistakes of ‘others’ and learn from them. Although deci-sions are increasingly being rendered through quantitative means, human judgement remains essential; albeit regularly disguised and concentrated. To reverse this devaluation of discretionary conduct, the socio-political dimension of assessment and valuation processes needs to be explicitly recognised. After all, finance is not a natural objective science.

notes

1. Typically, risk is considered as a tangible, empirical phenomenon with probabilistic coordinates. Uncertainty, conversely, eludes quantitative cap-ture and demands more subjective estimations and contingent informa-tion. Both are modes of framing the future as a problem of government.

2. Developed by anthropologist Gregory Bateson to define a self-amplifying process of divergence and conflict.

3. Beta is a measure of the volatility (systematic risk) of a security or portfolio relative to that of the market.

4. ‘Beating the market’ is nearly impossible over time.5. As of January 2017.6. As of January 2017.7. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) can also be actively managed, margined or

sold short.8. The contention is that the past reproduces itself at regular intervals.9. According to a March 2016 Operational Riskdata Exchange (ORX) bench-

mark exercise with a sample of 54 banks from Australia, Canada, Europe, South Africa and USA.

10. An options pricing formula that calculates theoretical pricing of put and call options.

11. In reference to physics, it explores stochastic processes in continuous time.

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CHAPTER 8

The European Blame Game: Explaining Public Responsibility Attributions

in the European Union

Tim Heinkelmann-Wild, Berthold Rittberger, and Bernhard Zangl

To avoid blame for policy mistakes, policy-makers have a strong incentive to deflect responsibility (Gerhards et al. 2013; Greuter 2014; Hood 2011; Hood and Rothstein 2001; Sulitzeanu-Kenan and Hood 2005; Weaver 1986).1 During the Euro crisis, Greek politicians blamed the EU for its terrible economic situation while, at the same time, EU representatives blamed Greek politicians for the economic and political muddle that ensued (Roose et al. 2016). During the recent refugee crisis, EU politi-cians blamed member states for having failed to comply with EU agree-ments, while EU member states’ politicians blamed the EU for its mishandling of the crisis (Rittberger et al. 2017: 8–10). In these European blame games, blame is shifted back and forth between the EU and its members. In some instances, responsibility for EU policy mistakes is attributed to EU institutions: For example, the EU’s external border regime was made responsible for the deaths of thousands of refugees

T. Heinkelmann-Wild (*) • B. Rittberger • B. Zangl Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich, Germany

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drowning in the Mediterranean. In other instances, such as the failed redistribution of refugees among EU members, the public attributes responsibility to the member states of the EU (see Rittberger et al. 2017). This, then, begs the question who is being made responsible for failed EU policies: When is responsibility for failed policies attributed to actors at the member state level, and when are responsibility attributions primarily tar-geted at actors at the EU level?

We follow the editors’ definition of mistakes as ‘something gone wrong’ in programmatic (policy performance) or political (reputational) terms (for a discussion, see Oppermann and Spencer 2016). Our focus, however, is on mistakes concerning policy performance, which we define as policy failures. Moreover, we are interested in responsibility attributions for pol-icy failures in rather than by the European public. We therefore study rep-resentations of public responsibility attributions (PRAs) on the aggregate level by means of content analysis of the news coverage of EU policy fail-ures in the quality press, rather than looking at responsibility attributions on the individual level by means of, for instance, surveys or survey experiments.

Our model to explain PRA is inspired by the recent literature on responsibility attribution in multi-level governance systems (Alcaniz and Hellwig 2011; Anderson 2000; Arceneaux 2006; Arceneaux and Stein 2006; Hobolt and Tilley 2014; Hobolt et al. 2013; Powell and Whitten 1993; Schwarzenbeck 2015). Drawing on insights from this literature, we distinguish between two variables shaping PRA: The level of authority and the level of complexity. According to the authority hypothesis, responsibility travels with policy-making authority (Gailey 2013; Gailey and Lee 2005; Hamilton 1986; Schwarzenbeck 2015). In contrast, the complexity hypoth-esis posits that the general public often lacks the knowledge about how policy-making authority is distributed in multi-level governance systems so as to attribute responsibility ‘correctly’; it hence expects PRA to be dif-fuse (Cutler 2004; Hobolt and Tilley 2014; Hobolt et al. 2013; Powell and Whitten 1993).

While our model builds on the authority and complexity hypotheses, we show that they are both insufficient to explain important variations in PRAs. If the distribution of policy-making authority is not complex, we expect that PRA travels with authority. When, however, policy-making is complex—as is the case for systems of multi-level policy-making, such as the EU—the authority hypothesis no longer applies and the complexity hypothesis predicts that PRAs become infrequent, untargeted and thus

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diffuse. Our implementer hypothesis disputes this claim and contends that PRAs for policies characterised by complex policy-making depend on the structure of policy implementation. We thus argue that the implementing actor is then likely to become the main target of PRAs.

To test our implementer hypothesis, we study PRA in the EU by focus-ing on two cases of EU financial policy-making, which are widely consid-ered to be policy mistakes. The first case concerns the EU’s failure to impose sanctions against France and Germany for their violation in 2003 of the rule stipulated by the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) that deficits should not go above 3% per annum. The second case concerns the EU’s failure to prevent harmful tax competition between its member states and to prevent tax evasion practices of large corporations in Europe. Controlling for both, policy-making authority (and thus the authority hypothesis) and policy-making complexity (and thus the complexity hypothesis), we show that the implementer hypothesis can account for PRA in both cases.

The chapter is structured as follows. In the ensuing section, we review existing explanations for PRA in multi-level governance systems, before developing our own implementer hypothesis. Subsequently, we explicate our research design, and in the ensuing sections, we analyse PRA in two prominent instances of policy mistakes in the area of EU financial policies. In the final section we summarise our findings and discuss their implica-tions for political accountability in the EU.

Theory: Who Is held responsIble?The literature on responsibility attribution distinguishes among several factors that affect PRA. While numerous contributions highlight the importance of attributes of policy-makers (Rudolph 2003, 2006; Malhotra and Kuo 2008; Marsh and Tilley 2010; Tilley and Hobolt 2011; Hobolt and Tilley 2014), our model ties in with those contributions emphasising the importance of the institutional setting for PRAs (Powell and Whitten 1993; Anderson 2000; Rudolph 2003; Cutler 2004 2008; Arceneaux 2006; Arceneaux and Stein 2006; Gerhards et al. 2013; Mortensen 2013; Schwarzenbeck 2015). These contributions assume that the institutional setting for policy-making plays a decisive role for how responsibility is attributed in the general public. Two hypotheses have gained particular prominence in the existing literature:

First, the authority hypothesis postulates that PRAs travel with policy- making authority. Actors with policy-making authority are held publicly

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responsible for the policies enacted under their authority. The formal distribution of policy-making authority thus shapes PRAs: Actors with superior policy-making authority, for example, government ministers, tend to be made publicly responsible for the actions of their subordinates, such as ministry officials (Hamilton 1986; Gailey and Lee 2005; Gailey 2013; Schwarzenbeck 2015). For the former, the institutional setting thus provides hardly any opportunities to evade responsibility for policies enacted within their domain of authority.

This hypothesis has been corroborated in the context of domestic authority structures, where political authority is shared between national and sub-national authorities (Arceneaux 2006; Arceneaux and Stein 2006; Mortensen 2013; Rudolph 2003). More recently, this hypothesis has also been applied to international institutions, where decision-making author-ity is distributed between member states and international decision- making bodies. For instance, the authority structure of an international institution is intergovernmental when decisions are under the control of the institu-tion’s member states; it is supranational when the institution’s decision- making bodies possess considerable independent decision-making power. According to the authority hypothesis, in settings dominated by intergov-ernmental decision-making, responsibility should be predominantly attrib-uted to member states and their governments. Conversely, when decision-making is supranational, responsibility should be mainly attrib-uted to the international institution and its decision-making bodies. The plausibility of the authority hypothesis in the international context has been underscored by several recent studies. For example, Hobolt and Tilley (2014) found that responsibility attributions ‘are at least partly a result of formal institutions’ (Hobolt and Tilley 2014: 141). Moreover, Alcaniz and Hellwig (2011) found that supranational decision-making authority wielded by international economic institutions affect PRA in Latin American countries.

The complexity hypothesis qualifies the authority hypothesis, stipulating that PRAs only travel with policy-making authority if the distribution of policy-making authority is sufficiently known to the general public. If the distribution of authority is, however, characterised by complexity and thus lacks ‘clarity of responsibility’ (Hobolt et al. 2013; Hobolt and Tilley 2014: 22), the authority structure is unlikely to shape PRAs. Complex decision-making structures provide political decision-makers with a favour-able opportunity structure: Actors with superior authority can more easily dodge responsibility even for policies they have enacted themselves. As the


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general public often lacks knowledge about how authority is distributed it cannot attribute responsibility ‘correctly’ (Powell and Whitten 1993; Cutler 2004; Hobolt et al. 2013; Hobolt and Tilley 2014). The complex-ity hypothesis, therefore, expects that clear-cut PRAs should be infrequent and/or untargeted and thus diffuse. Policy-making is complex if decision-making authority is shared by numerous actors across different jurisdic-tional levels (instead of being centralised by state executives) and if it involves a loss of decision-making control for executive authorities. Take the EU as an example: Policy-making authority is shared across different levels of government, and state executives cede control of policy-making by sharing decision-making authority with supranational institutions (the Commission and the European Parliament) as well as by pooling decision- making authority through majority voting (see Hooghe and Marks 2001).

Corroborating evidence for the complexity hypothesis can be found for the domestic and international context. Cutler (2004) demonstrates that lack of clarity of policy-making authority in national federal systems pre-vents the public from attributing responsibility to the particular political actors that have promoted these policies. Moreover, research on voting behaviour has shown that clarity about the allocation of policy-making authority among different actors in multi-level governance systems affects PRA and vote choice among citizens (Hobolt et al. 2013; Powell and Whitten 1993). With regard to international institutions, the complexity hypothesis seems to be particularly relevant, because many international institutions are characterised by a complex distribution of policy-making authority.2 According to the complexity hypothesis, PRA in complex decision- making systems should be untargeted, infrequent and thus dif-fuse. In fact, it has been demonstrated that where nation-state govern-ments and international decision-making bodies exercise authority jointly, it is difficult to attribute responsibility (Hobolt and Tilley 2014: 24).

We hold that the focus of both, the authority and the complexity hypotheses, is too much on policy-making authority, ignoring that policy implementation may also have an impact on PRA.3 Therefore, we assume that both, policy-making and policy implementation, have an impact on PRA. Our argument builds on the authority and the complexity hypoth-eses, while also clarifying the conditions under which these hypotheses and the concomitant expectations about PRA should hold. We agree with the authority hypothesis that PRAs travel with policy-making authority while we also agree with the complexity hypothesis that this only applies to sys-tems in which the distribution of policy-making authority is not complex.


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Yet, a complex institutional setting does not necessarily imply that PRA will be untargeted and infrequent. We contend that in complex policy- making systems the public will employ heuristics other than the distribu-tion of policy-making authority for directing PRA: It will employ a policy-implementation heuristic. Thus, our implementer hypothesis postu-lates that in settings where the distribution of policy-making authority is complex, the public will attribute responsibility to the actor implementing the respective policy. As policy-making authority cannot be easily grasped, we expect the implementing ‘agent’ to become the focal actor for PRA. While providing political actors with superior policy-making author-ity with ample opportunities to shun responsibility, a complex institutional setting offers subordinate implementing actors with very little opportu-nity to shift responsibility to others, including their superiors.

research desIgn

To test the plausibility of the implementer hypothesis, we compare PRA with regard to two policy failures from the realm of EU financial policy: The case of EU fiscal stability and the case of harmful tax competition in the EU. We conceive of these policies as mistakes, since in scholarly and public debate they are described as falling short of their own goals and are hence widely considered as policy failures. Moreover, we selected these cases, because they allow us to control for both the authority structure and the institutional complexity of policy-making while, at the same time, they enable us to test the implementer hypothesis, because both cases display variation with regard to the agent implementing the policy. While the European Commission and the Council of Economic and Finance Ministers (Ecofin) are the main implementing actors in the fiscal stability case, EU member states are the main implementing actors in the taxation case. Moreover, we selected cases from one issue area—that is, finance—as this enables us to control for other potentially confounding factors. To be sure, the comparison across the selected cases only permits a controlled plausibility test of the implementer hypothesis. As we control for policy- making authority and complexity, we cannot test the authority or com-plexity hypothesis. What we can do, though, is to probe for each of the two cases, whether the authority and complexity hypotheses provide alter-native explanations.

To analyse PRA for the policies in these two cases, we employ content analysis of their coverage in the quality press. We draw on the quality press because its content is generally considered to be a good proxy for debates


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about policies in the general public.4 We analysed news coverage in two quality newspapers: The International New York Times (formerly The International Herald Tribune) and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ).5 By way of keyword search we identified all articles concerning the following policy mistakes6:

1. Fiscal stability in the EU: According to the scholarly and public debate, the SGP is considered a policy failure because no sanctions were imposed against countries such as France and Germany that violated the pact through excessive public deficits in the early 2000s. For example, Leblond (2006: 985) speaks of the ‘collapse’ of the pact and de Haan et al. (2004: 236) write that ‘the SGP is effectively dead’ (see also Collignon 2004: 19; Fuller 2003: 1; Heipertz and Verdun 2004: 765; Pfanner 2003: 11; Schuknecht et al. 2011: 10).

2. Harmful tax competition in the EU: According to the scholarly and public debate, EU taxation policies failed to prevent harmful tax com-petition between its member states and to prevent tax evasion prac-tices of large corporations in Europe. For instance, Kanter (2015a: 18) speaks about ‘unfair tax competition’ and Kanter and Higgins (2014: 6) even write about ‘tax avoidance arrangements’ (see also James 1998: 23; Kanter 2015c: 16; Wasserfallen 2014: 420).

To identify patterns of PRA, we searched our sample of 80 articles for responsibility statements.7 We coded whether an identifiable social or politi-cal actor has been named as (politically) responsible for the respective policy failure. We also coded each of these responsibility statements with regard to the target of PRA, that is, whether supranational EU institutions (e.g. the Commission), intergovernmental EU institutions (e.g. the Council), EU member states’ institutions (e.g. the German government) or other actors (e.g. corporations) have been named as being held respon-sible. All in all, we coded 440 PRA statements. To assess which actor(s) were dominant targets of PRA, we calculated the distribution of PRA among these actors for each of the two cases (Fig. 8.1).

eU FIscal sTabIlITy

To ensure the stability of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), EU member states signed the SGP in 1997, which stipulated, among other things, that member states’ budget deficits must not exceed 3% of their GDP and that their overall level of debt must stay at or below 60% of their


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GDP. However, the SGP turned out to be a failure for its lack of strict enforcement. Already in the early 2000s, several Eurozone member states—most notably, France and Germany—breached the 3% ceiling without having to face the consequences foreseen in the SGP (Leblond 2006: 969–70; de Haan et al. 2004: 236; Schuknecht et al. 2011: 10).8 Moreover, not only the ‘big’ countries got away with their excessive defi-cits but also ‘smaller’ countries. As a result, the SGP can be considered a policy failure and some even declared it ‘stone dead’ (Pfanner 2003: 11).

According to our implementer hypothesis, what can we expect with regard to the main target of PRA? To begin with, the policies specifying the SGP were laid out in two Council Regulations, which were proposed by the Commission and adopted by the Council after consulting the European Parliament.9 Given the complexity of the decision-making pro-cedure establishing the SGP, which involves intergovernmental and supra-national actors, we would expect the prime target of PRA to be the implementing actor(s) of the respective regulations. Tasked with imple-menting the SGP is the Ecofin, that is, a supranational and an intergovern-mental actor (de Haan et al. 2004: 237; Howarth 2004: 762–63). According to the two procedures relevant for the SGP’s implementation—the ‘Early Warning Procedure’ (EWP) and the ‘Excessive Deficit Procedure’ (EDP)—the European Commission has the task to recommend imple-menting actions, including sanctions, which have to be approved by the Ecofin Council by a qualified majority vote (Heipertz and Verdun 2004: 770; Leblond 2006: 969). The implementation of the SGP is thus in the hands of EU-level actors involving a supranational (Commission) and an intergovernmental organ (Council) (Schuknecht et al. 2011: 10). According to the implementer hypothesis, PRA should thus target EU actors rather than EU member states.

This expectation is borne out by our assessment of PRA in the EU financial stability case. To begin with, in our sample of 38 articles cover-ing this case, we find 33 articles with PRA (87%). Only in a small propor-tion (13%) of the articles in our sample do we not find any PRAs at all. The vast majority of the 76 PRAs in our sample address EU institutions as being responsible: 33 (43%) point at the European Commission as the prime culprit (see Fig. 8.1). Many statements read like this: ‘the EU failed to sanction Germany and France, the two largest euro countries, for violating the agreement’ (Meller 2004: 11) and ‘the European Commission on Tuesday abandoned a previously set deadline for bal-anced budgets and proposed to allow governments to run a deficit for


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two additional years’ (Fuller 2002: 1). A much smaller proportion of PRAs (16; 21%) in our sample address intergovernmental EU actors. We find rather few statements stipulating, for instance, that ‘Finance ministers exceeded authority … in allowing rules to be flouted’ (Landler 2004: 1). Yet, taken together, the number of PRAs addressing supranational and intergovernmental EU organs clearly outperforms the PRAs that target EU member states. Only a minority of the responsibility statements in our sample, namely 27 out of 76 (36%), hold domestic state actors responsible for the failure of the SGP. Statements highlighting that ‘Germany and France have established a pattern of violating the rules with relative impunity’ (Landler 2003: 11) and that ‘Germany refused to pay the fines, and it and its powerful allies effectively suspended the pact’ (Bowley 2004: 11) are in the minority.

The observed patterns of PRAs in the EU financial stability case lend support to the implementer hypothesis. By contrast, the authority and complexity hypotheses—our main alternative hypotheses—are not cor-roborated. Due to the complex, multi-level policy-making structures, the authority hypothesis would have expected responsibility to be more or less equally targeted at EU institutions and member states, while the complex-ity hypothesis would have expected few and rather untargeted PRAs.

harmFUl Tax compeTITIon

In the 1990s and 2000s, the EU has gained ‘considerable regulatory power over taxation’ (Genschel and Jachtenfuchs 2011: 294). While tra-ditionally the EU has hardly had any tax competences, and it still does not have the power to tax (Moravcsik 2002: 607; Alesina and Spolaore 2003: 210–11; Börzel 2005: 224), it imposes more and more regulatory con-straints on its member states’ tax policies (Genschel and Jachtenfuchs 2016).10 Yet, EU tax regulation (or the lack thereof) is often criticised as a failure because it does not prevent harmful tax competition between its members nor tax evasion of large and mobile European corporations. While capital freedom is one of the bedrock principles of the EU’s com-mon market it not only facilitates capital transfers in Europe but also triggers tax competition between EU member states (Genschel and Schwarz 2011: 340; Zodrow 2003). As some—particularly smaller—member states designed their tax systems to attract foreign capital, which would have been subject to taxation in other member states, this tax com-petition has increasingly been seen as harmful for state revenues.11 Hence,


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Wasserfallen (2014: 420) states that the limited transfer of tax authority to the EU ‘exemplifies the failure of political and fiscal integration’.

What expectation can we derive from our implementer hypothesis with regard to the main target of PRA for this failure? To begin with, the EU tax policy acquis is based on community legislation by the Commission and the Council as well as on the case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) (Genschel and Jachtenfuchs 2011: 297–303; Radaelli and Kraemer 2008). As EU tax policy was thus made and enacted through complex policy-making procedures that involve various actors on both the national and the European level, our implementer hypothesis expects the implementing actor to become the main target of PRAs. However, as opposed to the policies to ensure fiscal stability, the implementers with regard to EU tax policies are EU member states and not EU institutions. It is the duty of member states to implement EU tax regulations. Therefore, the implementer hypothesis expects the bulk of PRAs to target EU mem-ber states rather than EU institutions (Fig. 8.2).

This expectation finds support from our assessment of PRA in the EU tax competition case. As in the fiscal stability case, the vast majority of newspaper articles covering harmful tax competition in the EU (40 out of 42 articles) engages in or reports on PRA. In contrast to the fiscal stability case, in the tax competition case, responsibility is not predominantly attributed to EU institutions but to EU member state actors. Only 23 out of 364 PRAs (6%) target supranational actors and not a single PRA is tar-geted at intergovernmental EU institutions. In contrast, 239 PRAs (66%)

Fig. 8.2 Inter-case comparisons: distribution of PRA


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are directed at EU member states (see Fig. 8.2). Thus, PRAs such as ‘Belgium’s low-tax arrangements with Anheuser-Busch InBev—as well as those it has with subsidiaries of Exxon Mobil and of the steel giant ArcelorMittal—amounting to “weapons of mass tax reduction”’ (Kanter 2015b: 18) are common statements. By contrast, statements like ‘address-ing corporate tax avoidance “can’t be a Luxembourgish answer—it has to be a European answer”’ (Hakim 2014: 12) are rare.

As in the previous case, the observed pattern of PRA supports the implementer hypothesis. Both the authority and the complexity hypothe-sis do not offer compelling alternative explanations. Given the complex, multi-level policy-making procedures, the authority hypothesis would have expected that responsibility attributions are directed to the actors tasked with adopting EU tax policy, that is, intergovernmental institutions (the Council) and supranational actors (such as the Commission or—with regard to case law—the ECJ). Moreover, given the complexity of EU tax policy-making, the complexity hypothesis would have pointed at few and untargeted PRAs. Both expectations are not corroborated by our data.

conclUsIon

Based on the findings from the two case studies, the implementer hypoth-esis offers a plausible account for the attribution of political responsibility. Contrary to the expectation of the complexity hypothesis, PRAs were not infrequent and untargeted but were rather frequent and targeted. And as expected by the implementer hypothesis, PRAs were mainly targeted at the respective implementing actor, that is, EU actors in the fiscal stability case and member state governments in the tax competition case (see Fig. 8.2).

Moreover, the authority and complexity hypotheses do not offer con-vincing alternative explanations. When we look at the within case evi-dence, the expectations formulated by these alternatives find little support. And since we controlled for the main explanatory variables stipulated by these two hypotheses—that is, policy-making authority and complexity of policy-making—they do not offer alternative explanations for the observed PRA variation across cases. To be sure, this does not disconfirm these two hypotheses. Yet, it shows that they do not offer alternative explanations that would undermine our positive assessment of the implementer hypothesis.12


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From a democratic accountability perspective, the implementer hypoth-esis has neither fatalistic nor overly hopeful implications. While it has long been criticised on theoretical grounds that the complexity of policy- making in international institutions in general, and in the EU more spe-cifically, is placing hard constraints on effective democratic accountability, our analysis qualifies this critique. Our findings suggest that complex policy- making processes still allow for frequent and targeted PRAs if the respective policies require implementation. If this is the case, the general public does attribute responsibility to the implementing agent. From the purview of democratic accountability, the attribution of responsibility is not a virtue per se. If there is correspondence between implementing actor(s) and decision-makers, as in the tax competition case where nation- states are required to implement EU policies, responsibility is attributed to the implementing actors, who—at the same time—bear direct responsibility for the making of the enacted policies.

In contrast, when implementing actors and political decision-makers do not coincide, as in the EU fiscal stability case, democratic accountabil-ity suffers: While the Commission and the Ecofin are blamed for the fail-ure to impose stronger sanctions on ‘deficit sinners’, the political actors responsible for the policies the Commission and Ecofin have to imple-ment sit—at least partly—elsewhere. From this perspective, complex pol-icy-making structures, which encompass long chains of delegation from principals to implementing agents, are particularly bad news for demo-cratic accountability.

In summation, while complex policy-making may not lead to the diffu-sion of responsibility for policy mistakes, it can be deceptive, as responsi-bility is attributed to implementing actors that are, in fact, not necessarily involved in decision-making. This observation contradicts the norms asso-ciated with political responsibility: Especially in the case of policy mistakes, it is not the politically superior actor who assumes responsibility for the subordinates’ activities, but it is the subordinate implementing actor who is made responsible for policies decided by their superiors. Our findings thus suggest that the combination of a complex policy-making system and the delegation of policy implementing powers to independent third par-ties comes with a considerable price tag from the purview of democratic accountability, since political decision-makers can effectively dodge their political responsibility.


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noTes

1. The authors wish to thank Leander Avena for excellent research assistance as well as Felix Biermann for his comments.

2. Moreover, the hypothesis is particularly relevant because the public also has less knowledge about the authority structures of international institu-tions compared to domestic authority structures.

3. In fact, we know from recent research in experimental economics—unre-lated to international organisations though—that implementing actors are often held responsible for decisions that have been made by others (Bartling and Fischbacher 2008; Coffman 2011; Oexl and Grossmann 2012; Hill 2015).

4. See, for instance, Kriesi et al. (2012: 39–40), Brüggemann et al. (2009: 396). The focus of this contribution is on PRA in the public. Therefore, we examine how PRAs are represented by media outlets, more specifically, the quality press. Thereby our approach differs from a large body of work which focuses on responsibility attributions by the public. This strand of research tends to focus on the individual level and to employ methods such as surveys or experiments to account for the effects of micro-, meso- or macro-level variables on individual responsibility attributions. In order to approach the subject of responsibility attribution in the public, such meth-ods are not appropriate, since we cannot make direct inferences from indi-vidual motivations to attribute responsibility to collective representations of responsibility attributions in the public.

5. We selected the International New York Times as well as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) because of their transnational reach and because we expect that there is no bias with regard to PRAs to particular (domestic) actors (see Rittberger et al. 2017), which would have been problematic, for example, if we had analysed German and French newspapers: For one, Germany and France breached the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). Moreover, the two countries are among the ones that suffer the most from tax competition.

6. We assume that neither the perceived severity of the failures nor the per-sonal involvement of the attributing actors contaminates our findings on the impact of authority structures on PRA. In the fiscal stability case, we examined the period between the decision to establish the SGP 1997 and the beginning of the global recession in 2007; in the tax competition case, the search period was open: The articles we examined range from 1997 to 2016. For an overview of the electronic newspaper archives consulted, the periods examined and the keywords applied to identify relevant articles, see the Appendix. The codebook will be made available on request.


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7. A responsibility statement consists of three components: (1) an individual or corporate actor that attributes political responsibility, (2) the policy for which political responsibility is attributed and (3) the actor to whom politi-cal responsibility is attributed.

8. A reform, which was agreed in early 2005, even introduced ‘greater discre-tion, leniency and political control’ (Schuknecht et al. 2011: 10).

9. The pact was outlined by a resolution and two council regulations in July 1997 and is based on Articles 121 and 126 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

10. Indeed, Genschel and Jachtenfuchs (2011: 303–6) state that the EU sub-jects state taxation to stricter regulatory controls than the federal govern-ment in the United States.

11. On multilateral cooperation on tax harmonisation in the EU, see Genschel and Schwarz (2011: 362–3).

12. We can rule out a media-driven bias, since we found this pattern not only across newspapers, we also obtain the same pattern for each of the two selected quality papers. These findings thus increase our confidence in their robustness.

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PART III

International Public Policy


CHAPTER 9

What Went Wrong? The World Health Organization from Swine Flu to Ebola

Adam Kamradt-Scott

As the World Health Organization (WHO) moves into its eighth decade of existence, the intergovernmental organisation (IO) is once again con-fronted with questions about its continued relevance and performance. Over the past ten years, several independent external reviews, as well as a number of internal commissions, have examined the IO’s activities. Multiple reports have been produced and recommendations have been posed on how the WHO should be reformed. The organisation’s secre-tariat, and specifically its director-general, has in turn responded to these proposals by outlining various steps to redress the problems that have been identified. Many of these corrective measures were ‘in progress’ at the time of writing.

This is not the first time the WHO has faced such questions or, indeed, extensive criticism. Even so, the fact that the IO’s member states, non- government organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs), are once again questioning the intrinsic value of the WHO is nevertheless alarming. Indeed, a perception has increasingly emerged that something has ‘gone wrong’ with the organisation, to the extent that reforming the

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WHO has become a common refrain. The IO has found itself in this current predicament again though due to a number of perceived mis-guided actions and judgements, or ‘mistakes’, in its management of recent health emergencies. These notably include the 2009 H1N1 influenza pan-demic and the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak.

This chapter examines these two events through the lens of this vol-ume. More specifically, the chapter proceeds by interrogating what mis-takes occurred throughout these two health crises, why they happened, the consequences arising from them and whether the organisation has learnt from these mistakes. In so doing, attention is given to the various structural, cultural and political factors that influenced these events, such as the WHO secretariat’s aversion to offending member states and the division of the organisation into autonomous regional offices. The chapter then concludes by examining the reforms currently being implemented to strengthen the WHO’s global health security credentials and what these signify for the future.

The WhO’s handling Of The 2009 h1n1 influenza Pandemic

Since late 2003 and the re-emergence and the global spread of the H5N1 ‘Bird Flu’ virus, governments around the world had been preparing for another influenza pandemic. The aetiological agent that caused the next pandemic though was not the much-feared H5N1 virus but rather a novel strain of influenza H1N1 that emerged in La Gloria, a small rural village in Veracruz, Mexico, in March 2009. From this remote location, the virus spread worldwide within weeks, carried by international travellers to initi-ate outbreaks in over 200 locations worldwide (WHO 2013).

The WHO’s handling of the 2009 influenza pandemic attracted criti-cism both during the crisis and in its aftermath. Moreover, in response to concerns the IO had been unduly influenced into declaring a pandemic by experts with links to the pharmaceutical industry, a total of three inter-nal and external investigations were launched into the organisation’s management of the crisis (WHO 2011; Flynn 2010; Cohen and Carter 2010). All three investigations subsequently concluded there was no evi-dence the WHO had engaged in inappropriate conduct. Nevertheless, each of these independent panels recommended amendments on how the IO responded to future health emergencies. While some of these measures

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have been enacted, in hindsight, it is now clear that there were at least two significant, related ‘mistakes’ in the WHO’s management of the 2009 pandemic: the first being the WHO’s decision to label the responsible aetiological agent ‘swine flu’ and, the second, to remove guidelines from the WHO website after a policy discrepancy was identified.

‘Swine Flu’

Throughout the twentieth century there was a discernible trend for nam-ing influenza pandemics after specific countries or areas (e.g. 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’, 1957 ‘Asian Flu’ and 1968 ‘Hong Kong Flu’). Such practices have, however, also often culminated in significant economic damage to loca-tions associated with disease (Cash and Narasimhan 2000). In an explicit attempt to avoid the risk the 2009 influenza pandemic would be labelled the ‘Mexican Flu’ (on account that Mexico was the location where the disease first appeared), the WHO secretariat initially settled on identifying the pandemic with the animal that is most closely associated with the H1N1 virus: pigs. Accordingly, for the first few weeks of the 2009 crisis, the pandemic was extensively described by the WHO and international media outlets as ‘Swine Flu’ (Cohen 2009b; Butler 2009).

The WHO’s decision to adopt the generic identifier ‘swine flu’ was arguably a noble one, intended to avoid damage to the Mexican economy. It did, however, result in a raft of unintended consequences that rapidly revealed the decision was a mistake. Indeed, within weeks of the descriptor being applied, approximately 20 per cent of the WHO’s member states implemented a series of measures that exceeded, and thereby contravened, international norms (Davies et al. 2015). In late April 2009, for example, the Egyptian government ordered the mass culling of all pigs throughout the country (estimated to be between 250,000 and 400,000 animals) as a ‘preventative measure’, despite the fact that no human cases of H1N1 had been recorded in Egypt nor any reported outbreaks of H1N1 had occurred in pigs worldwide (Katz and Fischer 2010). Within days, the Iraqi govern-ment followed Egypt’s lead and ordered the culling of three boars in a Baghdad zoo (Karadesh 2009). Added to this, some 20 other countries including Russia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bahrain and China imposed trade import bans on all live pigs, pork and pork products, citing concerns over the risk that H1N1 may be introduced into their respective human populations (Lynn 2009; WTO 2009; Katz and Fischer 2010).

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Quickly recognising the unintended consequences of the ‘swine flu’ label, the WHO secretariat launched a campaign to re-brand the pandemic ‘influenza A(H1N1)’ and co-opted other IOs to assist in halting the vari-ous bans and related measures. On 26 April 2009, for instance, the organ-isation issued a press release that emphasised that trade and travel restrictions were not recommended (WHO 2009e). The next day the sec-retariat expanded on this, unequivocally stating, ‘[t]here is also no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products’ (WHO 2009f). On 29 April 2009, a representative from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) went further, explicitly con-demning the Egyptian government by describing the slaughter of the country’s entire pig population a ‘real mistake’ and stating ‘[t]here is no reason to do that’ (Stewart 2009). To add further weight to this public messaging, the next day, the FAO, WHO and the World Organization for Animal Health issued a joint statement stipulating that pork and pork products were safe and that trade bans were unwarranted (FAO/WHO/OIE 2009). This statement was then re-issued on 7 May 2009 to further reinforce the message (Ibid). Nonetheless, several countries persisted in applying live pig and pork import bans with the result that official com-plaints were formally lodged with the World Trade Organization (WTO) in late June 2009 (WTO 2009).

Throughout the subsequent WTO hearings and other forums, most governments acknowledged that the import bans and related measures had been implemented without any scientific basis. They had done so though, primarily due to the initial correlations that had been drawn by the WHO between the virus and pigs. For instance, when challenged in the WTO, the Chinese government sought to justify its actions on the basis of ‘its huge population, its susceptibility to the disease through human-to-human transmission, the fact that China was the world’s big-gest producer of pork and that pork was the most consumed meat product in the country’ (WTO 2011: 4). Similarly, when questioned about their decision to slaughter three wild boars, a representative from the Iraqi zoo admitted that their actions were not based on science but were rather designed ‘to break a barrier of fear’ amongst zoo visitors (Karadesh 2009). The Philippines, which had banned pork imports from the USA, Mexico and Canada in late April 2009 as a ‘precautionary measure’(Joshi 2009), lifted the ban within a week for the USA and Mexico but sought to justify their continued ban on Canada on the basis of a suspected case of swine- to- human H1N1 infection (Ager 2009).

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What these statements reveal is the critical importance of appropriate public health messaging at the outset of a health emergency. Although the WHO secretariat had attempted to avoid the risk the 2009 H1N1 influ-enza pandemic would become known as the ‘Mexican Flu’, by selecting an alternative descriptor, the organisation had inadvertently instigated harm-ful trade and animal welfare practices. The fact that there was no clinical evidence of the 2009 H1N1 virus spreading between pigs and humans proved irrelevant; the damage had been done by drawing the correlation between pigs and the virus. Compounding the WHO’s mistake, a small number of countries took the additional step of quarantining Mexican citi-zens in their respective countries, or prevented travel to and from Mexico, in an inept attempt to limit the virus’ transmission. Although conceivably it could be argued the proportion of countries that engaged these latter measures was potentially smaller given the IO had acted so precipitously to negate the association being drawn between H1N1 and Mexico, it nev-ertheless proved only partially successful. In hindsight, therefore, it can be appreciated the IO’s initial descriptor was not only a mistake that could have been predicted and easily avoided by selecting an alternative name (such as ‘H1N1’), but it also failed to comprehensively repudiate an asso-ciation between Mexico and the H1N1 virus (and the associated economic repercussions) that was emerging.

Removal of Pandemic Guidelines

Like many disease outbreaks before it, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pan-demic was characterised by much uncertainty. Fortunately, due to the work undertaken post-2005 in strengthening pandemic preparedness through increased disease surveillance and collaborative arrangements, the epidemiological agent responsible for the crisis was rapidly identified as a novel strain of influenza. Importantly, however, it took a number of months after the disease’s identification in April 2009 before the lethality of the virus could be accurately determined. Concern over the severity of the virus and the risk to communities was also exacerbated by interna-tional media reports, particularly in the initial weeks; until sufficient data had been gathered and interpreted, it was unclear what measures were required to contain the disease and prevent unnecessary human morbidity and mortality.

It was within this context that the WHO perpetrated its second nota-ble mistake during the H1N1 pandemic: removing its own pandemic


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influenza guidelines from the organisation’s website. Since 1999 the WHO had actively encouraged countries to strengthen their pandemic preparedness and had released a series of guideline documents that detailed various measures designed to achieve that objective (i.e. build-ing vaccine manufacturing capacity, stockpiling antiviral medications, developing national emergency committees, etc.). These guidelines were also important as they introduced a framework for how and when a pan-demic would be declared by the IO, outlining the multiple stages and decision points (described as ‘phases’) such as ‘limited human-to-human transmission’ through to widespread, sustained community-level infec-tion (WHO 1999a, 2005, 2009c). Somewhat ironically, the WHO secre-tariat had released the latest version of these pandemic influenza guidelines only a few months before the first recorded outbreak of H1N1 in Mexico. One of the crucial factors cited in the most recent ver-sion of the guidelines for declaring a pandemic though had been an assessment of the severity of a virus.

The first recorded cases of H1N1 were officially reported to the WHO by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on 18 April 2009. Within the week, further cases had been confirmed in Mexico, including several clusters of young and previously healthy adults contracting severe pneumonia (WHO 2009g). By late April, Mexican health authorities had obtained reports of infection rates around 50 per cent in some areas (Ibid), with over 1300 suspect cases and approximately 84 probable deaths (PAHO 2009). Within days, laboratory confirmation was obtained that localised outbreaks were occurring in at least 9 countries (WHO 2009a), and by mid-May, the WHO had obtained confirmation of over 5000 cases throughout 30 countries in the Americas, Europe and Oceania (WHO 2009b).

Confronted with irrefutable evidence on the geographical spread of the virus, the WHO convened an emergency committee under the authority of the International Health Regulations (IHR) to assess the data and make recommendations on whether a pandemic should be declared. On 29 April 2009, the IHR emergency committee recommended the director- general raise the alert level from Phase 4 (community-level outbreaks) to Phase 5 (sustained community transmission), which was promptly actioned. According to the WHO’s guidelines though, the declaration of Phase 5 was also intended to send ‘a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent’ (WHO 2009c: 25).

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The elevation of the alert level to Phase 5 was immediately queried by a number of critics, principally because the epidemiological data increas-ingly suggested that the H1N1 virus caused only mild illness in the majority of cases. In fact, by early May 2009, although there were a num-ber of suspected deaths, only 61 H1N1-related fatalities had been verified by laboratory testing, with most infected people experiencing symptoms that were more akin to a seasonal variety of influenza (WHO 2009b). When then asked by a CNN reporter to explain the decision to declare Phase 5 in the light of the fact the WHO had previously maintained a pandemic entailed large numbers of human fatalities and severe illness, the response of the secretariat was to delete its guidelines from its website (Cohen 2009a).

The erasure of the pandemic guidelines—presumably by a member (or members) of the IO’s secretariat that lacked insight into the potential consequences that would arise—understandably created additional confu-sion around the WHO’s decision to declare H1N1 a ‘pandemic’. In an initial attempt to deflect criticism of the secretariat’s actions, rather than accept it had erred in its dealings with the media and accept that its removal of the guidelines was wrong, a WHO official responded to questions about the inclusion of severity criteria in the now-redacted version of the docu-ment as an ‘error’ (Flynn 2010: 9). As preparations for the annual World Health Assembly (WHA) got under way in May though, disquiet about the secretariat’s behaviour grew. Assessing a more robust response was needed, the WHO director-general convened an urgent high-level consul-tation immediately prior to the WHA to review the data and processes used by the secretariat and IHR emergency committee (WHO 2009d). Even so, throughout the WHA, political pressure continued to build for the IO to revise its procedures for declaring a pandemic (SooHoo 2010). The momentum was such that the director-general concluded it was nec-essary to appoint an independent panel to review the organisation’s man-agement of the crisis and give the panel unfettered access.

At the same time as the membership of the independent panel was being agreed upon, a further related scandal hit the WHO when it was revealed the secretariat refused to release the names of the IHR emergency committee members. In late 2009, a Danish newspaper alleged that mem-bers of the IHR emergency committee that advised the director-general received financial support from pharmaceutical manufacturers. The accu-sation further reinforced governments’ earlier concerns by insinuating


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that the director-general had been improperly influenced into declaring a pandemic. Attempting to deflect this latest controversy, senior WHO offi-cials initially publicly advocated that shielding the identities of the IHR emergency committee members was ‘to protect the committee from outside influences’ (Cohen and Carter 2010: 1278). The argument was not sufficiently persuasive though, given the allegations had raised con-cerns over perceived conflicts of interest. As a result, two further external independent reviews were launched by the Council of Europe and a joint investigation by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ). In early June 2010, these investigations handed down their findings, provoking the director-general to issue a strongly worded statement refuting the allegations that had been made and reaffirming that ‘[t]he world is going through a real pandemic. The description of it as a fake is wrong and irresponsible’ (WHO 2010).

All three investigations—the independent WHO panel, the Council of Europe and the BMJ/BIJ—ultimately concluded that while transparency in the WHO’s processes needed to be improved, there was no evidence of improper conduct or undue influence. All three panels did recommend extensive procedural changes to how the IO managed future health emer-gencies, and the director-general agreed to implement those recommen-dations that were within the secretariat’s power, such as making the identities of the IHR emergency committee members public. Even so, as discussed below, a number of the more substantive changes to how the WHO functioned during health emergencies such as the creation of a health emergency contingency fund (HECF) were not implemented due to resistance by member states or inadequate resources, and this in turn was revealed to have adverse impacts on the organisation’s management of the next major health emergency: the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

The WhO’s managemenT Of The 2014 WesT african ebOla OuTbreak

As with the WHO’s handling of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, the IO’s response to the outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa in 2014 attracted considerable scorn. Some critics suggested the organisa-tion should be disbanded and an entirely new entity be created to replace it (Wibulpolprasert and Chowdhury 2016), while others simply pointed to the need for the IO’s urgent and extensive reform. Due to the WHO’s perceived mishandling of the outbreak, the UN secretary-general not only

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established the very first public health mission (the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response or UNMEER) to coordinate the response, he also appointed a high-level panel to review the international community’s capabilities for future health emergencies. In addition, and in a like man-ner to the 2009 pandemic, a series of formal and self-appointed investiga-tions were launched into the WHO’s management of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, the majority of which subsequently concluding that serious mis-takes occurred.

In fact, the WHO is widely considered to have ‘failed’ the international community during the EVD outbreak. The criticisms that emerged have largely centred around the notion that the IO was far too slow to respond to the crisis, and although some have sought to provide additional context for why this occurred (Kamradt-Scott 2016), the perception has neverthe-less persisted. In the following section, this chapter surveys two of the WHO’s most apparent failings during the Ebola outbreak: first, an unwill-ingness to challenge official reports and, second, a lack of adequate coor-dination that contributed to the spread of the virus.

‘Official Reports’

The EVD outbreak in West Africa commenced in late December 2013 when a young child contracted the virus in a remote Guinean village on the border of Sierra Leone and Liberia. Due to a range of factors though, such as poor disease surveillance, laboratory and reporting infrastructure, the outbreak was not officially declared to be under way until 23 March 2014 (WHO 2014b). This delay permitted the virus to circulate unde-tected for some three months and, as a result, had spread across border regions into neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone. Initially suspected to be Lassa Fever, within hours of confirming that the aetiological agent was Ebola, the WHO secretariat in Geneva mobilised a response team via the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) to deploy to Guinea to assist local health authorities. The secretariat also alerted Liberian and Sierra Leonean health officials to commence surveillance. On 27 March 2014, both Liberia and Sierra Leone confirmed they had identi-fied a small number of suspected EVD cases.

In response, throughout April 2014, the WHO secretariat stepped up its efforts to mobilise technical assistance to help the affected countries. By 7 May 2014, some 88 technical experts had subsequently been deployed to assist the health authorities in Guinea, a further 23 had been sent to


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Liberia, 1 to Sierra Leone and 4 to the WHO African regional office (AFRO) (AFRO 2014b). Yet due to a lack of adequate national disease surveillance and reporting systems, the WHO was largely reliant on data being gathered by NGOs such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) that would be cross-referenced with government-based and other sources wherever possible (WHO Ebola Response Team 2014; Baize et al. 2014; WHO 2014a). The dearth of information contributed to further uncer-tainty around the nature of the outbreak, how it was unfolding and where resources were needed most.

By mid-May 2014, the available epidemiological data allegedly indi-cated that the EVD outbreak, which was still predominantly concentrated in Guinea (WHO 2014a), might be nearing its end. Although these claims were refuted by MSF (Blas 2014), the Guinean Minister for Health rein-forced the idea that the outbreak would soon be over at the 67th WHA later that same month when he reported his country was ‘yielding very encouraging results’ with five out of the six loci of the epidemic now under control (WHO 2015a). The Guinean government then went even further, explicitly rejecting MSF’s assertions that the outbreak was ‘out of control’ (Fofana 2014). While such proclamations may have persuaded some, any initial optimism proved short-lived, and by mid-June, the accu-racy of the MSF’s account was laid bare. It was at this juncture the flaws in the WHO secretariat’s approach to managing the crisis became particu-larly apparent.

Indeed, as early as March 2014, reports had emerged of large numbers of suspected Ebola deaths occurring in Monrovia (Sengupta 2015). Yet by the end of April the Liberian government—whether through negligence or obfuscation—had only ever reported one suspected case within the entire county of Montserrado (WHO 2014c, d). That only one case had been officially reported was not especially surprising at the time, given the well-acknowledged paucity of the disease surveillance systems and the absence of robust laboratory verification capacity. Yet rather than chal-lenge these official figures, the WHO secretariat took the government’s statistics at face value, seemingly accepting it was an accurate assessment. Later, when the Guinean health minister asserted at the WHA that his country’s epidemic was now under control, the IO again failed to contest this claim, accepting the health minister’s declaration. Between the end of the WHA and two weeks later on 10 June 2014, however, Guinea and Sierra Leone recorded approximately 150 new infections, bringing the cumulative total to 440 suspected or confirmed EVD cases. Within a week that figure had risen again to 528, with Liberia reporting 9 new suspected

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cases and 5 deaths—the first to be reported since April earlier that year and a new tranche that would ultimately evolve into thousands (AFRO 2014c).

The WHO secretariat’s unwillingness to gainsay the claims made by Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea as to the nature of their domestic epi-demics is perplexing to say the least and can only be considered a serious error in judgement. It must be recalled that the 2014 outbreak was the first appearance of the Zaire strain of EVD in West Africa—with a few limited exceptions, the majority of documented outbreaks had occurred in either Uganda, the Sudan, Gabon or the Democratic Republic of Congo (CDC 2016). As a result, health officials within the affected countries had never previously managed a domestic EVD outbreak. In such circum-stances, it could, and arguably should, have been anticipated that mistakes would occur and that accurate data collection would be made even more problematic given the heightened anxiety that often accompanies Ebola outbreaks—the world’s most deadly disease.

Poor Coordination of Effort

Exacerbating and, to some degree, contributing to the WHO’s mishan-dling of the 2014 Ebola outbreak were discrepancies between the organ-isation’s central headquarters in Geneva and the AFRO. The division of the WHO into seven different branches—six regional offices and a central headquarters—was a by-product of negotiations that commenced in 1946 to merge the Pan American Sanitary (later Health) Bureau with the newly created IO. Although the aim in the immediate post-war period had been to dissolve all pre-existing international health organisations to make way for the new universal health agency, representatives from the Bureau staunchly resisted the idea. The negotiations took three years to conclude, with the Bureau finally acceding to become the Americas regional office of the WHO in 1949. As part of the agreement that was struck, however, the Bureau retained considerable autonomy both in terms of setting their own policy direction and in terms of financial arrangements. Importantly, the Bureau’s decision created a precedent for the creation of subsequent regional offices that culminated in the IO’s current structure.

The structural composition of the WHO has been frequently identified as contributing to a range of inefficiencies, duplication of effort, poor health outcomes and obstructive infighting (Godlee 1994; WHO 1999b; Burci and Vignes 2004). Regrettably, the structural arrangements mani-fested as a problem throughout the 2014 Ebola outbreak as well. For


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example, as revealed in a leaked internal memo, AFRO representatives convened an emergency teleconference on 24 March 2014 in which the number of suspected Guinean cases and the ‘high possibility of cross- border transmission’ were noted with concern (Cheng and Satter 2015). In response, the AFRO secretariat advocated that the regional director declare an ‘internal WHO Grade 2 emergency’ and establish a regional emergency support team to coordinate technical and operational support. This action plan was approved the same day (AFRO 2014a); yet by 5 May 2014, whereas the WHO secretariat in Geneva had deployed almost 90 staff to Guinea, only 20 were sent to Liberia, 1 was dispatched to Sierra Leone and 4 were sent to the regional office. The Geneva-based secretar-iat’s dispersal of technical expertise thus did not reflect a regional approach but instead focused predominantly on Guinea as the worst-affected country.

This suggests that information and decisions taken at the regional level were not sufficiently communicated to the central office or, if they were, not acted upon. Speculation emerged at the time that the lack of effective communication between Geneva and AFRO was as a result of personality differences involving the director-general, Margaret Chan, and the then AFRO regional director, Luis Gomes Sambo, who was later replaced in office (Gostin 2015a). Irrespective of whether such hearsay was grounded on fact or the AFRO recommendation for a regional team was communi-cated or not, the decision to send the bulk of personnel to Guinea none-theless suggests staff in Geneva lacked sufficient insight into how the outbreak might unfold and spread to neighbouring states. Such an over-sight is virtually indefensible though given the outbreak was known to have started in an area close to international borders and surveillance sys-tems throughout the region were known to be inadequate.

If the central headquarters staff made mistakes though, so too did the AFRO secretariat. Indeed, somewhat ironically, the AFRO had updated and released their standard operating procedures (SOPs) for responding to disease outbreaks in March 2014 (AFRO 2014d). These new SOPs, which emphasised the importance of quality and consistency in managing adverse events (Ibid: 11), stipulated that AFRO had the responsibility for conducting regional risk assessments and coordinating the response to outbreaks affecting the region—in contrast, as noted in the SOPs, to WHO headquarters that had responsibility for global risk assessments and response (Ibid: 14). Yet, as Gostin (2015b: 1904) notes, ‘AFRO did not convene health ministers or open a regional coordination centre until

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3 months after Ebola was confirmed in Guinea’. By this stage, the virus had spread to neighbouring Sierra Leone and Liberia where, due to poor surveillance and response systems, the pathogen went on to infect thou-sands. Thus, whether due to obfuscation, intransigence or negligence, the AFRO secretariat’s slack of adherence to their own standards proved a costly mistake.

The performance of the AFRO, and in particular its regional director, understandably attracted considerable international media attention and further undermined the WHO’s reputation (Gale et al. 2014, Sack et al. 2014). Arguably, however, while the regional office attracted the ire of some, the majority of criticism was levelled at the WHO staff in Geneva. By September 2014, for instance, the IO’s response was being described extensively by a wide range of external commentators as slow and ineffec-tual (Anonymous 2014; Sack et al. 2014). While the director-general pub-licly attempted to defend her organisation by stressing that the agency was not the ‘first responder’ (Fink 2014), these perceptions were not aided by the unauthorised release of an internal review that identified ‘severe short-comings’ in the WHO’s response (Cheng 2014). Further mistakes were then uncovered in March 2015 with the publication of the AP investiga-tion that revealed staff in Geneva had actively resisted attempts to declare the event a global public health emergency over concerns that it may antagonise the affected countries (Cheng and Satter 2015). Collectively, the multiple reports and revelations consolidated the perception amongst many world leaders that the WHO had ‘failed’ the international commu-nity, prompting the UN secretary-general to take an unprecedented action in establishing the United Nations’ first ever public health mission (UNMEER), while other countries deployed military personnel to assist with the response (Kamradt-Scott et al. 2015).

can The WhO learn frOm iTs misTakes?Even before the EVD outbreak had been contained in West Africa, a num-ber of formal reviews had been established to scrutinise the WHO’s han-dling of the event. As Gostin et al. (2016) have observed, of these, four commissions were of particular note: (i) WHO Ebola Interim Assessment Panel, (ii) the Harvard University/London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola, (iii) the US National Academy of Medicine’s Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future and (iv) the UN High Level Panel on the


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Global Response to Health Crises. Disturbingly, very many of the recom-mendations produced by these commissions echoed the practical steps for enhancing global health security advanced by the various H1N1 review panels four years earlier. Critically though, the majority had not been acted upon, raising the question of whether the EVD outbreak could have been contained sooner, saving lives (Ottersen et al. 2016). To what extent, therefore, was the failure to enact these earlier recommendations the fault of the WHO secretariat? Was this yet another of the organisation’s mis-takes? Perhaps most importantly, can the IO learn from these commis-sions’ findings to prevent future mistakes?

Collectively, the multiple investigations held in the wake of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the 2014 EVD outbreak identified a num-ber of structural, financial and operational factors that contributed to the WHO’s mishandling of these crises. Issues such as a lack of an ‘emergency culture’ in how the IO responded to crises, bureaucratic inefficiency, inad-equate human and financial resources due to the disproportionate level of ‘voluntary’ (and thus tied) contributions, technical capacity and unhelpful competition between regional offices and the WHO headquarters emerged as common themes (GHRF Commission 2016; Moon et al. 2015; Stocking et al. 2015; Kikwete et al. 2016; Flynn 2010; Cohen and Carter 2010; WHO 2011). To redress these identified weaknesses, the indepen-dent panels and commissions suggested various remedies extending from increasing member states’ annual payments (otherwise described as ‘assessed contributions’), refining the IO’s work priorities, establishing a new global health emergency workforce (GHEW), creating an HECF, increasing the secretariat’s transparency and accountability, amongst oth-ers. For its part, the WHO bureaucracy responded to a number of the proposals, outlining measures it believed could reasonably be taken to address the problems identified (WHO 2016b).

Importantly, however, in each of the above instances, the WHO’s mis-takes can be directly attributed—in large part—to the organisation’s sec-retariat. The decision to initially label the H1N1 influenza virus as ‘swine flu’, for instance, was intended to avert damage to Mexico’s economy but incited animal welfare turpitude and economic damage in the form of trade barriers. Likewise, the decision to remove influenza policy guidelines when discrepancies were identified, presumably as part of some (mis-guided) media strategy, rests exclusively with the secretariat. These initial mistakes were then further compounded during Ebola with a combination of obstructive interpersonal and intraorganisational dynamics adversely

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impacting the response and an aberrant willingness to accept member states’ unverified claims as to how well the outbreak was contained. Collectively, these mistakes suggest a risk-averse, reactionary bureaucracy and one highly protective of the organisation’s reputation. To date, there is little indication that this mind-set has changed.

At the same time, as with the United Nations itself, the WHO ulti-mately exists as the sum of its parts: member states. Governments retain the primary authority for setting the policy direction and resources these IOs command and, correspondingly, retain the power to constrain and impede secretariats where there is a collective willingness to do so. While there are certain circumstances whereby the bureaucracies are able to peri-odically ‘shirk’ the preferences of their member states, equally, govern-ments have a variety of means—or ‘control mechanisms’—at their disposal to reign in, even punish, IOs that are perceived to enjoy too much auton-omy (Barnett and Finnemore 2004; Oestreich 2012a). These control measures habitually include assorted legislative and economic instruments inserted into the organisations’ design at the time of their creation to allow member states to shape and direct how the IOs behave (Schermers and Blokker 2003).

This is not to suggest, however, the WHO secretariat is powerless to effect change in the face of member state intransigence. Indeed, there have been a number of examples whereby the IO has acted against the expressed desires of governments, even the most powerful and influen-tial. Two notable instances include the production of the 2000 World Health Report that ranked member states’ health systems and the director- general’s decision to publicly ‘name and shame’ China during the 2003 SARS outbreak. In each instance, repercussions from member states followed (Kamradt-Scott 2015), but the secretariat was able to exert its own influence on matters the director-general considered espe-cially important.

With regard to many of the proposed reforms identified by the inde-pendent panels and commissions, however, several of the structural, pro-cedural and operational issues are beyond the secretariat’s immediate ability to execute. For instance, in the wake of both the H1N1 and EVD crises, proposals emerged for the WHO to establish a GHEW as well as an HECF. Throughout 2015 the secretariat undertook consultations to secure agreement to enact these initiatives, and at least initially, both appeared to enjoy strong support (WHO 2015b). As a result, both the GHEW and HECF were formally launched in 2016. Yet despite multiple


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pledges of support throughout the WHA and regional committee meet-ings, by 2017, both schemes have failed to attract the requisite funding to make them viable (WHO 2017). The WHO secretariat has persisted with the resources it has acquired (WHO 2016a), but without additional financial resources, the organisation’s ability to employ the necessary personnel to operate these initiatives, and thus manage crises effectively, is compromised.

Having said this, as this chapter has highlighted, there are clearly ele-ments of the WHO’s management of health crises that are within the organisation’s ability to change. The secretariat’s decision to remove guidelines during the H1N1 pandemic, for example, was unwarranted and yet inflicted considerable, unnecessary reputational damage. Similarly, the labelling of H1N1 initially as ‘swine flu’ resulted in a series of unintended consequences, whereas the aversion to challenging member states’ official reports during the West African EVD outbreak proved disastrous and was fundamentally motivated more by politics than technical incapacity. Such mistakes are readily avoidable, and while the coordination problems iden-tified in the Ebola response reflect a deeper organisational (bureaucratic and cultural) predicament, all these issues fall fully within the purview of the IO secretariat’s ability to realise. So, to what extent has the WHO learnt this lesson?

Perhaps the most fundamental reform to be instigated post-Ebola has been the launch of the WHO Health Emergency Programme (WHE). This new initiative seeks to develop a new organisation-wide policy frame-work for responding to health emergencies as well as recruit new special-ised personnel that will be distributed across the IO’s central headquarters, regional offices and country offices. As outlined in the proposal that mem-ber states have endorsed, ‘[i]n high-vulnerability, low-capacity countries, WHO offices will have dedicated staff to support Member States with their work in all-hazards preparedness and response capacity building’ (WHO 2016c: 3). To accomplish this, the WHE ‘will require the recruitment of a substantial number of additional staff, with new skill sets’ than the IO cur-rently retains (Ibid: 6). These new resources—both human and policy—are intended to ensure that on-the-ground assessments are conducted within 72 hours of official notification of a possible ‘high-threat pathogen’ (Ibid: 4). More broadly, the new programme and its personnel are expected to ‘bring speed and predictability to WHO’s emergency work, using an all-hazards approach, promoting collective action, and encompassing pre-paredness, readiness, response and early recovery activities’ (Ibid: 1).

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As the implementation of the WHE remains under way at the time of writing, it is difficult to fully ascertain whether this programme will help preclude a repeat of past mistakes. Given, however, that elements of the WHO secretariat had hoped member states would authorise even further modifications to improve the organisation’s crisis response (Fink 2015), it is reasonable to surmise that the IO’s bureaucracy has gained an appreciation of the need to do better in future health crises. Although this may not be evidence of lesson learning per se, it is argu-ably a strong indication of an internal cultural shift. Indeed, the WHE offers the secretariat a strategic opportunity to realign its current risk-averse approach. If embraced, it may help the organisation to avoid repeating the type of mistakes discussed above. Like the GHEW and HECF though, the new WHE is also struggling to gain the necessary financial backing to see the programme fully operationalised (WHO 2017). Here again, therefore, the secretariat is confronted with a dilemma whereby member states, desiring the WHO to change, appear unwilling to trust the organisation sufficiently with the resources to realise their preferred outcome.

Within this context, it is also unreasonable to expect the WHO to never err again. The IO, ultimately, comprises individuals, and as Oestreich (2012b) observes, ‘[p]eople are quirky, unpredictable, and unique’. Events such as disease outbreaks are often permeated by pervasive uncer-tainty, and while they do oftentimes create political space for change, as Ottersen et al. (2016) have also noted, the ‘policy windows’ for imple-menting change can be brief. Converting the organisation’s culture to adopt an ‘emergency mind-set’ is unlikely to be accomplished quickly, principally as reforming bureaucracies can be a laborious, tedious process. The combination of these two crises, occurring in comparatively rapid suc-cession as they did, generated a desire for the IO to reform how it accom-plishes its constitutional mandate, but it remains unclear how long the current window of opportunity will remain open.

cOnclusiOn

As the WHO enters its eighth decade, the organisation again finds itself confronting a crisis of confidence, largely precipitated by a series of mis-takes that occurred during two health emergencies: the 2009 H1N1 influ-enza pandemic and the 2014 EVD outbreak in West Africa. In the aftermath of the second of these events, political momentum built


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amongst member states to significantly reform the organisation’s pro-cesses, procedures and even internal culture, to make the entity more capable of responding efficiently and effectively in the future. Yet, while there currently seems to be an appetite for a reformed WHO (as opposed to abolishing the organisation and starting over), a number of challenges still remain. These notably include financial resources to implement and follow through on the multiple new programmes and initiatives that have been launched, yet it remains—at the time of writing—decidedly unclear whether these resources will be forthcoming.

For its part, the WHO secretariat appears to have learnt that it needs to perform better in future health crises. Besides external (financial) sup-port though, there are still hurdles to be overcome, most poignantly effecting an internal cultural change from its standard slow and method-ical work of standard and agenda-setting to adopt an emergency responder culture. It is a change that will not be easy and will likely take some time to attain. In the event that such a change can be realised though, and the organisation’s past mistakes avoided, it bodes well for the international community and global health security. We can only hope it is the latter.

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———. 2011. Implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005): Report of the Review Committee on the Functioning of the International Health Regulations. Geneva: World Health Organization.

———. 2013. Evolution of a Pandemic: A(H1N1) 2009, April 2009-August 2010. Geneva: World Health Organization.

———. 2014a. Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea – Update, 26 March 2014. World Health Organization. Available at http://www.who.int/csr/don/2014_03_ 26_ebola/en/. 3 Jan 2017.

———. 2014b. Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea, 23 March 2014. World Health Organization. Available at http://www.who.int/csr/don/2014_03_23_ebola/en/. 14 Dec 2016.

———. 2014c. Ebola Virus Disease, West Africa – Update, 14 April 2014. World Health Organization. Available at http://www.who.int/csr/don/2014_ 04_14_ebola/en/. 26 Jan 2017.

———. 2014d. Ebola Virus Disease, West Africa – Update, 25 April 2014. World Health Organization. Available at http://www.who.int/csr/don/2014_04_ 25_ebola/en/. 26 Jan 2017.

———. 2015a. Key Events in the WHO Response to the Ebola Outbreak: One year into the Ebola Epidemic. World Health Organization. Available at http://www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/one-year-report/who-response/en/. 26 Jan 2017.

———. 2015b. Sixty-Eighth World Health Assembly, 18–26 May 2015: Resolutions and Decisions, Annexes. Geneva: World Health Organization.

———. 2016a. Health Emergencies: WHO Response in Severe, Large-Scale Emergencies: Report by the Director-General. Geneva: World Health Organization.

———. 2016b. Strengthening Health Security by Implementing the International Health Regulations (2005). The Review Committee on the Role of the International Health Regulations (2005) in the Ebola Outbreak and Response. Geneva: World Health Organization.

———. 2016c. Reform of WHO’s Work in Health Emergency Management: WHO Health Emergencies Programme, Report by the Director-General. Geneva: World Health Organization.

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Wibulpolprasert, Suwit, and Mustaque Chowdhury. 2016. World Health Organization: Overhaul or Dismantle? American Journal of Public Health 106 (11): 1910–1911.

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CHAPTER 10

‘Success’ and ‘Failure’ in International Development: Assessing Evolving UK

Objectives in Conditional Aid Policy Since the Cold War

Jonathan Fisher

Notions of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ have long been intrinsic to the interna-tional development enterprise.1 Aid programmes and interventions have clearly stated objectives, mid-term reviews, evaluation reports and ‘lessons learned’ processes built into them as standard practice in the case of most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development-Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) donors. More generally, the emer-gence of development paradigms and new approaches—from structural adjustment to ‘good governance’ and ‘thinking and working politically’—has traditionally been premised upon growing expert and practitioner consensus around the ‘failure’ of current practice, in the wider context of long-standing debates on improving the effectiveness of aid and, indeed, on whether aid ‘works’ at all (Dollar and Svensson 2000; Fisher and Marquette 2016; Grindle 2004; Moyo 2009).

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The purported linearity of aid programmes’ stated success mecha-nisms—underscored in ‘evidence-based’ programme business cases and the ‘theories of change’ which they often claim to be guided by—often obscure, however, the complex political economy of delineating measures of success or failure for many aid agencies and the shifting understandings of success attached to particular instruments and policies occurring within donor institutions over time and contexts (acknowledged formally or not). The ambiguities and, at times, contradictions that can emerge in this regard stem—as this chapter demonstrates—from the multiple audiences aid agencies must seek to serve and placate de facto in undertaking their work. For while aid recipients—for the most part, state and non-state actors in the Global South—are often presented as the primary ‘partners’ in a development initiative, in practice aid agencies must also be cognizant of the views, preferences and prejudices of their own political and financial backers, namely domestic publics and government ministers. This com-plex requirement to maintain accountability domestically and internation-ally is rendered even more acute by the almost unique vulnerability of aid agencies within Western state architectures—while all ministries may see their budgets fluctuate, few need fear institutional annihilation—particu-larly on the basis of public opinion trends; the last decade has nevertheless seen all but one independent aid ministry folded into another department (usually foreign affairs) (Gulrajani 2015).

In unpacking the nature of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in international development, this chapter will focus on ‘political conditionality’ (PC)—the placing by donors of political conditions upon aid, often (and as explored in this chapter) through suspending aid flows to states per-ceived as violating particular norms. Analyses of PC since the early 1990s have focused heavily on identifying trends in its application and answer-ing one central question—‘does it work?’ A less common, but no less important, question, however, is ‘do policy-makers expect it to work?’ and, indeed, ‘why do they use the instrument?’ The apparent return of PC in the management of many donor–recipient relationships since the mid-2000s—particularly linked to the disbursement of General Budget Support (GBS)—provides a suitable opportunity to re-focus discussion of the phenomenon in a manner that addresses this analytical and empir-ical gap around objectives, expectations and understanding the instru-ment’s success or failure.

This chapter therefore attempts to explore donor motivations for imposing PC. In doing so, two major categories of motivations for

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applying PC are delineated. Developed from conceptual debates in the literature on economic sanctions these are instrumental (where PC is applied to force aid recipients to implement political reforms) and expres-sive (where PC is applied to signal disapproval of the recipient’s actions—for domestic or international audiences—without any clear expectation that actual reforms will follow). Establishing whether a particular PC deci-sion is based primarily on instrumental or expressive rationales has impor-tant implications for how the effectiveness of the instrument should be assessed; if donors do not intend for a particular suspension to result in political change, should they be criticised when it does not? Should this be interpreted as a policy failure, or something else? Moreover, if dominant rationales for PC have shifted over time, this too raises crucial questions for scholars and practitioners on how they should assess the effectiveness of the instrument.

In investigating the key rationales for PC decisions the policies and per-spectives of one major donor—the UK—since 1990 are reviewed and cri-tiqued. Britain has played a particularly prominent role in promoting and employing PC in the past (particularly between ca.1991 and 1995) and in its revival since ca.2004. Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) has also—more than many other donors—con-sciously sought to explain and rationalise its usage of PC since 2005 with a view to influencing how other Western donors employ it (DFID 2006a, b). This has been a reasonable ambition given the widespread acceptance among many in the Western development community today that DFID represents a ‘thought leader’ second only to the World Bank. The UK’s position as one of the leading aid donors—particularly in sub-Saharan Africa—and providers of GBS also provide it with a degree of influence in international development for and within ‘in-country’ cross-donor group-ings that few other donors possess.

The chapter ultimately argues that while expressive motivations have always played a role in London’s PC decisions, they have become increas-ingly central since the mid-2000s. Likewise, where the expressive dimen-sions of PC impositions in the 1990s were mainly aimed at the international level, those of today are focused far more clearly on domestic, British audi-ences. Finally, while instrumental rationales were highly influential in the PC decisions of the 1990s, they have become largely irrelevant in the contemporary era. DFID officials do not believe that PC can force politi-cal change on aid recipients but continue to use it—in relation to GBS, at least—as a means of communicating with an increasingly aid-sceptical

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domestic audience. The final part of the chapter suggests several factors which have led to this state of affairs and reflect on how these changing rationales behind the instrument raise difficult questions around viewing PC as a success or a failure in its current application.

This analysis draws upon semi-structured interviews carried out with current and former DFID staff—and former staff of DFID’s predecessor, the Overseas Development Administration (ODA)—between 2007 and 2013. Interviewees include current and former staff at varying levels based in both London and regional and country offices. Internal DFID and ODA documents released to the author under the 2000 Freedom of Information Act (UK) are also analysed together with public statements, ODA/DFID documents and media reporting.

The chapter is structured as follows: The next section reviews and cri-tiques the existing literature on PC, highlighting in particular its reluc-tance to explore the intentions and perspectives of donor officials involved in imposing the modality. The literature on the purpose of economic sanc-tions, however, does speak to this debate and is therefore engaged with as a means to develop a set of categories for conceptualising donor PC ratio-nales and understanding its degree of success vis-à-vis its objectives. The chapter then introduces the British case and analyses London’s employ-ment of PC since the Cold War highlighting a significant shift in UK thinking on the modality’s efficacy from instrumental to expressive and from international norm-signaller to domestic reputational risk manage-ment tool. The next section delineates a number of reasons for this shift in the last decade linked to the domestic and international political economy of aid management in the contemporary era. The chapter concludes by exploring the implications of these findings for development scholars and policymakers interested in understanding the success, or failure, of the mechanism.

Political conditionality Under ScrUtiny

The term PC has been defined and employed in several different ways by scholars and policymakers since its coining in the early 1990s. In essence, it refers to the placing by donors of ‘political’ conditions upon their aid disbursements with many scholars dividing this behaviour into ‘positive’ conditionality (where aid is released once conditions have been fulfilled) and ‘negative’ or ‘restrictive’ conditionality, or ‘aid sanctions’ (where aid is suspended when conditions have not been, or are no longer being,

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fulfilled) (Crawford 1997: 69–70; Stokke 1995: 11–13; Waller 1995: 401–408). Much of the PC literature has, however, tended to focus upon the latter—as this study also does.

Scholarly interest in PC has tended to focus on questions of PC’s ulti-mate instrumentality and effectiveness: ‘does it work? That is, does the threat of, or actual withholding [of aid] sway recipient governments into a different course of action?’ (Hayman 2011: 683; see also Crawford 1997, 2000; Levitsky and Way 2006; Molenaers et al. 2010; Moore and Robinson 1994; Smith 1998; Stokke 1995; Uvin 1993). In evaluating the success or failure of the instrument on these terms—employing McConnell’s (2010: 357) broad definition of policy failure being ‘if [a policy] does not fundamentally achieve the goals that proponents set out to achieve’—one would need to focus on whether the aid suspension prompted political reform in the recipient state within the area highlighted as the trigger for the suspension.

This approach is, however, based on a set of assumptions that repre-sent only one way to look at the PC phenomenon. Exploring whether PC ‘works’, for example, fails to investigate the extent to which donors themselves actually apply it in the hope—or belief—that it will work, whether one understands ‘work’ as above or otherwise. The purpose of this chapter is to offer an alternative perspective—one which focuses on exploring and comprehending the motivations of officials within donor agencies for actually applying the instrument—and thus, evaluating it on these terms.

Few aid scholars have attempted to explore or unpack the reasons why donors use PC—either conceptually or empirically (though see Molenaers 2012). Similar questions have, nevertheless, been addressed within the literature on economic sanctions to some extent. Galtung argued—in a study of economic sanctions applied to Rhodesia—that sanctions can have ‘expressive functions’ as well as ‘instrumental’ ones and that ‘there is the value [on the part of an interested state] of at least doing something … of being busy in time of crisis’—that is, in imposing sanctions to make a political statement and not just to force reform (Galtung 1967: 411). Several scholars have since sought to develop this instrumental/expressive distinction at the conceptual level. Lindsay, for example, delineates five ‘aims’ of imposing trade sanctions—compliance (by the target with a stated policy), subversion (forcing the overthrow of the target govern-ment), deterrence (discouraging the target from repeating an action), international symbolism and domestic symbolism (Lindsay 1986).


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In applying these frameworks to PC motivations it is useful to consider the extent to which Lindsay’s variety of aims actually applies in reality. Thus, instrumental-based aid cuts are usually premised on compliance and deterrence but rarely, at least explicitly, on subversion. The case of Malawi in 1992, however, reveals that PC impositions can—in part—lead to sub-version even if this was not part of the original rationale for the aid suspen-sion (Brown 2004). Likewise, expressive-based cuts can rarely be said to have only domestic symbolism in mind, and many such impositions clearly seek to make a point to domestic and international audiences simultane-ously. It is important to keep in mind in any analysis of donor motivations, therefore, that multiple rationales for each decision can exist at any one time and that differentiating between instrumental and expressive ratio-nales, and sub-types within each, must be about identifying degrees and extents rather than clear-cut dichotomies.

In examining London’s motivations for applying PC since the Cold War, therefore, this chapter seeks primarily to distinguish between deci-sions based primarily on instrumental rationales and decisions based pri-marily on expressive ones (including both domestic and international symbolism). It is perhaps most helpful to view each PC decision as plot-ted somewhere on a spectrum between the two extremes of instrumental and expressive rationales (Fig. 10.1). At one end, the key focus is on the recipient state and influencing developments there, while at the other the focus is on domestic audiences and managing their perceptions of the donor.

the UK’S USe of Political conditionality Since the cold War: changeS and continUitieS

Though the UK had imposed what might be called PC in a number of isolated cases during the height of the Cold War, those applied to Fiji in 1987, Burma in 1988 and—particularly—Kenya in 1991 represent the

Instrumental Expressive

Subversion Compliance Deterrence International symbolism Domestic symbolism

Fig. 10.1 Primary motivation spectrum for political conditionality (Source: Adapted from Lindsay (1986))

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first examples of London doing so as part of a more systematic and enduring policy shift. Since 1987, the UK has suspended, delayed or re-directed aid away from recipient governments based on governance con-cerns in around 35 instances (see below) with the withholding of all GBS to Tanzania following accusations of corrupt use of Central Bank funds in October 2014 being the most recent examples at the time of writing (Anderson 2014). These 35 instances represent the universe of cases under scrutiny in this section. Before exploring trends, changes and con-tinuities in the UK’s use of, and rationale for, PC since 1991, however, it is important to outline the changing institutional context in which the instrument has been applied and governed.

From ODA to DFID: Effects on Political Conditionality Policy

During the 18 years of Conservative government between 1979 and 1997, Britain’s aid programme was managed by the ODA—a semi- autonomous organisation within the country’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). During this period, British aid policy was frequently designed to support and defend UK foreign policy interests, particularly those linked to trade (Killick 2005: 68–83). Following the election of a Labour administration in May 1997, however, ODA was separated from the FCO becoming an independent department of state, DFID, with its own secretary of state attending as a full member of Cabinet.

DFID rapidly established itself, strongly supported by DFID Secretary Clare Short’s forceful dynamism, as the antithesis of its predecessor (Vereker 2002: 136–138).2 The Department defined its sole objective as being the ‘elimination of global poverty’ with the linking of British aid programmes to foreign or trade policy objectives not only discouraged but effectively criminalised in the 2002 International Development Act.3 In addition to seeking to change the intellectual culture of the Department since 1997 through the hiring of staff with closer links to development, DFID managers have also attempted to decentralise development policy-making since 1997.4 Staff in DFID Country Offices are the key decision- makers on how aid money is spent in ‘their’ countries, and this dispensation has not changed since the Labour Party’s loss of power in 2010. An important exception to this decentralisation of authority, however, con-cerns the imposition of PC, a decision which has remained largely in the hands of DFID’s secretary of state and his or her London officials since 1997 (de Renzio et al. 2005: 30).5


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The UK’s Use of Political Conditionality Since 1987: The Universe of Cases

PC has been imposed by the UK around 35 times since 1987—12 times under ODA and 23 under DFID. Threats to apply PC have also been made on a number of occasions but not followed through for a variety of reasons (Crawford 1997: 75–77; de Renzio et al. 2005: 12). It is not pos-sible to be wholly certain that these represent the entire universe of cases—although they include all examples cited in existing secondary literature (including systematic comparisons produced in 1997 and 2005), in media sources and ODA/DFID statements consulted and in interviews under-taken for this chapter.

The following tables, which delineate instances of UK aid suspensions, delays or diversions linked to concerns on democratisation, corruption, human rights abuses and security under ODA (Table 10.1) and DFID (Table 10.2)—and the stated rationales for these decisions (where avail-able)—since 1987, represent as complete a list as possible. While Table 10.1 captures PC imposed on a range of aid modalities, Table 10.2 focuses only on PC applied to GBS disbursements—reflecting DFID’s almost total restriction of PC decisions to this modality in the contemporary era (Hayman 2011, see also Molenaers et al. 2015, 2016).

Table 10.1 Applications of political conditionality by ODA (1987–1997)

Year Country PC applied to

Reason(s) for application (where stated)

1987 Fiji Democratisation/military coup1988 Burma Democratisation/human rights abuses1991 Kenya Democratisation1991 Sudan Military coup/democratisation1991 Somalia Security/Civil War1992 Malawi Democratisation1992 Sierra Leone Democratisation/military coup1992 Peru Democratisation1993 Nigeria Democratisation/military coup1994 Gambia Democratisation/military coup1995 Kenya Corruption/governance1996 Zambia Political liberties/democratisation/‘good governance’

Sources: Crawford (1997, 2000); de Renzio et al. (2005); Mokoro 2005; Stokke (1995); UK Parliament (1992)

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A comparison of the two tables highlights a number of basic trends in the imposition of PC by London since 1987. Firstly, while PC applied dur-ing the 1980s–1990s tended to focus primarily on instances of democratic backsliding or political space (10 of 14–72%), PC since about 2001 has been directed far more towards corruption concerns (15 of 16–94%). Secondly, while some states have been consistently targeted by UK PC since 1987—notably Malawi—others have received greater attention in either the 1990s (e.g. Kenya, Zambia and Tanzania) or the 2000s (e.g. Uganda and Rwanda); all, however, have been African since 1992. This is

Table 10.2 Applications of political conditionality by DFID (1997–2014)

Year Country PC applied to

Reason(s) for application (where stated)

2000 Tanzania (Zanzibar)

Security/democratisation (police repression of Zanzibari elections)

2001 Kenya Corruption2001 Malawi Corruption and executive interference in judiciary2001 Tanzania Corruption2002 Uganda Security/defence spending2004 Malawi Corruption2004 Rwanda Security/military involvement in Congo2005 Ethiopia Security/democratisation (violent regime response to

electoral protests)2005 Uganda Democratisation2006 Uganda Democratisation2007 Bangladesh Corruption2008 Tanzania Corruption2009 Zambia Corruption2009 Cambodia Corruption2010 Uganda Corruption2011 Uganda Corruption2011 Malawi Democratisation/political liberties/fiscal indiscipline/

expulsion of British High Commissioner2012 Uganda Corruption2012 Rwanda Security/alleged support for Congolese rebel

movement2012 Mozambique Corruption2013 Uganda Corruption2013 Malawi Corruption2014 Tanzania Corruption

Sources: de Renzio et al. (2005); DFID (2006b: 160–161); DFID (2007: 123–124); DFID (2008: 91–92); DFID (2009a: 197); DFID (2010: 68–69); DFID (2011: 96); DFID (2012: 55); DFID (2013: 115); Hayman (2011: 675–678); Mokoro (2005); Molenaers et al. (2016)


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perhaps not surprising, given both ODA’s and DFID’s very heavy focus on Africa in their programmes (UK Parliament 2008: 75). As noted by a range of commentators, though, many states have not seen PC being imposed upon them by London in certain periods, despite what one DFID-commissioned report called ‘the gravity and impact’ of particular government transgressions (Brown 2005; Crawford 1997, 2000; Cumming 2001; de Renzio et al. 2005; Porteous 2005). It is crucial, however, to interrogate and unpack these—and other—trends identified in greater depth in order to better understand the UK’s evolving employ-ment of PC and evaluations of its ‘success’ and ‘failure’. The following section, therefore, analyses how far instrumental and expressive rationales have lain behind PC decisions by London across these 35 instances.

Changes in UK Political Conditionality Policy Rationales Since 1991: From Instrumental to Expressive

The UK’s use of PC has always been motivated in part by expressive objec-tives—particularly a desire to be seen to be ‘acting’ in the face of high- profile governance abuses by aid-recipient government—such as in Kenya in 1991, Malawi in 1992, Ethiopia in 2005 or Uganda in 2006 (Aalen and Tronvoll 2008: 117; Brown 2007: 307–313; Cammack 1998: 183–205; Fisher 2012: 421–422). ODA and DFID officials involved in these PC decisions discuss these events in terms of their being ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’, the stepping over of a ‘red line’ by the recipient which made PC necessary and justifiable.6

It is also clear, nonetheless, that ODA officials in the 1990s—and their political masters—viewed PC as a credible and potentially effective means to force political reform upon intransigent, semi-authoritarian regimes. Senior decision-makers involved in the aid suspensions to Kenya, Sudan, Somalia (all 1991), Malawi (1992) and Nigeria (1993) have privately stressed their ‘genuine belief’ at the time that PC could ‘bring democracy’ to Africa.7 These statements are supported by the public and private behaviour of ODA personnel during this period. PC was applied with specific guidance and recommendations given to the regimes in question as to how the aid relationship might be restored—usually the abolition of one-party states and/or a return to constitutional government (Crawford 1997; Cumming 2001).

Internal ODA discussions on the re-establishment of aid programmes in states subjected to PC focused heavily on assessments of whether the

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regime in question had responded in a ‘positive’ or ‘satisfactory’ manner to the specific conditions demanded by London (ODA 1992a, b, c). Likewise, the publicising of decisions and on-going discussions on PC to the British media and general public appear to have been frequently opposed in order, as one internal document on Malawi produced in June 1992 puts it, ‘to encourage as positive a response as possible [on political reform] from the Malawi Government’ (ODA 1992b).

Early impositions of PC by the UK, therefore, appear to have been informed, at least in part, by an ‘instrumental’ understanding of the tool’s efficacy. Overall, this appears to have been mainly based on Lindsay’s logic of compliance—attempting to force aid recipients to introduce political reforms—rather than subversion or, at least explicitly, deterrence, and pol-icymakers often expressed clear guidance on what such reforms should entail. This sentiment on the instrumental efficacy of PC appears to have been echoed, to some extent, in contemporary scholarly analysis of the phenomenon which largely focused on reviewing the circumstances under which PC ‘could be effective’ (Crawford 1997, 2000; Levitsky and Way 2006; Moore and Robinson 1994; Smith 1998; Stokke 1995).

More recent applications of PC by London, however, do not seem to have been informed by quite the same logic. With some exceptions—such as the 2001 aid suspension in Tanzania linked to Dodoma’s purchasing of an air traffic control system in dubious circumstances—contemporary impositions of PC have rarely been accompanied by any clear guidance on what reforms the recipient government in question should make to restore the aid relationship (de Renzio et al. 2005: 42–44). Indeed, in some instances—such as Uganda in 2006—recipient governments have not even been clearly informed that a decision to suspend aid has been made beforehand (FCO 2011). Most impositions of PC since the early 2000s have been declared as a response to a transgression (such as a corruption scandal) but not linked to any recommendations on what policy changes DFID would like to see introduced or what policy response it would inter-pret as the instrument operating successfully.

Unlike those few statements made to explain PC decisions by ODA/FCO in the early 1990s, more recent such government statements, includ-ing those on Malawi in 2011 and 2013, have emphasised the extent to which protecting ‘UK taxpayers’ money’, ensuring that ‘taxpayers’ money is safe’ (Laing 2013) and satisfying the expectations of ‘British taxpayers’ have influenced the decisions of senior policymakers. DFID officials have also followed how their spending decisions have been portrayed in the


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British media increasingly closely since the mid-2000s (West 2012; see also Anderson 2014 on Tanzania). This emphasis on managing how its PC decisions are framed in the British media indicates a much stronger focus on the domestic expressive nature of the instrument among UK officials in recent years.

It is crucial to note, nonetheless, that this change in tone has been accompanied by a clear loss of faith on the part of most DFID officials in PC’s instrumental effectiveness. One DFID official has claimed, for exam-ple, that the 2010 and 2011 GBS suspensions to Uganda were not expected ‘to make any actual difference to the situation on the ground’.8 Indeed, DFID officials have held quite negative views of conditionality as an instrument since the early years of the Department, describing it as the ‘old’ way of engaging with developing states to be contrasted with a new approach based around donor–recipient ‘partnership’ (DFID 1997: 22–49). Clearly influenced by the largely critical conditionality literature produced during the 1990s, DFID declared in 2009 its belief that ‘attempts to “buy” policy reform from an unwilling partner [through con-ditionality] have rarely worked’ (DFID 2009a: 19).

This revised position on the purpose of PC emerged from a departmen-tal reassessment of the role, purpose and effectiveness of applying the instrument between 2004 and 2005. This process ultimately fed into the release of a 2005 policy paper—Rethinking Conditionality—which for-mally laid out the UK’s approach to PC and the ‘circumstances in which the UK will consider reducing or interrupting aid’ (DFID 2005: 3). Importantly, for the purposes of this chapter, the paper stressed that PC decisions ‘will be based on an assessment of the long term impact on pov-erty of the overall programme of the [recipient] government … not on failure to implement any specific policy’ and that ‘the UK will seek to talk the issues through with partner governments before taking a decision’ (DFID 2005: 10). These sentiments and guidelines have been repeated and expanded upon in several other more recent DFID practice papers on ‘implementing DFID’s conditionality policy’ where, the form of ‘breaches’ in the UK-recipient aid relationships meriting PC are outlined (DFID 2006a: 10–11).

The last decade has therefore seen an explicit rejection of compliance- based, instrumental PC among UK officials. It has also seen a growing focus by DFID on the domestic symbolism aspect of applying PC—assuring domestic audiences that their tax money is not being ‘wasted’ on corrupt governments (DFID 2005: iii, 2009b: 20).

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Political conditionality and domeStic PoliticS

Two primary reasons can be advanced for this shift in thinking on PC among UK officials. These are both linked to a certain extent and are best categorised as (1) changes in intellectual thinking on the efficacy and nor-mativity of PC in Western donor agencies since the late 1990s and (2) an increasingly fraught economic climate in the West since 2007 leading to greater scrutiny of aid budgets. The first of these might be classed as a ‘negative’ influence on this shift in that it has undermined donor confi-dence in the instrumental logic of PC, while the latter might be seen as more ‘positive’ in that it has encouraged donors to embrace the expressive features of the instrument.

The Rise of Ownership and the ‘Failure’ of the ‘Old Conditionalities’

Conditionality (political or otherwise) as a feature of the aid relationship came under heavy attack from commentators during the late 1990s for being both ineffective and fundamentally counter-productive for foster-ing long-term recipient commitment to good governance and other development goals (Killick 2004: 12–14). A number of donors conse-quently sought to discredit what a 1997 DFID White Paper refers to as ‘the old conditionalities’ of the past, instead proposing a new form of donor–recipient engagement based around ‘partnership’ (DFID 1997: 22–49) and respect for ‘[recipient] leadership and ownership’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1998: 82). At the heart of this focus on ‘ownership’ has been the commitment by donors to work in partnership with recipient governments, using the latter’s budget and policy framework as the basis for aid interventions, and the formal acknowledgement of the past failure of conditionalities—as interpreted through an instrumental lens (DFID 2009b: 19).

Within this dispensation, conditionality has been rejected as highly damaging, problematic and ultimately ineffective for the fostering of con-tinued partnership and recipient ownership of policies; ‘dialogue’ is to be the preferred method for resolving donor–recipient disagreements on issues of democratisation, corruption and human rights (though see Maxwell and Riddell 1998: 262–267; Hayman 2011: 679). Donor offi-cials themselves, however, clearly perceived moves towards ownership, partnership and budget support in the late 1990s/early 2000s as directly


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counter to the PC approach taken in the early 1990s. Clare Short, whose 1997–2003 tenure at DFID had profound and enduring consequences for British development policy, held this perception very strongly and viewed PC as a relic of an era of UK aid policy dominated by geostrategic and economic interests rather than concern for eliminating global poverty.9 Short’s determination to instil a wholly ‘pro-poor’ culture at DFID—in contrast to its ODA predecessor—together with the Department’s enthu-siastic investment in, and engagement with, academic development research made the UK one of the earliest donors to wholly lose faith in PC as an appropriate and effective instrument to promote developmental change. Though the UK has continued to use PC since this time, it has still not formally retreated from this position on the tool’s instrumental efficacy and former ‘failure’ (see above).

A Changing International Economic Climate

The 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis and its consequences have placed heavy pressure upon most European governments to curtail public spend-ing where possible and to better justify ‘non-essential’ expenditure to con-stituents. Development budgets have been hit particularly hard within this process and a range of states, including Ireland and the Netherlands, have substantially reduced their aid spending in recent years—the latter by nearly 20% between 2011 and 2012 (De Los Reyes 2011; McGee 2013). Moreover, in this environment, Western development agencies have felt under increasing pressure to defend and justify any aid spending to scepti-cal domestic audiences—particularly in terms of its ‘value for money’. This changing environment has, to some extent, led to a re-calibration of donor standards of evaluation—with domestic (Western) perceptions of ‘waste’ or ‘value’ becoming increasingly significant measures of success or failure.

Since the late 2000s, therefore, most have incorporated ‘value-for- money’ criteria into many or (in the case of the UK) all of their spending programmes with ‘economy’, ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’ represent-ing central considerations in this regard (OECD 2012). Andrew Natsios, US Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator between 2001 and 2006, recounts a similar phenomenon in Washington in his reflection on the growth of a ‘counter- bureaucracy’ in the coun-try’s aid management (Natsios 2010). The corollary of this approach

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has been to curtail or limit spending on states and programmes where funds are likely to be ‘wasted’ (e.g. through corruption) or seen to be bolstering authoritarian regimes. Given the difficulties of tracking GBS expenditure and demonstrating direct value versus potential for diver-sion or ‘waste’, this modality has been a particular victim of that dynamic and has frequently been cut by the UK and other donors on the basis of such concerns (Hayman 2011; Maxwell 2011).

The impact of the Global Financial Crisis in this regard has been felt particularly heavily within DFID given the Department’s rising budget under the Labour government (1997–2010) and protection against cuts (‘ring-fencing’) under the 2010–2015 Coalition government and the current majority Conservative government. DFID became the first donor to build ‘value-for-money’ considerations into its programmes compre-hensively and its approach has been adopted by a range of other govern-ments since this time (OECD 2012: 3–4).10 Protecting the Department from accusations that funds are being ‘wasted’ has become a central fea-ture of DFID’s bureaucratic culture and DFID officials now privately bemoan how acutely conscious they are of the negative consequences that will befall their careers should they ‘take their eye off the ball’ on particu-lar aid interventions and end up being perceived as responsible for con-tinuing support to a regime which is then reported to have committed human rights abuses or sanctioned the syphoning-off of aid funds for political cronies.11 This political culture of evaluating success or failure in light of domestic perceptions of the integrity of DFID spending decisions has been further enhanced by the arrival, in July 2016, of right-wing Conservative MP Priti Patel as DFID Secretary. Patel had previously argued in favour of DFID’s abolition and soon after her appointment was reported—via a source cited by the Daily Mail, a newspaper she granted her first interview to as Secretary of State—to be critical of DFID’s prior ‘spending spree [s]’ (Owen 2016). The use of PC has therefore flourished in this environment, given its ease of application (at least in relation to GBS) as well as its high profile and immediate impact; DFID officials note that they feel increasingly incentivised to use PC to demonstrate to their superiors—and, indirectly, to domestic audiences—that they are firmly committed to ‘protecting UK taxpayers’ money’ from abuse.12 The instrument’s ‘success’ in this regard has therefore come to be seen as demonstrated in its domestic, expressive functions.


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imPlicationS for the ‘SUcceSS’ or ‘failUre’ of Political conditionality

This chapter makes an important contribution to literature on PC and the nature of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in international aid policy by turning around the oft-asked question ‘does PC work?’ to investigate whether aid officials themselves believe it can work and, if not, why they continue to use it and how they assess its effectiveness. Drawing on concepts discussed in the literature on economic sanctions, two broad sets of motivations have been delineated as a framework for understanding applications of PC: instrumental (focused on compliance and deterrence) and expressive (focused on domestic and international symbolism). The chapter has focused in depth on the UK’s experience with PC and argues that while expressive rationales have always informed London’s use of PC, they are far more central now that they were a decade ago and are largely con-cerned with domestic (UK) rather than international perceptions. Moreover, while instrumental rationales played a very important role in decisions to impose PC by UK officials in the early 1990s, the expectation that the instrument can actually force reform abroad is now largely absent from the calculations of DFID staff—thus this is no longer taken as a yard-stick for the successful application of the instrument by policymakers.

These findings raise some interesting and challenging questions around hierarchies of failure in the policy world and how analysts should interpret this move towards prioritising reputational success over instrumental suc-cess among UK international development policymakers. From one per-spective, a re-calibration of PC policy involving protecting against ‘failure’ in the domestic sphere represents a welcome re-focusing of policy agendas around accountability mechanisms; UK taxpayers fund UK development aid and thus their views should arguably take priority. As this chapter has shown, though, it is unclear how far DFID is aware of the nuances of pub-lic opinion in this regard, beyond a reading of media headlines. Moreover, development is one of few policy spheres where domestic audiences are not posited as the primary beneficiaries; UK aid policy is still governed by an act of parliament (2002) mandating all provision of development assis-tance to ‘contribute to a reduction in poverty’ (International Development Act 2002: Part 1, Point (1)). It is unclear how the prioritisation of assumed domestic views on DFID’s reputation meets this obligation.

Indeed, the findings of this study raise a broader set of questions for development scholars, as well as for donor officials themselves on how

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assessments of success or failure evolve in response to changing domestic and international political contexts. Most critically, how should the effec-tiveness of PC be assessed and measured to take into account its expressive purposes? If PC’s instrumental efficacy is no longer a major factor in its employment, then clearly analyses which evaluate its ‘success’ or ‘failure’ only from this perspective (e.g. whether PC results in greater democratisa-tion or political reform) require reconsideration. Moreover, if donor usage of the instrument is increasingly premised on managing the perceptions of domestic audiences, then should donors themselves look more closely at how PC impositions are interpreted by Western citizens in measuring their degree of success and how, if at all, this affects general opinions on the value and integrity of the development enterprise?

The chapter also highlights the complex nature of evaluating policy successes and failures for scholars and analysts such as those in this edited volume. Policies around issues such as PC, for example, may be driven by multiple—and, critically, shifting—motivations and goals, and seek to address—sometimes competing—concerns from multiple audiences, domestic and international. This complicates the scholarly task consider-ably, since to evaluate, in McConnell’s words, whether a policy such as PC ‘fundamentally achieve [s] the goals that proponents set out to achieve’—one can answer both in the affirmative and the negative depending on the time period being analysed and the perspectives and mindsets of officials concerned—both often heavily influenced by changes in the domestic and international political environment in a manner not always obvious in for-mal, political statements around how policies are to be evaluated.

Moreover, the chapter demonstrates the difficulties of even delineating the de facto tools of success/failure evaluation employed by policymakers in particular contexts. DFID has never conducted (or funded any) surveys on whether public perceptions of aid effectiveness shifts (or not) in response to well-publicised aid suspensions aimed at tackling ‘waste’. Moreover, several DFID officials interviewed for this study have privately noted that their perceptions of ‘public opinion’ on aid are often largely based on reading newspaper articles13 rather than any more comprehen-sive measure of the impact of PC on public opinion—seemingly how PC’s success or failure is now primarily understood by DFID officials. Given the profound and often long-lasting impact of PC cuts on developing states and on relations between such states and donor governments, there is a strong argument for ensuring that stronger evidence exists on its success or failure vis-à-vis domestic opinion to make such cuts worthwhile.


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noteS

1. This chapter draws upon an article (‘Does it work?—Work for whom? Britain and Political Conditionality since the Cold War’) published in World Development (Volume 75, November 2015, pp. 13–25) and the author is grateful to World Development for allowing the reproduction of much of this article, which was published under Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0).

2. Personal interviews by the author with former ODA and DFID staff (September–October 2009, London).

3. The 2002 International Development Act states that all DFID spending commitments should be based solely on their ability ‘to contribute to a reduction in poverty’, text available at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2002/1/contents (1 February 2014).

4. Personal interviews by the author with current and former DFID staff (March 2009, London).

5. Ibid.6. Personal interviews by the author with former senior Foreign and

Commonwealth Office (FCO), Overseas Development Administration (ODA) and Department for International Development (DFID) staff and current DFID staff (March 2007; March–November 2009; June–July 2012, London, Kampala and Washington DC).

7. Personal interviews by the author with former senior FCO and ODA staff (March 2007; March, September–October and December 2009, London).

8. Personal interview by the author with DFID Uganda staff (July 2012, Kampala)

9. Personal interview by the author with Clare Short (November 2008, London)

10. DFID has had a value-for-money approach since the early 2000s although the more comprehensive ‘3E framework’ was introduced between 2009 and 2010 (Barnett et al. 2010: 6–10).

11. Personal interviews by the author with DFID Uganda and HQ staff (June–July 2012, October 2013, Kampala and London).

12. Personal interviews by the author with DFID Uganda and HQ staff (June–July 2012, September–October 2013, Kampala and London).

13. Personal interviews by the author with DFID officials (September, November 2013, London).

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CHAPTER 11

When Foreign Aid and Wider Foreign Policy Goals Clash: The Pergau Dam Affair

Tim Lankester

This chapter concerns the most controversial financing in the history of Britain’s foreign aid programme—a grant of £234 million in 1991 to fund a 600-megawatt hydroelectric scheme on the Pergau River in Malaysia’s northern state of Kelantan. The aid for Pergau had its origin in 1988 in a secret undertaking by the British defence minister that he would arrange to make available to Malaysia £200 million in civil aid as a quid pro quo for a major arms export deal. Such a link was entirely contrary to British aid policy and contrary to internationally agreed rules on aid and trade. A few months later, a consortium of UK contractors proposed the Pergau project for aid funding. The agency responsible for Britain’s aid, the Overseas Development Administration (ODA), had serious doubts about the project’s economic viability, but under pressure from Prime Minister Thatcher, and from the contractors and the Malaysian government, ODA consented to a provisional offer of aid being made. Eventually, after the estimated costs of the project had escalated by one-third, ODA concluded that the aid should be refused.

I was ODA’s permanent secretary at the time—its most senior civil servant with overall responsibility for managing the aid programme under

T. Lankester (*) Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK

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the direction of ministers and separately accountable to parliament for the proper and effective use of the aid budget. I advised ministers that this particular project would involve such a poor use of the budget that, if they insisted on proceeding, I would require a formal written direction before any monies could be disbursed. The Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, to whom I reported, decided to overrule ODA officials’ advice and instructed us to proceed with the financing.1 My insistence on a formal ministerial direction was an unusual step and it led two years later to an investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO). This in turn led to separate enquiries by two House of Commons committees. The reports of both committees were highly critical of the government. Some months later the High Court ruled that the granting of the aid for Pergau had been unlawful because it contravened the provisions in the aid programme’s enabling legislation. Meanwhile, the Malaysian government was infuriated by allegations in the British press of high-level corruption in connection with this and other aid contracts and placed a temporary ban on public sector contracts with UK firms.

This all proved hugely embarrassing for the British government. There was relentless media coverage over many months and a general consensus that the government had acted with gross incompetence. A sizeable chunk of the aid budget was being wasted on a ‘white elephant’ project and Britain’s reputation as an aid donor, hitherto high, was seriously compro-mised. Moreover, although substantial arms sales to Malaysia were achieved over the next few years, in the short term Britain’s trading and political relations with Malaysia suffered badly. In short, a misguided promise to provide civil aid to promote arms sales turned into a serious foreign policy blunder. The linking of aid to arms sales had the potential to cause significant difficulty, but, as will become evident, what made it toxic in terms of the eventual political fallout both at home and with Malaysia was first of all the failure to cancel or at least remove the appear-ance of linkage and, second, the failure to ensure that whatever aid proj-ects were to be financed would be of high quality in developmental terms. If Pergau had been a sound project, then it is quite possible that the aid/arms sales linkage would never have come to light. Call it carelessness or hubris: the Pergau Dam Affair, as it came to be called, should never have been allowed to happen.2

Foreign aid is by definition an element in a donor country’s foreign policy toolbox. In Britain, however, where the legally mandated purpose of aid has always been to enhance development and improve human

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welfare (and since 2002 poverty reduction), it has usually been evaluated purely against these objectives. In the case of Pergau, where non- developmental factors played such an important role in the decision- making, an analysis that focuses purely on development and welfare is clearly inadequate, and a more holistic approach is needed. This chapter shows how the decision-making shared many of the defects that have been common in other more famous and more conventional foreign policy fail-ures. Thus, the following impulses and explanations played a part in the Pergau debacle: conflicting policy objectives and inter-agency discord; unchecked power at the centre of government; lack of transparency and on occasion outright deception such that parliament and civil society were unable to offer any serious challenge; carelessness, miscalculation and self- delusion; doubtful legality; policy capture by private vested interests; con-flicts of interest within the executive; failings in the advice from officials; and failure to adequately understand the other country’s point of view. This is indeed a formidable list but each factor played a part, albeit at dif-ferent times during the saga and with varying degrees of severity.

Aid And TrAde

To understand how and why the aid for Pergau went so badly wrong, it is necessary to provide some background on Britain’s aid programme. From its earliest years in the 1960s British aid had acquired a good reputation for helping to address the problems of poverty and underdevelopment in the world’s poorest countries. Whilst the World Bank was the recognised leader of the international aid community, amongst the bilateral donors the UK ranked high. From the standpoint of aid quantity, whether mea-sured in absolute terms or relative to gross national product (GNP), UK aid lagged behind quite a few others, and the more so following budget cuts imposed in the early 1980s. But in terms of quality, as a result of ODA’s expertise across a range of sectors and disciplines and due to its sound appraisal and monitoring methods, UK aid was considered amongst the best. For example, the regular reviews of members’ aid programmes by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) usually expressed high praise for the quality of UK aid.

British aid—in common with the practice of most bilateral donors—was largely tied to the purchase of goods and services from the home country. The reason for this was to protect the balance of payments and

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to help British industry. ODA aimed to choose projects for which the UK could offer competitive prices but inevitably there was some tension between supporting the British industry and maximising aid effective-ness. In the 1980s, this tension got worse. In 1977 the Labour Government that preceded Mrs Thatcher’s administration had intro-duced the Aid and Trade Provision (ATP). Whereas the normal practice was for programmes and projects to be worked up between the recipient government and ODA, under the ATP a small portion of the aid budget was devoted to projects proposed in the first place by British contractors, then vetted by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) for their commercial and industrial usefulness and finally by the ODA for devel-opment worthiness. ATP grants were mixed with guaranteed export credits to produce so- called mixed credits. Under rules agreed by mem-bers of the OECD, in order to stop competitive subsidisation, the grant-to-loan ratio under mixed credits had to be no less than 35 per cent. Unlike most of the ODA’s normal aid, which was focused on the poorest countries, ATP grants were available for middle-income countries like Malaysia.

Under UK aid’s enabling legislation, the purpose of aid was to promote the development of countries overseas and the welfare of their peoples. In the case of capital projects, this was taken to mean projects that met stan-dard cost-benefit tests relating to economic viability. ATP projects were expected to meet these tests and were subject to economic and technical appraisal like other ODA capital projects. However, owing to pressure from contractors and the DTI, ODA’s appraisal of ATP projects was often less thorough. Due to the policy of aid tying, ATP projects were not sub-ject to international tender. Instead, price and other terms were the result of negotiations between contractor and client, and so the scope for uncompetitive pricing and bribery was all too real. ODA economic apprais-als and ‘value for money’ studies attempted to counter these tendencies but rarely with complete success.

During Mrs Thatcher’s administration, the portion of the aid budget set aside for ATP was expanded and ATP grants could be made available not only as part of a mixed credit but also to soften the interest payments on export credits: such grants in support of ‘soft loans’ involved much smaller upfront payments and therefore enabled the total sum allocated for ATP projects to go further in terms of the number of projects that could be supported. Accordingly, the number of ATP projects greatly expanded during the 1980s.

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Arms And Aid enTAngled

The aid for Pergau was a soft loan, consisting of a grant of £234 million payable over 14 years to soften the interest payments on export credits totalling £308 million. The aid was finally signed and sealed in July 1991, but the Pergau ‘story’ started back in 1988 with the linking of arms sales to development aid. For several years, the defence equipment manufactur-ers had been looking to Malaysia as a lucrative outlet for their products. In March 1988, the Defence Minister George Younger led an export mission to Malaysia. He was aware from a meeting he had had in London with Malaysia’s Finance Minister Daim Zainuddin that Malaysia might well be looking for a quid pro quo in the form of an offer of civil aid in return for any substantial arms sales deal. He was equally aware that any such linkage was not permitted under OECD rules and was wholly contrary to declared UK policy on aid, and he had no authority to offer aid from another departmental budget.

During the negotiations, however, Younger was persuaded to sign a Protocol which would commit the British government to provide civil aid to the tune of 20 per cent of the proposed defence sales (estimated at £1 billion or more) (see Lankester 2013: 54). He did this without reference back to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) or to ODA in London. Later, he claimed that he had no time to consult London and that if he had refused to sign, there would have been no defence equip-ment deal. This may or may not have been the case. But he and his advisers should have realised that they were taking a grave risk. In promising funds, which most likely would have to come from the ODA budget over which they had no authority, there was a fair chance that this would one day become public and lead to a political storm in the UK and arouse condem-nation from the OECD and from other aid donors.

Younger was a cautious and respected politician who, left to himself, probably would not have signed. But he was accompanied and advised by Colin Chandler, the then head of the Defence Exports Sales Organization (DESO), an agency within the Ministry of Defence (MOD).3 Chandler and many of his DESO colleagues were employed on short-term secondments from the defence equipment industry. Their salaries were routinely paid by their companies rather than by MOD, leading to the suspicion that they were working more for their compa-nies than for the government. Whether or not this was the reality, they tended to be all too ready to cut corners with government policy and


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normal administrative procedures for the sake of securing export orders—strengthened in the knowledge that Mrs Thatcher was a great enthusiast for arms sales. Younger and his advisers knew that the linking of aid to arms sales was wrong, but they obviously thought the wrong was justi-fied by the greater good, as they saw it, of boosting Britain’s arms sales. They clearly miscalculated—if they calculated at all—what the negative consequences might be.

When news of the signing reached London, there was a sharp reaction from ministers and officials in the FCO, the Treasury and ODA. All three departments were appalled by the aid/arms sales linkage and by the prom-ise of civil aid in this highly controversial manner. Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe took the view that MOD should withdraw the aid under-taking, and if they were unwilling to do this, the aid would have to come out of MOD’s budget. MOD refused to do this, and it was put to Mrs Thatcher to decide. She ruled that, if the word of British ministers was to be trusted in the future, the aid undertaking had to be honoured and ordained that the aid money would have to come from ODA. Never an enthusiast for the aid programme, Mrs Thatcher was not overly troubled by the aid/arms sales linkage. She championed British arms exports and, as her involvement in the massive Al Yamamah contract with Saudi Arabia a few years earlier showed she was not too fussy about the methods typi-cally used to seal such deals. In 1988, Mrs Thatcher’s dominance within her government was still at its height; power was heavily centralised within the government and it was no surprise that her instinctive view in favour of MOD and its salesmen prevailed, despite the grave misgivings of Howe and other ministers.

Moreover, there could be no challenge from parliament, the media or the NGOs because knowledge of the Protocol was kept secret—though not so secret that some in the major contracting companies did not get to hear about it. In the battle between the various ministries, ODA did not entirely lose out. Instead of being asked to contribute £200 million in grants, it was decided—much to the annoyance of the Malaysians—that the £200 million would take the form of mixed credits. ODA would con-tribute £70 million in grants and the rest would be provided in the form of guaranteed export credits. It was also decided that, if possible, the extra aid should be delinked from the arms deal. Given Malaysia’s insistence on the linkage, this was easier said than done. The result was a botch that convinced no one except possibly those ministers who in due course had the misfortune to have to explain the original linkage in the Protocol.

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Younger wrote to the Malaysian finance minister that, because of OECD rules, there could be no linkage. In a separate letter sent on the very same day, the British high commissioner to Malaysia informed the finance minister that an additional £200 million was available in aid. On the basis of these separate letters, British ministers felt able to deny that there was any linkage; instead, in Douglas Hurd’s words, there had only been a ‘temporary and incorrect entanglement’ (Foreign Affairs Committee 1993–1994: 33).

Hurd, who had succeeded Howe as Foreign Secretary in late 1989, told the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs that the linkage had not influenced the decision to provide aid for Pergau (ibid.: 52–53). It was he who took the final decision in early 1991 to approve the aid, and it is strictly correct that he was not influenced by the linkage. Astonishing though it may seem, when he took the decision, he was not aware of the existence of the Protocol, for it was during his prede-cessor’s term as foreign secretary that the Protocol had been signed. And Hurd was not briefed on its existence. But when he took the decision to approve the aid, this was nearly two years after a provisional offer of aid for Pergau had been made, and at that earlier stage, the documentary evi-dence, as well as my clear recollection, is that the linkage did influence the actions of the key players on both sides. For example, just two months after the ‘disentangling letters’, Mrs Thatcher met the Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir and referred explicitly to the linkage, and later DTI officials pressed the case for Pergau aid with reference to it (see Lankester 2013: 62–63).

Aid for The PergAu ProjecT

Rumours of the promise of aid soon percolated to British contractors. Malaysia was already the largest recipient of aid under the ATP scheme, and it was only natural that—with £200 million new aid in the offing—contractors would quickly come forward with new project proposals. For some time, a consortium led by two construction companies, Balfour Beatty and Cementation International, and the power equipment manu-facturer, the General Electric Company (GEC), had been in discussion with the Malaysian government about the Pergau hydroelectric scheme. They liked the project because it had a large offshore component which they were technically competent to deliver and because they believed, with a negotiated contract and a subsidy from the ATP scheme, they


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could steal a march on Japanese and other competition even though their prices were likely to be higher.

Malaysia’s national power utility, Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), did not rate this scheme highly: they were keener to develop gas-fired generat-ing capacity making use of Malaysia’s plentiful offshore gas, and amongst five potential hydro projects on their list, Pergau ranked the lowest. The basic problem was that the volume of water in the Pergau catchment was relatively small and yet it required a substantial dam and associated works, with the consequence that for the amount of electricity it was capable of producing, it was extremely costly. Dr Mahathir, however, was keen on the project. He felt that Malaysia was becoming too dependent on fossil fuels for its generating capacity and wanted to make more use of its hydro resources. Amongst the potential hydro projects, he favoured Pergau firstly because it was in a state governed by the main Islamic opposition party, and a large project like this might help improve the standing there of his ruling party. He also favoured Pergau because he judged—correctly as it turned out—that GEC and the other companies in the consortium had the political muscle to secure aid for it from the British government. GEC was the largest private sector company in Britain at the time and a major supplier of power equipment and of components to the defence industry; as such, it had a potential stake in both the Pergau project as a supplier of turbines and in the arms deal.

Bearing in mind that he had scant regard for economists, provided he got the aid, Dr Mahathir was not particularly concerned that Pergau was high cost compared with other power projects. Whereas TNB looked to minimise costs across the power system without regard to whether Pergau or any other project was aid funded, for Dr Mahathir, the subsidy from ODA helped to make Pergau competitive. Finally, in a convoluted way, Dr Mahathir would feel in due course that he owed it to Mrs Thatcher to deliver the Pergau contract to Britain, and he would lose face with her if this did not happen. In a curious way, they promised Pergau to each other—and for reasons other than sound economic development.

ODA’s approach to evaluating Pergau was the same as TNB’s; in fact, they used the same model and incorporated most of the same assump-tions. For ODA, this was the rational approach. They were prepared to give some credence to Dr Mahathir’s wish to diversify Malaysia’s power generation but only within certain cost limits, but in other respects, Dr Mahathir’s approach in their view was irrational. And yet, as the British high commissioner routinely pointed out, it was Dr Mahathir’s view that

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the Malaysian side was bound to prevail. If ODA had given more cogni-sance to this fact, they might have been less inclined to place any hope in the Malaysian government pulling back from wanting this exceptionally costly project. ODA was strong on engineering and economics but less strong on understanding Dr Mahathir’s view and that it was bound to prevail.

In October 1988, the consortium sent a proposal to the DTI request-ing ATP support for the project. The DTI quickly endorsed the proposal on the basis that it would secure many jobs in Britain and help the power plant and construction industries through a difficult patch and for-warded it to ODA with their blessing. ODA’s power engineers and econ-omists already had considerable knowledge of the Malaysian power sector. They had doubts about Pergau, but under pressure from DTI and the consortium, middle-ranking ODA officials were persuaded to issue a ‘comfort letter’ that they would be willing to consider ATP sup-port, subject to a satisfactory appraisal. In theory, the qualification ‘sub-ject to satisfactory appraisal’ should have allowed ODA the let-out that they needed if their experts’ doubts proved conclusive. However, all concerned in ODA at that stage underestimated the pressures that lay ahead—from the Malaysian government, from Mrs Thatcher, from the FCO and the DTI and from the consortium. Those few in ODA who knew about the egregious Protocol and the ‘disentangling letters’ took it as their duty—taking their cue from ministerial statements—to behave as if the linkage no longer existed, but in doing so, they naively ignored the leverage which others would exert from the fact that in reality the linkage remained intact.

It may seem curious that the FCO, having been so worried about the aid/arms sales linkage, should now be wishing to force the pace with aid for Pergau. The answer is that the principal role of the high commis-sioner in Malaysia was to promote British exports, and he was doubly concerned that his government should not appear to be backsliding on the £200 million promise of aid. Whatever doubts ODA might have about the economics of Pergau, the project provided a good opportunity for making good this promise. But in doing so, the high commissioner lost sight of the risk that by promoting a dubious aid project, it was all too likely that eventually the aid/arms sales linkage would be revealed. Like Mrs Thatcher, the FCO now gave priority to promoting arms sales and aid- funded exports, and relations with Dr Mahathir, at the expense of the ODA’s official development mandate.


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As was the usual practice with ATP projects, ODA experts first under-took a desk appraisal. This was completed in January 1989 and it con-firmed their initial doubts. But in view of the high political importance of the project, ODA judged that one of its economists, Alan Whitworth, should pay a quick visit to Malaysia to check their negative findings with TNB. However, the DTI and the high commission in Malaysia blocked the mission on the grounds that it would undermine the ongoing negotia-tions between client and contractors. ODA should have insisted but instead, it was only in early March 1989 that it was finally agreed that Whitworth should visit Malaysia.

By ill luck from the ODA’s point of view but perfect luck from the point of view of the contractors, Dr Mahathir decided at short notice to visit the UK for medical treatment. After some early spats earlier in the decade over student fees and trade, Dr Mahathir had built up a good working relationship with Mrs Thatcher, and so—not surprisingly—he asked for a meeting with her during his visit. Whitworth arrived in Malaysia just three days before Mrs Thatcher was due to meet with Dr Mahathir. He spent a day with TNB and sped back to London to help with the brief-ing that Mrs Thatcher would require on Pergau. In the event, Whitworth arrived back in London too late to help, and ODA had to rely on a tele-phone call from the high commission in Kuala Lumpur which gave the impression that he was more or less satisfied with the economics of the project. This was in fact far from the truth. In the light of this misleading call, and under pressure from the prime minister’s office which was being vigorously lobbied by the contractors, ODA advised Mrs Thatcher that she could offer a grant of £68 million towards a mixed credit of £200 mil-lion, which in turn was based on an estimated contract price of £316 mil-lion for the whole project. And this is what she offered to Dr Mahathir when they met.

Two weeks later at the end of March 1989, the consortium advised that the contract price was now likely to be around £400 million, up by a nearly one-third, and they expected the aid offer to increase proportion-ately. ODA economists were clear that at this price, the project was wholly uneconomic: over the assumed 60-year life of Pergau, the cost of the elec-tricity which Pergau would generate would be over £100 million more on a present value basis than if it were generated in the best gas-fired plant. In other words, with Pergau, Malaysia would be paying an unnecessary cost penalty of over £100 million (see Lankester 2013: 149–168). ODA offi-cials were also concerned that the proposed contract price had been

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pumped up to pay for bribes to various parties in Malaysia. ODA policy was to avoid at all costs helping to fund bribes, but this was easier said than done with a negotiated contract as in the case of Pergau. ODA was able to cut back by £15 million the provision in the contract for agents’ fees. Nonetheless, there were credible if not fully substantiated reports that bribes were paid to win the contract. When questioned on this by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee several years later, repre-sentatives of the consortium of course denied it. Yet if bribes were paid, it would not have been at all unusual in Malaysia at that time on a contract of this size. Amongst senior members of the government, the Energy Minister Samy Vellu was famous as a bribe taker for himself and for the small political party he headed.

ODA refused the consortium’s request to increase the aid but nonethe-less re-confirmed to the Malaysian government the amount offered by Mrs Thatcher, adding that it would be willing to discuss the possibility of additional aid if it turned out to be necessary. This was a case of political power prevailing over good governance. ODA, probably the weakest department politically in Mrs Thatcher’s administration, felt unable to incur her likely wrath if the offer was taken off the table. And ODA could not look to parliament or NGOs for any help since they had no access to information on ATP projects before their funding was finalised. This was because parliamentary approval was not required for individual projects, only for the total aid budget. For over a year, negotiations dragged on as the Malaysian side sought to reduce the contract price, but the contractors stood firm. Fearing the worst—that Malaysia would opt for Pergau in spite of its high cost—in the late summer of 1990 ODA persuaded DTI that there should be a joint mission to Malaysia with the aim of finding projects in the power sector for which ODA would feel comfortable providing the finance. The mission did identify several such projects but by this time it was too late: Malaysia was dead set on Pergau.

Malaysia’s utility company, TNB, remained of the view that Pergau was too costly and should be delayed for at least ten years, but Dr Mahathir was determined to proceed, and although not particularly happy with the price, his government in November 1990 confirmed that they would go ahead on the basis of a price of £417 million provided the contract was supported by British aid. With an estimated import content of £308 mil-lion, this would require an ATP grant of £108 million as part of a mixed credit. By this time, Britain had a new Prime Minister John Major. The ODA minister, Lynda Chalker, advised that supporting the project at this


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extremely high price would be wholly inconsistent with ODA’s established development criteria and that Malaysia’s formal request for aid should be turned down. Major and his Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, who had succeeded Howe and was Chalker’s ministerial boss, decided that they had to honour Mrs Thatcher’s commitment to support the project, even though her specific aid offer—£68 million—had been one-third lower. They feared a trade backlash from Malaysia which, as things turned out, they got anyway.

Before Hurd took the decision, I myself provided formal advice in my role as an accounting officer responsible to parliament for the proper and effective use of public money. As mentioned earlier, under ODA’s enabling legislation, aid had to be for development or for improving welfare. Based on precedent, I convinced myself—wrongly as it turned out—that the aid for Pergau would be within the law. Although constructing Pergau was not economically sensible, it was adding to Malaysia’s power-generating capacity. In a broad, if not economic sense, the aid would be assisting Malaysia’s development, and it was the long-established view that, pro-vided ministers believed that the aid in question was assisting development, it was within the law. I had never felt this view particularly convincing and therefore should have taken formal legal advice, but based on precedent and my understanding that the prime minister and foreign secretary believed that the aid for Pergau would be assisting Malaysia’s develop-ment, I concluded that the aid would be within the law.

On economy and effectiveness, it was a different matter. I took the view that providing the aid would be a gross misuse of public money and I would not wish to be held responsible to parliament for it. Under British government rules for the conduct of accounting officers, if he or she con-siders spending under their control to be unlawful or failing to meet mini-mum standards of economy or effectiveness, they should request a written direction from their minister before authorising the spending. At that time, it was quite unusual for an accounting officer to seek such a direc-tion. I nonetheless decided I had to do this. In asking for the direction, I warned that parliament, the NGOs and the media were likely in due course to be highly critical. In my advice to ministers, I failed to mention the secret Protocol of 1988 and the aid/arms sales linkage. In 1988 I was in the overseas division of the Treasury, and I knew about it from that time. It had disturbed me greatly and I had advised John Major, who was at that time Chief Secretary in charge of public spending, to call for its cancellation—a course of action he felt unable to endorse in the face of

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Mrs Thatcher’s strong view to the contrary. I personally believed that one day this would be a bigger story than the misuse of aid for Pergau.

Three years later in 1991, I was loth to dredge up this murky episode which I knew ministers hated to be reminded of, and although it had hap-pened before Hurd became the foreign secretary, I assumed he was aware of it. As it turned out, I was mistaken. None of his officials in the FCO had mentioned the Protocol to Hurd either. In a newspaper interview in 1995 he said that—had he known about the Protocol—he would not have approved the aid for Pergau.4 Such can be the effect of mistaken assump-tions, failed communication and lack of institutional memory.

The Malaysian government was informed of the decision to grant the aid in February 1991, but it took another five months for the formal con-tracts to be signed. Contract signing was held up because ODA found itself unable to afford the upfront grant of £108 million without squeez-ing out other ATP projects in the pipeline. As a result, it decided to switch the aid to a soft loan, involving an interest-relieving grant of £234 million payable over 14 years. Under arcane OECD rules, this was the minimum subsidy for a soft loan equivalent to the £108 million grant in connection with a mixed credit, but in actual fact, it gave Malaysia greater benefit in present value terms and cost the British taxpayer that much more. Consequently, this switch was later roundly criticised by the parliament’s public accounts committee. Hurd was also unsurprisingly cross that he was going to have to defend the apparent more than doubling of the aid.

In addition, the Malaysian government insisted that the interest subsidy should be passed on to TNB. ODA’s normal policy was that the recipient government should secure the aid benefit on the grounds that a commer-cial entity like TNB should not be receiving subsidised loans. The Malaysian government’s insistence reflected partly the fact that TNB needed to be compensated for taking on an uneconomic project and because they wanted to improve TNB’s financial position prior to its planned privatisation. As on most other aspects of Pergau, ODA con-ceded. And by helping make TNB more attractive for privatisation, ODA may have indirectly benefited certain people and institutions close to the ruling party, for when the privatisation took place in 1992, the share offer was massively underpriced to the advantage of those who were allocated shares.

For good reason, ODA announced the aid for Pergau in July 1991 with as little fanfare as possible. The Malaysian government were happy, as were the British contractors and the MOD, because it meant the aid side of the


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original, albeit officially disowned, aid/arms deal was fulfilled. The FCO and the DTI were pleased too that such a large export contract had been secured. In ODA, there was a sense of great despondency that the aid programme had been seriously compromised; there was also a determina-tion that nothing like the aid for Pergau should ever be allowed to happen again. There was also a foreboding, at least in my mind, that when the details eventually came out—the combination of a hugely uneconomic project and therefore waste of taxpayers’ money and the aid/arms link-age—there would be great trouble for the government. Ministers and offi-cials in other departments did not seem to share my worries. This could have been for a variety of reasons: self-delusion that the situation was not as bad as it was, the fact that overseas aid was rarely in the news or the fact that there were larger things to worry about on the international front, like the breakup of the Soviet Union.

My fears that there would be a political storm turned out to be only too true. Two years later in 1993, the NAO, which has access to the files of government departments, conducted an investigation into the aid for Pergau. In their report, they highlighted the fact that my advice had been overridden by ministers and I had felt bound to seek a formal direc-tion before authorising the spending. This led to questioning in parlia-ment and outside as to why such a large amount of aid had been committed for a demonstrably unsound project. As the story unfolded, it became clear that the primary purpose of the aid had been to enhance Britain’s commercial interests, rather than Malaysia’s development. When the secret Protocol was revealed in early 1994, there was uproar in the media and this carried on for many weeks as ministers tried to excuse and explain. A separate enquiry by the House of Commons Committee on Foreign Affairs focused on the secret Protocol and the botched attempt to disentangle the aid/arms linkage. It also blasted ministers for repeatedly misleading parliament, and the underhand actions of the lead contractors aimed at persuading the government to provide ATP assis-tance for the project.

The press coverage was largely sympathetic to ODA and hostile to everyone else involved both in Britain and in Malaysia. But a minority criticised ODA for not being more robust, and a few—including Conservative ex-minister Alan Clark who had long been hostile to over-seas aid—were critical of ODA for causing so much political trouble. Clark argued that using aid to help sell guns and other exports was just what it should be used for. The government’s troubles were compounded when

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the Malaysian government, furious at being accused in the press of bribery in connection with Pergau and other aid projects, cancelled all new public sector contracts with British firms. This boycott lasted for seven months whilst British ministers had to offer abject apologies to get it lifted. As Foreign Secretary Hurd later wrote, ‘I was defending a wasteful project on grounds of good faith and friendship with a man [Dr Mahathir] who was busy kicking us in the teeth’ (Hurd 2003: 495).

Finally, in March 1994, a small advocacy NGO, the World Development Movement (WDM), decided to take the government to court for unlawful use of the aid budget. Their chances of success were not rated highly within and outside government legal circles. This was for two reasons. First, WDM’s lawyers had to persuade the court that they had locus standi—that is, the right to seek judicial review. Traditionally, the courts had tended to restrict this right to those who were individually affected by the government’s action, and WDM could not be said to fall within this category. Second, there was the view outlined earlier in this chapter that the powers given to ministers in the legislation were widely drawn and were sufficient to cover the Pergau aid, even though the official advice had been that its purpose and usage was unsound according to standard devel-opment criteria.

The case was heard in November 1994. The court decided to grant WDM ‘standing’ on the grounds that there was an important point of law to be settled and no one who was affected by the Pergau aid was likely to bring a challenge. On the substance of the case, it ruled in favour of WDM on the grounds that the relevant legislation, in stating that aid had to be ‘for the purpose of promoting the development or maintaining the econ-omy of a country’, must have meant that the aid had to be for economically sound development, and the aid for Pergau, according to ODA, most clearly did not meet this criterion. Many in the legal profession were sur-prised by the judgement: in their view, it was not for the court to deter-mine what parliament meant by ‘development’; this was for parliament alone to decide. But for development specialists, and for WDM and the rest of the NGO development community, the ruling seemed like com-mon sense and was warmly welcomed. Foreign Secretary Hurd was advised by government lawyers that he would have a good chance of winning if he decided to appeal against the judgement. He declined this advice: the aid for Pergau had been in the newspaper headlines for long enough and the political risks for the government and for himself were too great if the appeal were to be lost.


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By now, the Pergau scheme was half completed and, even though the aid was now deemed to have been committed unlawfully, there were contracts between the British government and other parties in Britain and Malaysia that had to be honoured. The government decided that the undisbursed portion of the committed funding would come out of the Export Credits Guarantee Department (ECGD). Some but not all of the funds already disbursed by ODA for the project were reimbursed to ODA by the Treasury. ODA for its part undertook a rapid review of other ongoing ATP projects to see if there might be grounds for challenging them on legal grounds in the light of the court ruling. Two such projects were identified, in Indonesia and Botswana, and—as with Pergau—continuing disbursements for these projects were made from ECGD rather than from ODA.

Pergau was completed in 1998. The client, TNB, was satisfied with the quality of the civil works but not with the mechanical and electrical works, and this led to three years of remedial work. Once these teething problems were sorted out, the plant ran well and continues to do so to this day. It supplies roughly 500 million kWh of electricity per year, which equates to about half a per cent of Malaysia’s electricity consumption. Although rela-tively modest in terms of the power it generates, Pergau contributes use-fully to the system’s peaking requirements.

conclusion: AfTermATh And lessons leArnT

Pergau was and remains a high-cost power station.5 Whilst the cost penalty involved in building Pergau rather than a gas-fired plant was probably significantly less than ODA originally envisaged, it has still been substan-tial. As the price of gas has fallen and gas price projections have been low-ered somewhat in recent years, the ex-post cost penalty has climbed back a little.

In retrospect, therefore, as well as on the basis of what was known when the original commitment was entered into, the funding of Pergau was a wasteful use of the aid budget. With greater care, and if ODA and other government departments had been more robust in fending off pressure from GEC and the other UK contractors, it should have been possible to provide Malaysia with aid for much more worthy projects in the power sector. Although Dr Mahathir dearly wanted Pergau, if ODA had made clear much earlier on both to him and to the British contractors that it

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would only finance ‘good’ projects in the power sector, it is unlikely he would have succeeded in securing ODA funding for it. Additional aid for ‘good’ projects would have satisfied ODA’s policy mandate, UK contrac-tors could still have benefited and it would have avoided the charge of illegality. Moreover, this additional aid might have been sufficient to encourage Malaysia to look kindly on the efforts of MOD and the defence equipment salesmen without any need to link the two as in the secret Protocol. ODA officials would never have been happy with a parallel strat-egy on these lines, but it was one that was implicitly pursued by Britain in other aid-receiving countries such as India and Pakistan and by other aid- giving countries, notably France and the USA.

MOD did achieve their objective of a major increase in defence equip-ment sales. Between 1989 and 1993 British firms in the defence industry signed contracts totally worth £1.3 billion. But the fallout from all that had happened was costly. Political and commercial relations with Malaysia suffered a serious dip. The British government appeared foolish, incompe-tent and untrustworthy at home and a confused and contradictory partner to a rising country in Asia. ODA’s reputation amongst other donors was significantly damaged, and although it was to a large extent the fault of others in the government, its reputation domestically suffered. The Treasury took advantage of this drop in ODA’s political fortunes by cut-ting its budget.

But within the ODA, lessons were learnt and remedial action taken, and because of the political furore, no real attempt was made by others in or outside the government to stand in their way. First of all, ODA played a leading role in international negotiations to tighten up the rules on mixed credits. Had the new rules under the resultant Helsinki Agreement been in place in early 1991, Pergau would not have been eligible for ATP funding: the new rules restricted tied aid credits to poorer countries and excluded projects like Pergau that ought to be commercially viable. Second, after having got things so badly wrong over Pergau, ODA became more robust and careful in its consideration of those projects that contin-ued to be put forward by DTI for ATP support, and DTI itself became less ruthless in its promotion of such projects. ‘Avoiding another Pergau’ became part of ODA’s DNA.

Yet the potential for misuse of the aid budget on account of pressure from commercial interests remained, and when the Labour Party came to power, the new government decided to abolish ATP altogether. The new


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Department for International Development (DfID) as ODA was renamed, with its minister a member of the Cabinet for the first time since 1976, gave more emphasis to poverty reduction and truly sustainable develop-ment, and this strengthened policy mandate was eventually enshrined in new legislation, the International Development Act 2002. The tying of aid to British goods and services was also eliminated around this time. All these measures gave DfID a clearer mandate, greater autonomy and ability to conduct its business less prey to commercial and political interests and made British aid more efficient and effective.

On a wider canvass within government, there was one barely noticed but significant reform which aimed to make parliament aware at an earlier stage of mis-spending by government departments. In the case of Pergau, my insistence on a formal direction in 1991 only came to light when the NAO published its findings in 1993 and it was this that set off the further investigations and questioning. Following this revelation, the Treasury decided that in future all such requests should be copied to the NAO and to the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. In recent years there have been many more accounting officer requests of this kind, and parlia-ment and the media have become immediately alert to them, which has been a useful reform in the interests of accountability and protecting the taxpayer from wasteful spending.

How much the Pergau saga impacted on the conduct of Britain’s rela-tions with other countries more generally remains more doubtful. For a few years, the various elements that made Pergau an exemplar of how not to conduct relations with another country—especially the effect of com-peting and conflicted goals, the lack of transparency and the influence of special interests—stayed in the institutional memory, at least within ODA/DfID. But memory of policy failures that are not of the first rank tends to fade, and beyond the international aid department it soon became a policy failure best forgotten.

After her appointment in July 2016, the new secretary of state for inter-national development, Priti Patel, suggested that the aid budget, whilst continuing to help the poor, should also be used to secure trade deals for Britain post-Brexit. This does not necessarily mean a repeat of the Pergau debacle, but the renewed emphasis on aid as an instrument for promoting trade, alongside development and poverty reduction, clearly carries risks. The Pergau Dam Affair is a cautionary tale that deserves revisiting before the lessons from it are entirely forgotten for both aid and foreign policy more generally.

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noTes

1. I reported to Hurd through the Minister for Overseas Development, who at that time was Lynda Chalker.

2. I have previously described and analysed this episode in my book The Politics and Economics of Britain’s Foreign Aid: The Pergau Dam Affair (Lankester 2013). I wrote this book primarily from my perspective as the senior official in charge of Britain’s foreign aid, with an emphasis on how and why Pergau was such a bad project and therefore could not be justified for aid financing. But since political and commercial factors loomed large in the causes and consequences of the decision-making, I also covered these in some detail. In this chapter, I switch the emphasis more to the latter, so as to situate the episode within a broader foreign policy context.

3. Colin Chandler was seconded to DESO from British Aerospace plc. He later became chairman and chief executive of Vickers plc.

4. The Independent, 18 July 1995.5. In my book (Lankester 2013), I undertook a detailed ex-post evaluation

taking into account the actual path of international fuel prices since the early 1990s and factoring in a notional social cost for carbon emissions for fossil fuel alternatives (something that the ODA did not do in their original appraisal).

references

Foreign Affairs Committee. 1993–1994. Third Report, Volume 2. London: House of Commons.

Hurd, Douglas. 2003. Memoirs. London: Abacus.Lankester, Tim. 2013. The Politics and Economics of Britain’s Foreign Aid: The

Pergau Dam Affair. Abingdon: Routledge.



CHAPTER 12

‘First as Tragedy…’: Mistakes, Blaming and Learning at the Copenhagen Climate

Conference

Antto Vihma

The Copenhagen climate meeting was the biggest and most anticipated climate meeting in history, bringing together more than 120 heads of state and governments, accompanied by a worldwide media show unprec-edented in multilateral negotiations. The sense of urgency in climate politics was influenced by dismal news from global emissions data. During the process of negotiating for Copenhagen from 2007 to 2009, global greenhouse gas emissions were increasing rapidly, and the 2°C target sup-ported by many was in danger of slipping out of reach (UNEP 2010). Encapsulating the general sense at the time, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the meeting ‘the most important conference since the Second World War’ (Goldenberg 2009).

The Copenhagen meeting—the 15th Conference of Parties (COPs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—or ‘Hopenhagen’, as the host country branded the confer-ence, was promoted with the unofficial slogan ‘Seal the Deal’. Expectations that the conference would result in a major breakthrough encouraged an

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unprecedented number of people to attend the conference—with unin-tended and unfortunate consequences for the logistics of the meeting. The sheer size of the summit was staggering. There were 37,000 regis-tered participants including 10,500 government delegates, 13,500 observers from civil society and 3000 journalists (Dimitrov 2010: 796). Famously, the security was so tight that even some ministers of key coun-tries had difficulties entering the conference centre.

Since the high expectations were met with modest results at best, an extensive debate on the reasons for the failure and on those who might be culpable took place after the conference, focusing especially on China (Lynas 2009; Kanter 2009b; Lee 2009) and the Danish Presidency (Khor 2009; Doyle 2010; Vidal 2010). The immediate ‘blame game’ was intensive and heated. Now that the new landmark agreement on global climate politics, the Paris Agreement, has been adopted and rati-fied and has entered into force in 2016, the trauma of the Copenhagen failure has passed. Hence, the time is ripe to analyse the mistakes that contributed to the failure in Copenhagen and whether learning from them has impacted the more recent developments in the UN climate negotiations.

In the aftermath of the Copenhagen meeting, many reporters, academ-ics, negotiators and civil society organisations criticised the UNFCCC for a dysfunctional process. Some called for a reform of the UN model of multilateral negotiations, while others argued for abandoning the talks altogether or moving the negotiations elsewhere.1 Several policymakers voiced their frustration, including Ed Miliband, at the time UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change: ‘We cannot again allow negotia-tions on real points of substance to be hijacked in this way’ (Vidal 2009). Miliband further noted that there must be ‘major reform’ in the UNFCCC and of the way in which negotiations are conducted.

The crunch issue that the Copenhagen meeting was supposed to resolve was the shape of the world’s response to climate change after 2012—in many ways similar to what the Paris climate meeting in 2015 succeeded in doing for the post-2020 period. The negotiations addressed a plethora of policy issues ranging from land use to technology transfer, which have been analysed in detail by UNFCCC specialists (Kulovesi and Gutiérrez 2009; Rajamani 2009). The broader political debates in Copenhagen that emerge from a political reading of the Bali Action Plan (UNFCCC 2007) included global long-term targets, the legal architecture, differentiation in mitigation, namely developing country actions and developed country

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commitments, and North–South financial flows. Many hoped for the new agreement(s) to be legally binding and, substantively, to recognise long- term targets and pave the way for the goal of limiting global warming to 2°C (see Jones 2011).

In contrast to these expectations, which were especially pronounced in the West, the Copenhagen meeting failed to achieve a formal outcome and only resulted in a political agreement entitled ‘the Copenhagen Accord’. The Accord was a brief and general document, comprising just two-and-a-half pages of text, containing several unclear formulations pre-viously unknown to the UN climate regime. Furthermore, due to objec-tions by a small group of countries, the conference was unable to ‘adopt’ the Accord. Instead, the conference ‘took note of’ the Accord, leaving its future status and implementation uncertain. This result, as well as the process leading up to it, was widely seen as a failure across the North–South lines. According to Dimitrov (2010: 796), ‘the conference was a failure whose magnitude exceeded our worst fears and the resulting Copenhagen Accord was a desperate attempt to mask that failure’. Dubash (2009) notes that the Accord was a ‘paper-thin cover-up of what was a near complete failure’.

The aim of this chapter is twofold: Firstly, it identifies two underlying reasons for the failure of the Copenhagen conference by pointing to pro-cedural failures in the run-up to and during the meeting as well as exces-sive expectations coupled with misconceptions of great power politics. Secondly, based on these insights, the chapter points to the lessons learnt from the failure of Copenhagen. Will the tragedy of Copenhagen repeat itself in a forthcoming, important climate meeting? Two aspects are high-lighted in particular: the intensive and strategic leadership role of the pres-idency, which is needed for the consensus-based decision-making to function, and the need for bilateral cooperation at the highest level between the USA and China, ensuring that the great powers are ‘on the same page’ before a key climate meeting.

The chapter builds on a literature review, public discussion in the media surrounding the Copenhagen and Paris meetings, and the author’s participatory observation of the UNFCCC negotiations.2 It first concep-tualises failures and learning in International Relations (IR) and then outlines two main types of failure in more detail: procedural ones and those related to expectations and great power politics. The chapter then reflects on the lessons learnt for UN climate talks and multilateralism in general.

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AnAlyticAl FrAmework

There are ample definitions, frameworks and conceptualisations of ‘fail-ure’, ‘fiasco’, ‘mistake’ and related categories in the academic literature on public policy and IR. Many scholars have analysed, in several ways, differ-ent types of successes and failures and engaged in building systematic cri-teria and rendering judgements about policy being ‘an actually existing state of affairs’ (Howlett 2012). Other analysts, including McConnell (2010), and Oppermann and Spencer (2016), have emphasised ‘failure narratives’, understanding policy failures not as objective occurrences but as being constructed in political discourse. Constructivists underscore intersubjective beliefs and point out that assessments of policy success and failure are political and discursive tools, up for utilisation in the public debates (Hood 2002).

Evaluating success and failure in the multilateral context is also linked to the broad literature on regime effectiveness (Young 2002; Karlsson- Vinkhuyzen and Vihma 2009). How and why can international agree-ments affect state behaviour, and how can they do so effectively? Many different frameworks for evaluating the effectiveness of global governance have been developed by regime theorists. Some have a rationalist empha-sis, in which state behaviour is mostly driven by the ‘logic of consequences’, while others start out from a constructivist perspective and emphasise the roles of norms, legitimacy and the ‘logic of appropriateness’ (Karlsson- Vinkhuyzen and Vihma 2009). While there might be irreconcilable differ-ences between the two approaches at the level of grand theory, both approaches can be improved on the ground ‘by carefully incorporating the arguments made by the other’ (Abbott and Snidal 2000: 422).

At the epistemological level, similarly, the approach adopted by this chapter occupies a middle ground in assessing failures and successes and is thus akin to mainstream variants of critical realism or pragmatism. Facts are historical and contextual and can be socially constructed, framed and turned into different narratives. However, political events outside the con-structed discourses also exist, while different events and outcomes offer themselves for framing in different ways and not everything can be framed in every possible way. As discussions under the heading ‘post-truth’, recently selected as the word of the year by Oxford dictionaries (2016), have emphasised, political actors adopt differing levels of ‘seriousness’ with regard to facts. These basic epistemological premises, I argue, enable us to expand our understanding of failures, the blame game and different political strategies in practice.

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The focus on both measurable events and discourses highlights the political struggle that involves both expectations before an important meeting and the blame game that takes place after it. Expectations’ setting is a key strategic tool of different countries and constituencies. By ratchet-ing up the expectations, for example by suggesting that the UN climate meeting should immediately set up a global market for carbon, some industrial interest groups may be looking for an outcome that ‘disap-points’ them after the meeting (Vihma 2015b). These constituencies want to see the climate meeting ‘fail’. Some progressive actors, in a seemingly similar vein, also set very high expectations for the multilateral climate process. These constituencies ramp up the expectations and in turn hope that maximising the political pressure on governments will enable mean-ingful compromises. State actors, on the other hand, may try to minimise expectations or at least take them off their own shoulders.

The related idea that ‘blame avoidance’ is a significant motivator in policy behaviour has gained traction recently (Hood 2010; Howlett 2012). It highlights ‘the desire of decision-makers and implementers to emulate positive exemplars of successful policies, and avoid negative exemplars of failed ones’ (Howlett 2012: 541). This resonates well in the UN context, where an old dictum notes that there are only two types of UN meetings: successful and very successful. In key climate meetings such as Copenhagen, the media attendance is intensive and global and reputational stakes are especially high. A failure implies a large-scale blame game, which under-scores expectation management and blame avoidance behaviour.

Importantly, blame avoidance has been linked to policy learning (Hood 2010; Howlett 2012). Following Hood’s (2010) conception, learning takes place at two levels, thin (‘technical-strategic’) and thick (‘political- experiential’)—although students of strategy would hardly call strategic learning ‘thin’. However, in Hood’s (2010) terms, thin learning concerns instrumental issues and efficiency, an activity related to the attainment of technical aspects of policies, such as the acquisition of more and better data, that could reduce the risk of policy failure due to poor information. Thick learning, on the other hand, takes place at the proce-dural and political levels, ‘in terms of being able to successfully negotiate policy and political decision-making processes’ (Howlett 2012: 541). Howlett (2012: 545–546) further notes how popular commentators also often blame the failure of policies on ‘thick’ issues, such as process-related factors, including psychological limitations of decision-makers, and organisational failings, such as a pervasive ‘bureaucratic mentality’ preventing innovation and promoting inefficient implementation.


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Learning from mistakes, especially at a thick level, may sound progres-sive and even idealistic. But framed in this way, as linked to the desire to avoid blame, it is also tied to the core objectives of strategic behaviour—not only to the ideal of rational planning and policymaking.

the FAilure oF copenhAgen

The deadlock in the formal negotiations by civil servants lasted for two years up to the Copenhagen meeting. As it could not be resolved, political leaders were forced to come up with the Copenhagen Accord, an ad hoc type of political agreement. Furthermore, as noted in the introduction, the parties did not adopt the Accord in the final plenary as a formal deci-sion. The text became a free-floating agreement without an institutional home and with a low and unclear legal status. The Accord contained, inter alia, a loose, bottom-up structure for developed countries’ commitments and developing country actions, an unspecific goal of ‘mobilising’ $100 billion of climate financing and an agreement to cut emissions ‘with a view to’ keeping global warming below 2°C (UNFCCC 2009). Rajamani (2010: 1) opined that the Accord could plausibly be characterised as ‘rot-ten’, as it is weak on addressing the massive challenge and ‘even in this weak form it faces considerable legal and procedural challenges to its operationalisation’.

Many environmental conferences in the past had produced informal outcomes, such as declarations by political leaders or public–private part-nerships. A widely shared, although not uncontested, expectation for the Copenhagen process was to negotiate a legally binding treaty. Two main options for the overall architecture were on the cards. The first was to extend the Kyoto Protocol through the adoption of a second commitment period for developed countries and to adopt a new agreement that would address the emissions of countries that are either not parties to Kyoto (the USA) or do not have Kyoto emissions targets (developing countries). The second option was a single new agreement that would be comprehensive, addressing both developed and developing country emissions.

Substantively, hopes were pinned on recognising and institutionalising the long-term targets of limiting the global temperature increase to 2°C in accordance with global emission reductions for 2050 and perhaps setting up a pathway for reaching the emission reductions needed to meet the targets. The Copenhagen outcome failed to fulfil these formal and sub-stantive expectations. It was also widely considered a failure by parties and

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stakeholders. Bovens and ‘t Hart (1996) as well as Hood et al. (2000) discuss the extent of a policy fiasco and include a range of subcategories, such as duration, publicness or visibility, avoidability, intensity and whether the failure can be seen as intentional. Even without a comparative analysis across policy fields, it seems that the Copenhagen climate meeting would score high on these indicators. In fact, Howlett (2012: 544) uses UN climate change negotiations—soon after the Copenhagen meeting—as an example of a ‘major failure’ that exemplifies high magnitude (extent and duration) and salience (intensity and visibility).

The key characteristics of the Copenhagen Accord were shaped by the BASIC group of China, India, Brazil and South Africa together with the USA. The discussion between EU leaders, the USA and BASIC on the final night of the meeting on the inclusion of the 2050 targets is now well known publicly as the tapes have been published by a weekly German magazine, Der Spiegel (Rapp et al. 2010). Several other changes intro-duced by BASIC and the USA also weakened the Accord somewhat, as seen in the various iterations of the draft Accord that were leaked outside the negotiating room. The most notable changes entailed merely compil-ing developed country commitments and developing country actions into an information document with no formal status and not the Accord itself (paragraphs 4 and 5), the exclusion of ‘our firm resolve to adopt one or more legal instruments’ (preamble) and the exclusion of a new mandate to negotiate a legal instrument.3

The last night of negotiations received a great deal of publicity, espe-cially in the blame game after the conference. It was a rare sight—a group of prime ministers and presidents with pens in hand, drafting a short com-promise text almost by themselves, evoking comparisons to Churchill’s famous napkin in the Yalta conference in 1945. However, both procedur-ally and politically, the most significant developments took place before the last-minute negotiations and deal-brokering among world leaders. These included mistakes in the general two-year preparations process as well as during the Danish Presidency in 2009.

Procedural Failure: The Road to Copenhagen

In preparation for Copenhagen, the biggest meeting in the history of environmental diplomacy, countries opted to host an unprecedented number of preparatory meetings. At the civil-servant level, formal negotia-tions for all parties lasted for nearly 14 weeks in 2008 and 2009 (Vihma


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and Kulovesi 2012). In addition, according to the UN climate talks calen-dar, some form of climate meeting was organised by the Secretariat on a total of 140 days during 2009.4

In spite of frequent calls for the talks to shift into ‘full negotiating mode’, states simply restated their positions, meeting after meeting (Vihma 2015a, b). As a result, they made little progress in narrowing their differ-ences. The official negotiating text before the Copenhagen meeting was still nearly 150+ pages long and included over 2500 parentheses indicat-ing areas of disagreement (ENB 2009). The civil servant-level negotia-tions univocally failed to produce a mature text to identify the crunch issues and offer concrete options to address them at the political-level negotiations in Copenhagen—despite the considerable amount of extra time and resources allocated to formal negotiations.

A large part of the Copenhagen meeting itself, as well as the two years of intense negotiations prior to it, was spent arguing over procedural issues. These included, for example extensive deliberation over the exact mandates of certain contact groups, over whether a ‘friends of the Chair’ group should be convened or negotiations carried out only in a plenary setting and whether the Chair should be given a mandate to prepare a streamlined ‘Chair’s text’ or not. This procedural side of the failure was exacerbated by the mistakes made by the overly active and un-strategic Danish Presidency before and during the meeting. These mistakes con-tributed to the inability of the Copenhagen meeting to adopt decisions in the final plenary.

The backdrop to the procedural failure was an issue well known among UNFCCC negotiators and experts. The decision-making in UN climate negotiations takes place in a legal vacuum, as the regime has never been able to agree on its Rules of Procedure (UNFCCC 1992: Art. 7.2). Initially, the decision on the adoption of such rules was not reached in 1995 and the negotiating aim of Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries at the time became the de facto outcome: All decisions must be taken by ‘consensus’. The mainstream opinion of international lawyers would have it that the consensus is denoted by the Chair’s perception that there is no sustained, stated objection. However, international negotiations also seem to develop their own contextual interpretation of consensus. It has cer-tainly been the practice in the climate negotiations—as well as in several other environmental treaties—that decisions have been adopted in spite of some opposition. Recent examples of this within the climate talks include the Doha meeting (in 2012), where Russia, Belarus and Ukraine objected

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to the adoption of the decisions under the Kyoto Protocol, which was however not taken into account by the presidency, and the Cancún meet-ing (in 2010), where Bolivia tried in vain to block the adoption of the agreements.

All in all, the consensus requirement for 195 countries is problematic. Over the years, climate negotiations have been characterised by controver-sies over decision-making procedures and interpretations of the consensus requirement as well as various other procedural issues (Depledge and Chasek 2012; Depledge 2010). The Copenhagen meeting thrust these issues into broader policy circles due to the presence of world leaders and global media attention. The consensus requirement gives undue weight to parties with obstructive tendencies—parties that prefer no outcome to any available outcome—as they may successfully water down agreements with brinkmanship strategies. Importantly, and as manifested in Copenhagen, the application of consensus ultimately depends on the president’s percep-tion and abilities, and the final plenaries of big meetings are sometimes unpredictable and theatrical as decision packages are gavelled—or not gav-elled—through objections.

In Copenhagen, the Danish Presidency had neither the global resources and sensitivity nor the requisite strategy to play this role. Their preparation work was extensive but not good enough to win over the small states of the South—the inclusiveness of the Danish approach was questioned early on in Copenhagen with the preparation of the so-called Danish text (ENB 2009). In the final plenary, notoriously, it was revealed that Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen was not even remotely prepared to con-duct a UN meeting, let alone strategise with and against key parties or push decisions through in spite of opposition under ‘consensus’.

Expectations and Misconceptions: Great Power Politics

In late October, one month before the Copenhagen meeting, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer acknowledged what some analysts had been saying earlier in the year, namely that Copenhagen would only be able to produce a political agreement as it would be ‘physi-cally impossible to conclude a comprehensive agreement this year’ (Kanter 2009a). President Obama also acknowledged some weeks before the con-ference started that time had run out to secure a legally binding climate deal in Copenhagen (Adam et al. 2009). However, this did not signifi-cantly alter the general expectation of a full-fledged legal agreement and a


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substantial breakthrough. As a result, the outside world expected a global climate treaty but inside negotiators and well-informed politicians did not regard this as a viable option. The galloping expectations could not easily be reined in right before the meeting.

It was also increasingly evident that the procedural inefficiencies of the UN climate negotiations could not fully explain the deadlock in formal negotiations. Disputes in Copenhagen, as well as the climate meetings before it in 2008–2009, were caused by significant substantive disagree-ments on key issues, most notably the extent of differentiated responsibili-ties of developed and developing countries. Importantly, there were also new political dynamics at play in the climate talks in Copenhagen. As noted by several analysts, China was much more assertive in Copenhagen than in the key climate meetings of the past (Bodansky 2010), reflecting its emergence as a global power, at one point embarrassing the USA by sending Deputy Foreign Minister He Yafei to negotiate with President Obama and other world leaders. A common analysis of the meeting was that of a shifting global order and that ‘the contours of a new political world order became visible, one shaped by the new self-confidence of the Asians and the powerlessness of the West’ (Rapp et al. 2010). The EU, on the other hand, was excluded from one key meeting between Obama and the BASIC leaders. Europe’s fate in Copenhagen was, according to popu-lar descriptions, to be ‘snubbed’, ‘bypassed’ or ‘sidelined’ (Hewitt 2009). Third, the wedges and conflicts of interests among the developing coun-tries were more pronounced than before (Vihma et al. 2011).

The broader, political side of the Copenhagen failure thus revolved around great power politics, especially concerning China, and the expecta-tions management for the meeting. Prior to Copenhagen, China leaked, in all likelihood, a draft text coordinated by Denmark, the ‘Danish Text’, and criticised it heavily despite cooperating with the presidency for months in creating that draft. The ‘backroom’ development of a draft negotiating text was pegged by many developing countries as a significant cause of the escalating mistrust between North and South in Copenhagen. During the actual meeting, China is known to have coordinated much of the procedural obstructionism by Sudan, the Chair of the negotiating bloc of developing countries (Zammit-Cutajar 2010; Purvins and Stevenson 2010). A feasible explanation for this and other ‘wrecking ball’ tactics prior to and during the meeting is that China had concluded well before Copenhagen that legally binding obligations, for example adding trans-parency to its emissions and policies, were not in its interests.

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The pressure on China to curb its emissions as well as report and verify them internationally had been steadily mounting for a decade. When the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997, China had 21% of the world’s population but was responsible for only 14% of global CO2 emissions.5 By 2009, China was producing 26% of the world’s emissions. For this reason, as well as the increasing significance of other emerging economies such as India, Brazil and South Africa, the ‘firewall’ between developing country and developed country mitigation commitments that was embedded in the Kyoto Protocol was beginning to crack in the 2007 Bali meeting. At the Copenhagen meeting, considerable changes were expected by many vis-à-vis the black-and-white differentiation between the obligations of developed and developing countries.

Before Copenhagen, the West had interpreted China’s willingness to take domestic action as evidence that it would also allow some kind of ‘internationalisation’ of its policies under an international agreement, meaning that it would agree to subject its actions to some form of inter-national scrutiny. China, in turn, calculated that this was not in its interests and furthermore that it could avoid the blame for failure at Copenhagen, as it would not be isolated as a member of the BASIC group and/or sin-gled out from the wider group of developing countries. China’s active role in forming the new BASIC group of emerging economies in the run-up to Copenhagen took experienced diplomats and analysts by surprise. In the decisive days of COP-15, the four countries coordinated their positions ‘on an hourly basis’.6 In retrospect, it is easy to conclude that the most important raison d’être for BASIC in the Chinese thinking was to avoid isolation amid the unprecedented pressure of the Copenhagen meeting and the blame game afterwards (Halldig et al. 2011).

As indicated in the previous section, if a major power wants to obstruct the outcome of a UN climate meeting, there are ample procedural oppor-tunities available to this end. The complicated structure of the negotia-tions and decision-making procedures provide for this. Procedural concerns and the opportunistic exploitation of North–South mistrust have since the dawn of the UN climate talks been a key tool for Saudi Arabia and the OPEC group in their negotiating strategy. Saudi Arabia’s role in particular has been well documented and analysed as an example of obstructionism (Depledge 2008). These characteristics also sometimes emerge beyond the ‘usual suspects’ of oil-exporting countries. The height-ened status of climate negotiations in international affairs and the global media spectacle offer a platform for addressing issues outside the realm of


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climate change. In Copenhagen, the presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia, in particular, used much of their time in the limelight to criticise the USA, all rich nations and the ‘predatory capitalist system’ (Vihma 2010).

In Copenhagen, as China was on the defensive against increasing pres-sure from the North (and some parts of the South), it supported Sudan, Venezuela and Bolivia in their obstructive tactics. From a Northern per-spective, the role of China and India was seen as ‘allow[ing] the obstruc-tion of Sudan and the G77 to take place’.7 China had decided to safeguard its ‘no new commitments’ line, which is also compatible with its long- standing foreign policy principles of non-interference and sovereignty. Compromising on these principles in climate talks was also perhaps seen as ‘opening the gates’ for further concessions. This was simply too much to ask—and China reacted by throwing its political weight around in Copenhagen.

lessons oF copenhAgen: DiD leArning tAke plAce?The implications of the Copenhagen failure and blame game were omni-present in UN climate negotiations in the ensuing years, most notably in the subsequent COPs in Cancun 2010 and Durban 2011, in which the inclusiveness of the negotiations and the leadership role of the presidency were emphasised in numerous discussions. In this way, the Copenhagen mistakes can be perceived as having possible consequences for both thin and thick learning.

The strategic implications of Copenhagen were somewhat painful to accept at first, as they rather clearly indicated that the world lacked the political will to respond adequately to the threat of climate change. After these emotions had subsided, some ‘thin’ lessons could be proposed, for example on efficiency (Vihma and Kulovesi 2012), as well as ‘thick’ ones on setting expectations (Vihma and Van Asselt 2012) and on great power politics for the USA and China (Purvins and Stevenson 2010).

Concerning efficiency, the Copenhagen exercise showed that two years of frequent formal negotiations did little to pave the way for a much- needed political compromise. The UN climate negotiations have intensi-fied in many ways during the last 20 years—as have many other UN regimes. There are more negotiating bodies, a sophisticated institutional architecture, more meetings and more participants involved in the process. Although this also reflects the growing seriousness regarding the

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international politics of climate change, there are also arguments for look-ing at the intensification from a critical perspective. An excessive number of meetings drains donor budgets for multilateral environmental agreement- related activities, including the implementation of the agreements, and spreads the resources of poor countries more thinly (Vihma and Kulovesi 2012). Increased specialisation in different subgroups also leads to imple-mentation challenges as outcomes become more difficult to implement in the domestic sphere without trained and experienced specialists. As nego-tiations become more complex and develop their own jargon and multi-tude of acronyms, they also become harder to communicate to wider audiences.

A first thick lesson concerns the relationship between the USA and China, the main emitters and otherwise biggest global powers, and is con-nected to the broader theme of expectations management. In the multipo-lar era, the USA and China cannot be pressured internationally at a given meeting to agree on something that they have perceived as being against their interests. On the other hand, in practice, both are needed to make an international climate agreement work—their emission levels as well as the power of their examples are enough to delegitimise any deal that would exclude them. This is not necessarily the case with secondary emerging powers, such as Brazil. Continuous bilateral diplomacy at multiple levels of the sort that took place before the Paris meeting is needed in order to set the expectations for the meeting accordingly. The US diplomatic efforts with China on post-2020 climate targets had already been publicised in detail before the Paris meeting (Restuccia and Crowley 2014). Before and during the Paris meeting itself, President Obama appeared to have been ‘instrumental in fostering a relationship with both China’s President Xi Jinping and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which ultimately helped secure the final Paris deal’ (Goldenberg 2014). Obama met Xi and Modi in Paris and also talked repeatedly with both over the phone.

When the stakes are very high, as in Copenhagen in 2009, politicians may fear that playing their hand poorly would lead to enormous political and economic consequences domestically (Vihma 2015a, b). Such fears may lead to countries stepping on the brakes. One of the thick Copenhagen lessons thus deals with political messaging: Key actors should engage in lowering the stakes by clearly communicating, and repeating, what is not going to happen in the meeting at hand.


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Another thick lesson concerns process management. Considerable blame in the aftermath of Copenhagen was directed towards the Danish Presidency. The presidency indeed plays a vital role in the success of cli-mate negotiations. This was widely acknowledged among experts before the Copenhagen meeting, but the procedural difficulties and blunders in the meeting reinforced the message. Some noted the strategic and tactical mistakes (Vidal 2010), while others argued that the Danes were also vic-tims of circumstances and unrealistic expectations (Meistrup 2010).

After the Copenhagen meeting, it again became evident that the overall context of North–South politics in the UN climate talks influences and limits the role that can effectively be taken by the presidency. It has been pointed out that COP presidencies conducted by developed countries face a more difficult job and are more easily accused of bias. Moreover, there is ‘a sad history of well-meaning European COP presidents’ (Vihma and Kulovesi 2012). The examples of the Netherlands in 2000, and Denmark in 2009—both of which worked hard to make their meetings successful and possess a formidable record as donor countries in development coop-eration—raise questions on whether European countries might have a ten-dency to overestimate their good reputation and the extent to which they have the ear of the South in multilateral negotiations. The triumphant French Presidency in 2015 managed to avoid this by hard work and an unmistakable sense of realpolitik.

Enhancing the strategy and practices of the presidency in climate nego-tiations is by no means straightforward. The annually rotating nature of the COP Presidency among five UN regional groups is a firmly established practice. It means that the leadership style will change every year with each successive presidency, including the manner, scope and intensity of infor-mal preparations. Promoting continuity and best practices has become and will continue to be a major challenge for the Secretariat and UNFCCC in general. These will certainly include aspects of the recent high-profile Mexican and French Presidencies. In 2010, Mexico committed itself to conducting a process that would be transparent and inclusive (for details, see Vihma and Kulovesi 2012). This effort, along with the parties’ mutual desire to ‘save’ the UNFCCC process and multilateralism, contributed to the success of the Cancún Conference, where the transparent leadership style of the Mexican COP Presidency was appreciated by most parties.8 Through its leadership strategy, the Mexican COP Presidency was able to generate a sufficient degree of support, goodwill and trust to enable COP President, Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa, to openly overrule Bolivia’s

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objections to the adoption of the Cancún Agreements without protest from other parties (Vihma and Kulovesi 2012). This demonstrates how the handling of procedural issues is a question of the political capital of the presidency, which is built up over the course of the year and through infor-mal negotiations (Vihma 2015a, b).

The French Presidency in 2015 also won considerable public praise from different quarters after the successful Paris meeting. This included the Western press and, significantly, also parties such as Venezuela and India (Stothard and Chassany 2015). Many parties publicly declared in the final plenary that they had felt respected and that their concerns had been listened to, some even going as far as to say that this constituted a first in climate talks.9 Preparing for the mega meeting had, again, entailed a huge diplomatic effort, with the whole of the French diplomatic corps being mobilised. In the run-up to the Paris meeting, the French held 900 climate events in different countries, with the COP President, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, ‘visiting a crazy amount of countries’ personally (Stockton 2015). The combination of inclusiveness, hard diplomatic work with boots on the ground and strategic skill paid off in the meeting itself. During the meeting, the French had tactically sided with Least Developing Countries and Small Island States on their demand to recognise also the 1.5° warming target, a move that initially took several EU partners by surprise (Darby 2015). When Nicaragua considered protesting in the final hour, the French Presidency wielded the gavel swiftly and effectively (Stothard and Chassany 2015). During the final stretch, the presidency was able to change an obviously political key wording (from ‘shall’ to ‘should’) as a technical issue (Eddy 2015). On several occasions, the presi-dency also employed discreet pressure tactics by giving emotionally charged speeches about saving the world and then quickly adopting deci-sions, leaving little political room for protest.10 Even notably critical assess-ments of the Paris meeting such as that by Clemencon (2016: 17) acknowledge that the French Presidency ‘ably steered the conference through critical moments’ and avoided a ‘Copenhagen-style collapse’.

The precedent set by the UNFCCC’s practice of overruling objec-tions in several key meetings leaves some crucial political space for COP presidents. This is of importance in keeping the decision-making of the UN climate talks functional. Unfortunately, this leadership role of the presidency has been lacking on many occasions and it is still not fully recognised by all member states. Each ambitious presidency has to work hard for the leadership position and decide for itself how to play this role.


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The sense of inclusiveness and ownership of countries are achieved by and large by what happens outside the formal negotiations. However, the use of this political space is prone to mistakes, running the risk of stretching the ‘consensus’ too far by an unskilled presidency. Recent important meetings, most notably the Paris meeting in 2015, indicated that some ‘thick’ procedural learning may have taken place in conducting the presidency in the UNFCCC. Whether the learning occurred at the organisational level remains to be seen in forthcoming meetings.

conclusions

In spite of some early pessimism, the UN climate negotiations managed to survive the failed Copenhagen meeting rather well. The Durban confer-ence in 2011 picked up the pieces of the Copenhagen debacle and adopted a mandate ‘to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention applicable to all Parties’ (UNFCCC 2011). The subsequent Lima conference triggered the process in which parties submitted their climate post-2020 pledges ahead of the Paris conference—open to the other parties and civil society to assess and review. These key steps enabled the success of the Paris meeting.

This chapter analysed the Copenhagen meeting as a policy failure and underscored the opportunity for the negotiating parties to learn from the mistakes, motivated to a considerable extent by blame avoidance. Howlett’s (2012) overview article did not explicitly link the magnitude of the blame game to thick learning, but he does point towards that direction. There have been several failed meetings in the UNFCCC and conferences with little or no tangible results, but the volume of political and public atten-tion reached new heights at Copenhagen. The intensive blame game resulted in more thinking and strategising on the ‘thick’ level, including procedural issues and decision-making as well as political issues concern-ing great power politics and expectations.

The thin lessons of Copenhagen concerned the slow progress and agenda disputes which indicated that formal intersessional meetings do not constitute the most efficient use of negotiating time and resources. Second, on the thick level, in order for a key climate meeting to succeed, at least the USA and China must make sure that they know where the other stands and broadly agree on the main points at hand and on how to move forward. In terms of procedural learning, the lessons of Copenhagen highlighted the fact that the decision-making in the UNFCCC process is

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complex and confusing. This condition also makes the role of the presi-dency particularly relevant. Ultimately, the Mexican and French exercises, in particular, showed that an open yet strategic consultation process can help to build sufficient understanding and political capital to overcome last-minute objections and thus enable decision-making in key meetings.

However, it is worth noting some other variables and external factors that influenced the success of the Paris meeting. First, the constructive role of China in Paris was not only about the wish to avoid blame for another failed meeting or the close climate cooperation between the Obama administration and China. Within China, the air pollution prob-lem in many important cities had become urgent and politicised since 2009—and it has also been addressed and discussed at all levels of the administration, including by President Xi. Hence, the increased motiva-tion of the Chinese leadership to appear as leaders in climate talks has an important domestic component. Second, in the Paris negotiations there was a different level of clarity on the legal nature of the emission targets by countries than there was in Copenhagen. In Paris, these were based on a bottom-up process and were not projected, as such, to become subject to a legally binding obligation. This meant less pressure on emerging econo-mies which were defensive in Copenhagen, where legally binding emission targets were still a core objective for many.

To claim that the Copenhagen meeting was a failure is almost a trivial exercise, especially in 2017, when legitimising some of the novelties in the Copenhagen Accord is no longer a political objective for anyone. This chapter has gone beyond assessing the failure and mistakes of Copenhagen and has highlighted some lessons that were learnt from the exercise, both thick and thin, and their beneficial consequences in practice at the Paris meeting. The UN climate talks have shown that the possibility to learn from mistakes in multilateralism exists—even if the substantial results of the Paris Agreement are still somewhat unclear.

Blame avoidance behaviour makes the argument for learning more fea-sible. In the aftermath of Copenhagen, considerable blame was directed towards Denmark and the UNFCCC, which highlighted procedural issues, the presidency and decision-making. Second, blame for the failure was directed at China, which in turn highlights the significance of great power politics and expectations management. However, large and decisive meetings conducted by world leaders in global climate politics do not take place every year, so it is still too early to draw the definitive conclusion that learning has taken place among the parties and the UNFCCC. As the


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saying goes, ‘there is only so much policy one can do’, indicating that there will always be ‘in-between COPs’, meetings that are not intended to make major breakthroughs but that provide stepping stones on the way to other conferences. For these meetings, there is no need to embark on a great diplomatic initiative.

To invoke Marx’s sinister dictum, Copenhagen was a tragedy, but in the meantime, the Copenhagen experience gave the international com-munity, or at least the UNFCCC, valuable lessons on how to conduct multilateral talks in the twenty-first century. In the event that the thick lessons are forgotten, history may well repeat itself and the dramaturgy of the Copenhagen meeting returns as a farce.

The inadequacies of the UN and global governance extend far beyond climate, environment and sustainable development. Is effective and legiti-mate global governance possible, and where are the limits of rational plan-ning and pragmatic application on the global scale? Global climate politics and the UNFCCC will be in the front row in answering these questions in the coming decades.

notes

1. Many prominent analysts have raised these issues, one of the most influen-tial being Victor (2011).

2. The author has participated in UNFCCC meetings in Vienna (27–31 August 2007), Bali (3–14 December 2007), Bonn (2–13 June 2008), Poznan (1–12 December 2008), Bonn (2–13 June 2009), Bonn (10–14 August 2009), Barcelona (2–6 November 2009), Copenhagen (7–18 December 2009), Bonn (9–11 April 2010), Bonn (2–6 August 2010), Cancún (29 November–10 December 2010), Bonn (6–17 June 2011), Durban (28 November– 10 December 2011), Bangkok (28 August–7 September 2012), Doha (26 November–8 December 2012), Bonn (29 April–3 May 2013), Warsaw (11–22 November 2013) and Paris (30 November–12 December 2015) as an independent scholar, writer/editor for Earth Negotiations Bulletin or as a consultant. Many of the views and ideas expressed in this chapter concerning the procedural issues of the negotiations are influenced by interviews with prominent experts and a workshop that took place at the Nordic Council of Ministers in Copenhagen in 2010. These ideas have also been enriched and further developed in close correspondence with Professor Kati Kulovesi (Vihma and Kulovesi 2012).

3. Four different draft versions of the Copenhagen Accord informally circu-lated between 5:00 PM, 18 December 2010, and were finally tabled by the COP Presidency at 2:30 AM, 19 December 2010 (on file with author).

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4. See the UNFCCC calendar, available at www.unfccc.int (accessed 2 February 2017).

5. For evolution of the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, see CAIT—a tool by World Resources Institute, http://cait.wri.org/ (accessed 10 November 2017).

6. Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, Lok Sabha of the Indian Parliament, 21 December 2009 (transcript on file with author).

7. The COP Presidency consulted bilaterally with the EU on the morning of 17 December 2009, stating that it was ‘extraordinary that the four big ones let [the G77 Chair] Sudan do the talking’ and did not use their authority to bring order to the group (transcript on file with author).

8. Cancun COP President, Foreign minister Patricia Espinosa, was elected Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC in May 2016.

9. See the statements of countries at the Paris meeting final plenary at the UNFCCC video archives, available at: http://unfccc.int/press/multime-dia/webcasts/items/5857.php (accessed 10 November 2017).

10. These occasions included Foreign Minister Fabius’ manoeuvres in closing the technical meetings and opening the COPs in the middle of the two- week meeting—sometimes a rather difficult task—and President Holland’s speech on Paris Agreement before the delegates had even seen the final text on the final day.

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CHAPTER 13

On the Indeterminacy of Policy Mistakes: Lessons from British Immigration Policy

James Hampshire

How do we identify a policy mistake? It is certainly commonplace to hear policies described as ‘failures’, and the actions of policymakers as ‘mis-takes’, but it is far from straightforward to turn these everyday terms into analytical categories. In this chapter I argue that the reason for this lies in the indeterminacy of policy mistakes, which in turn is due to their con-tested, often ambiguous and shifting nature. I develop this argument in two stages. In the first part of the chapter, I discuss the conceptualisation of policy mistakes. Drawing on the literature on policy failures and fiascos, I propose that a policy mistake is an action, decision or judgement made by a policy actor which has unintended and negative consequences. There are three elements in this definition where indeterminacy and contingency rear their heads: the criteria by which the policy is negatively evaluated, the intention of the actor in making the policy decision and the time frame within which the consequences are assessed.

In the second part of the chapter, I illustrate these conceptual issues through a discussion of immigration policy mistakes in Britain. Immigration provides a useful case study, partly because there are many policies which

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have had unintended or perverse consequences, and partly because the highly contested nature of immigration policymaking enables us to see how mistakes are constructed through political discourse. From the post- war government’s creation of an expansive imperial citizenship category in 1948, to New Labour’s decision to open the UK labour market after European Union (EU) enlargement in 2004, and most recently David Cameron’s net migration target in 2010, immigration is a policy field in which claims of failure and mistakes are abundant but often ambivalent. And most recently, the central—and possibly decisive—role of immigra-tion in the EU referendum shows how this issue has the ability to trans-form politics in unintended, and for many at least, deeply mistaken directions. I conclude the discussion with some reflections on what the indeterminacy of policy mistakes means for their analysis in political sci-ence and international relations.

ConCeptualising poliCy Mistakes

As several authors have observed, policy failures are not so much identified as constructed through discourse by actors who often have a stake in the game (Boin et al. 2009; Bovens and ‘t Hart 1996, 2016; Oppermann and Spencer 2016). To describe a policy as having failed is to make (or assume) a negative evaluation of that policy, which in turn implies a set of evalua-tive criteria. Yet there are no fixed or universal criteria for evaluating poli-cies. Objectivists may appeal to a policy’s stated objectives—where they exist—or to criteria which they contend to be uncontroversial or self- evident. But this ignores the extent to which any policy may be evaluated using multiple criteria, and that there is rarely, if ever, agreement among all actors about how a policy should be evaluated. What counts as a success or failure depends upon the perspective of the observer: a given policy may be viewed as a success from one perspective and a failure from another. Bovens and ‘t Hart use the example of airport planning in Britain and France during the 1960s and 1970s. From a ‘technocratic, planning per-spective’ the development of Charles de Gaulle airport was a success, in contrast to the failure of the British government to develop London air-ports at the same time. But viewed as a political process in which all inter-ested parties could shape the debate and exert some influence on the outcome, the British approach was arguably more successful (1996: 5–6).

The discursive construction of policies as failures is not a detached, bloodless process, overseen by impartial observers. Policies come to be

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thought of as failures, blunders or mistakes through discursive contests in which interested actors—politicians, interest groups, journalists, think tanks, experts and so on—mobilise different frames of analysis to establish or undermine a policy’s credentials. The ideational framing of existing policies is a central part of policymaking, as policy actors seek to mobilise support for their preferred course of action by re-presenting the status quo. Narratives about the effects of a given policy can be marshalled stra-tegically to support or oppose change (Schmidt 2011). They are often mobilised to quash a new policy idea (‘we tried that before and it didn’t work’) but also to prompt a rethinking of received ideas as a catalyst for change (Boswell and Hampshire 2017). In other words, the construction of policies as successes or failures cannot be divorced from political con-flict. As Bovens and ‘t Hart put it, ‘the verdict about a public policy, pro-gramme or project is shaped by ongoing “framing contests” between its advocates and shapers on the one hand, and its critics and victims on the other’ (2016: 654; cf. Boin et al. 2009; Oppermann and Spencer 2016).

Political scientists cannot take an Archimedean view of these framing contests by trying to establish whether a policy is really a success or failure. Even if such criteria of success and failure existed, to do so would be to overlook how partisan conflict, institutional rules and power relations shape actors’ ability to mobilise support through their policy narratives; in other words, it would be to overlook the political. In this sense, the politi-cal scientific analysis of policy failures and mistakes is very different from policy evaluation. It is not about gathering evidence to decide whether a policy has ‘worked’, in the sense of meeting its objectives or generating positive outcomes according to some set of criteria decided by the evalua-tors, but rather to understand, and possibly explain, why some policies come to be viewed as successes and others as failures. Thus, the analysis of policy failures and mistakes must account for the constructed and con-tested nature of failure. The description of a policy as having succeeded or failed is a discursive process of social-political construction, in which actors with their own interests and agendas mobilise narratives to praise or criti-cise others.

I want now to home in on mistakes and argue that they are conceptually distinct from failures. The narrative construction of a policy as a failure is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for it to be identified as a mistake. A policy that does not achieve its stated objectives may be described as a ‘failure’, and a state of affairs may be described as a ‘fiasco’. But neither can be described as a ‘mistake’ without reference to an intending agent.

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I propose that we conceptualise mistakes as actions which produce neg-ative unintended consequences. The importance of agency and intention-ality become clear when we consider how we use the word ‘mistake’ in everyday language. We do not say that a computer or a machine has ‘made a mistake’, we rather say that it has ‘broken down’ or ‘failed’.

This is because mistakes are made by actors. Objects whose behaviour is causally determined by exogenous forces cannot make mistakes. And if we say that an actor has made a mistake, then we presume that it had a choice in acting the way that it did. In other words, mistakes are made by actors who could have acted otherwise. If an actor could not have acted otherwise, then however negatively we evaluate the effects of their action, we are unlikely to describe it as having made a mistake. (Related to this, when we describe someone as having made a mistake, we are often attrib-uting blame or holding them responsible for their action.)

Secondly, when we claim that an actor has made a mistake we are—explicitly or implicitly—referring to their intentions. If an actor intended to bring about a certain effect in acting the way that she did and we disre-gard the unintended consequences, the action cannot be considered a mis-take, however negative we, as observers, consider that effect to be. We might argue that it was a bad decision (according to some criteria that we consider relevant to evaluating the action in question), an imprudent deci-sion or even an immoral one, but we cannot sensibly describe it as a mis-take. For this reason, I do not think that it is plausible to conceptualise mistakes as ‘procedural failures’ and outcomes as ‘substantive failures’ (Walker and Malici 2011: 8). The analysis of mistakes requires that we consider the effects of an action in relation to an actor’s intentions.

To illustrate this point, consider the following example. At a chess tour-nament, a leading grandmaster makes a bad move that quickly leads to her opponent winning the game. This may be described as a mistake in the game of chess because the rules and objectives are clear and agreed to by all participants (indeed, one cannot sensibly play chess without agreeing to the rules and objectives). Chess is an example of what Alasdair MacIntyre (1985: 187–190) calls a ‘practice’, a ‘socially established cooperative human activity’ with shared rules enabling uncontroversial judgement of good and bad. Within this context, a player who makes a move that gives an advantage to her opponent has made a mistake. But this assumes that the player does indeed wish to win the game. Suppose our grandmaster is tired and wants to lose the game so as to get to bed early. Or she is corrupt and will receive a large sum of cash for throwing the game. Then a move

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which undermines her position and increases the likelihood of defeat may be perfectly intended. She will have made a mistake according to the rules and objectives of chess, but if her intention is to get to bed early or take a bung, then it is not really a mistake at all, rather an intentional act to per-form badly to achieve another objective.1

This example illustrates that identifying an action as a mistake requires an observer to draw inferences about an actor’s intentions, which may or may not be revealed. What appears as a mistake according to a given set of evaluative criteria is not a mistake at all if the author’s intention was pre-cisely to ‘fail’ in the terms of those criteria in order to ‘succeed’ in achiev-ing some other goal.

Unfortunately for those trying to analyse policy mistakes, recovering intentionality can be difficult since political actors often have reason to conceal or misrepresent their intentions for strategic reasons. In order to recover actors’ intentions, we must rely on what they say but also draw inferences from what they do not say, or what they merely imply. As Thomas Hobbes argued nearly four centuries ago: ‘though words be the signs we have of one another’s opinions and intentions … because the equivocation of them is so frequent according to the diversity of contex-ture, and of the company wherewith they go … it must be extreme hard to find out [those] meanings and opinions’ (Hobbes 2008 [1640]: I.13.8).

Furthermore, even if we may confidently infer that an actor did not intend a particular negative outcome, we tend not to use the word ‘mis-take’ if that actor could conceivably have foreseen that outcome as a likely result of their actions. If an actor could have foreseen the negative (albeit unintended) outcome of their action, we are likely to reach for stronger words than mistake. This is the realm of blunders, miscalculations and errors of judgement. Indeed, when we describe an act or a decision as a mistake, we often do so to absolve the agent of full responsibility: mistakes happen, mistakes are human, everyone makes mistakes and so on. In this light, when Neville Chamberlain came back from Munich in 1938, having agreed to Nazi Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland, had he made a mistake? He certainly had noble motivations, but many commentators at the time and since have argued that he misjudged Hitler and should have foreseen the futility of appeasement. To say that the Munich Agreement was a mistake seems to be letting Chamberlain off the hook.

At this point I should clarify how my argument about intentionality differs from an objectivist view of policy failure. The objectivist holds that


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policies should be evaluated in terms of their objectives and claims that a policy has failed if it does not achieve its objectives. Constructivists argue that we cannot analyse policy mistakes in these narrow terms because poli-cies are evaluated from multiple perspectives and constructed as failures or mistakes through processes of political contestation in which competing frames are mobilised by interested actors. Thus even a policy that does achieve its stated objectives may nevertheless be claimed as a mistake if it has significant negative consequences. I do, however, argue that these consequences must have been unintended by the actor for us to talk about the policy as a mistake. For if the unstated consequences that we believe to be negative were intended by the actor (bearing in mind that they may not have revealed their intentions), then it seems peculiar to claim that the actor made a mistake. Instead, it would seem that they made an inten-tional decision of which we are critical.

I conclude this conceptual discussion with a third difficulty that besets the analysis of policy mistakes: the problem of temporality. As Paul Pierson has compellingly argued, since politics and policymaking unfold over time, political analysis should have a temporal dimension (Pierson 2004). It is clear that the evaluation of policies can change over time (Bovens and ‘t Hart 1996: 6; King and Crewe 2013: 5). This is inherent to processes of ‘social learning’ (Heclo 1974; Hall 1993) as well as to the mobilisation of competing narratives by proponents and opponents of policy decisions. Whether through technocratic, evidence-based review or political contes-tation, a policy that appears initially successful may in the longer run be considered a failure. Conversely, a policy that looks like a failure in the short run, may be viewed more positively over time. Therefore, depending on the point in time at which a policy is being analysed, it may appear as anything from a catastrophic blunder to a resounding triumph.

This is not unique to policymaking: the effects and consequences of all human actions evolve and often only become clear (if ever) over time. But temporality is especially pertinent to the analysis of policies whose half-life extends for years, decades or even centuries. The effects of many impor-tant policy decisions reverberate into the future, and evaluations of these policies as successes or failures evolve accordingly. In foreign policy, for example, decisions to go to war, sign international treaties or leave regional organisations may have short-term effects, but their wider impacts often only become apparent over an extended time horizon. Take two of the most controversial wars of the last century: evaluations of both the wis-dom of US involvement in the Vietnam War or, more recently, the invasion

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of Iraq have certainly shifted over time. A tactical victory may become a strategic mistake if in the longer run it undermines a state’s objectives. And, of course, the pendulum can swing back: what starts off being thought of as a success may come to look like a failure, only to be revalu-ated several years hence as a success after all. In short, the evaluation of policies is temporally contingent.

It is true that in some policy areas, decisions have a much shorter half- life. Campaign tactics during elections or referendum campaigns, for example, become successes or failures almost literally overnight. The ‘Project Fear’ tactics during the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 are a case in point, as the Better Together campaign’s tactic of emphasising the negative economic consequences of Scottish indepen-dence was vindicated once the result was in. Conversely, a similar tactic adopted by the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign during Britain’s EU referendum was swiftly labelled a mistake after the surprise vote to leave on 23 June 2016.

But even in the case of elections and referendums, temporality often confounds the stable classification of campaign tactics as successes or fail-ures. A policy commitment that helped win votes will look successful on the morning of an electoral victory, but it may come to be perceived as a failure if the government later struggles to implement its promises or its implementation produces unforeseen consequences, including negative political effects, when in power. Mario Cuomo’s much-quoted quip about campaigning in poetry and governing in prose rests on the idea that suc-cessful rhetoric is quite different from effective governance. This returns us to the problem of perspective discussed above, with a temporal twist: actors will often have reasons to re-evaluate their earlier ‘successes’ as events unfold.

The implication of this for the analysis of policy mistakes is that we need to be conscious and self-reflexive about the time frames that we work within. If, as I have argued above and substantiate in the case below, what looks like a success at t1 can come to look like a failure at t2, then the analy-sis of mistakes must recognise the contingency of evaluative judgements made by policy actors and observers. We are bound to what the philoso-pher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1989) called a ‘horizon of understanding’: a temporally situated vantage point that shapes our ways of perceiving past decisions. All interpretation involves prejudgements that are necessarily oriented to our present concerns and interest. As historians are acutely aware (perhaps more so than political scientists), understanding past


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decisions requires an attempt to divest oneself of these prejudgements, to place oneself in the ‘foreign country’ of the past. Insofar as the political science analysis of policy mistakes looks to past decisions and aims to recover actors’ intentions, it too requires such a divestment. And this tem-poral dimension of policy evaluation interacts in complex ways with the problems of perspective, as dominant frames of analysis may themselves shift over time.

In the remainder of this chapter I illustrate the difficulty of overcoming these conceptual obstacles in the analysis of policy mistakes through a dis-cussion of UK immigration policies. My aim is to show that the identifica-tion, let alone explanation, of policy mistakes is far from straightforward.

iMMigration poliCy Mistakes in British politiCal history

The history of UK immigration policy is littered with unintended conse-quences, but it is not always clear that these policies can be described as mistakes. Perhaps the most far-reaching unintended policy consequence of all, the path-dependent effects of the British Nationality Act of 1948 (BNA 1948), illustrates the point. The BNA 1948 shaped immigration policy for three decades and underpinned the transformation of Britain into a multi-ethnic, multicultural society (Hansen 2000; Hampshire 2005). The BNA 1948 created a single citizenship category, Citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC), for all persons born throughout the British Empire and Commonwealth. The Act was prompted by the Canadian government’s decision to create a citizenship category, which the British feared would fragment imperial and Commonwealth membership (Hansen 2000: 41–45). The intention of the BNA 1948 was to shore up the Commonwealth, but by extending the right to live and work in the UK to nearly one-third of the world’s popula-tion, it unintentionally placed real constraints on the government’s ability to control immigration.

In this case, we can be confident that the immigration effects were unintended. They were certainly unforeseen: Britain had not experienced significant immigration from the Empire before 1948, and nowhere in the parliamentary debates is immigration discussed. It seems hard to comprehend this now, which only goes to show how non-salient, indeed inconceivable, substantial immigration was perceived to be at the time.

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Furthermore, as CUKCs from the Caribbean and then South Asia migrated to Britain, successive governments consistently tried to close the ‘open door’ that it had created. At first, administrative measures were deployed (Spencer 1997: 46–48), then from 1962 onwards successive immigration acts restricted CUKC’s right of abode in the UK. During this period, neither Labour nor Conservative governments wanted to jeop-ardise the process of decolonisation—and the replacement of formal empire with an informal sphere of influence through the Commonwealth—by abolishing CUKC. At the same time, there was a perceived need to restrict immigration from the ‘New’ Commonwealth countries, while retaining a degree of access for the ‘Old’ Commonwealth. Rather than overhauling citizenship legislation, successive governments legislated to differentiate the rights of CUKCs based on their ‘belonging’ (Hampshire 2005). It was only in 1981, when the Thatcher government passed a new BNA (BNA 1981), that CUKC was finally abolished. By this point, Britain had reoriented itself towards Europe following its accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, and the replacement of imperial with national citizenship no longer seemed so costly.

In hindsight, the creation of CUKC, and the failure to foresee its impli-cations for immigration policy, seems an astonishing oversight. Whether or not it was a mistake is, however, very difficult to answer. Its conse-quences for immigration policy were certainly unintended, but the evalu-ation of a piece of legislation with such ‘tentacular effects’ (Hansen 2000) as BNA 1948 can be undertaken from many perspectives. As a tool to shore up the Empire and manage the transition to the Commonwealth, BNA 1948 was moderately effective; as a basis for the regulation of immi-gration it left something to be desired. Many politicians at the time held both views, upholding the importance of CUKC while also calling for restrictive immigration legislation. Were the consequences of BNA 1948 so unambiguously negative that it can be labelled as a mistake? It clearly created legislative problems for the government, but did these offset its function as a post-imperial glue?

These questions illustrate a recurring tension between the interna-tional and domestic effects of immigration policy: open policies are a useful diplomatic tool, but they can create domestic opposition; con-versely, restrictive policies, such as the imposition of visa requirements, may be politically popular at home but easily jeopardise foreign rela-tions. The problem of weighing the different criteria and effects of the BNA 1948 on different audiences is compounded by the way in which


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its costs and benefits changed over time. In the 1950s, most politicians thought the diplomatic importance of CUKC outweighed the problems it created for immigration control, but by the late 1970s, this calculus had dramatically changed.

The case of BNA 1948 begins to illustrate that it is often far from clear what criteria should be used to evaluate a policy, and faced with competing criteria, what weight to give to each one. Moreover, the effects of a piece of legislation such as BNA 1948 clearly change over time, making the identification of a policy as a mistake contingent on the time at which the claim is being made.

laBour’s iMMigration poliCy Mistake?During the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s Britain had one of the most restrictive immigration regimes anywhere in Europe. This changed shortly after the 1997 election of Tony Blair’s Labour govern-ment, which liberalised immigration policy: not quietly or by the back door, but openly and assertively. Blair argued that ‘managed migration’ was essential to growth and competitiveness in a globalised economy, and his government set about transforming the UK’s restrictive regime. Visa requirements were relaxed for migrant workers with jobs, the existing sea-sonal worker scheme was expanded and a new programme for high- skilled workers was created (Somerville 2007: 29–38).These changes were pub-licly defended through a discourse that celebrated labour immigration as economically beneficial and portrayed Britain as an open and tolerant nation (Boswell and Hampshire 2017). Unlike the ‘open door’ of the 1950s, which was the unintended consequence of the BNA 1948, Labour’s immigration policy was clearly intended to open up the labour market to migrant workers.

More significant still—both numerically and in terms of its political con-sequences—was Labour’s decision to open the UK labour market to citi-zens of the A8 countries following EU enlargement in 2004. All of the EU15 countries except the UK, Ireland and Sweden imposed transitional controls on citizens of these former communist countries, where wages were significantly lower than those in Western Europe. Labour believed that EU migrants could fill labour shortages and stimulate economic growth without creating inflationary pressure on wages. Furthermore, on the basis of a report commissioned by the Home Office, the Home Secretary

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estimated that numbers would be relatively manageable. However, this was not only, or even primarily, a labour market policy decision. It was as much about foreign policy: a strategic attempt to create new alliances within the enlarged EU-25, with the belief that Poland and other Central and East European countries (CEECs) would ally with the UK to act as a counter-weight to the Franco-German axis. Thus a combination of economic self-interest, under-estimation of likely flows and diplomacy shaped the A8 decision (Consterdine and Hampshire 2015). In the following years, the number of EU migrants to Britain increased dramatically: in 2003, net migration from the EU was 15,000, the following year it was 87,000 and by 2007 it had reached 127,000 (ONS 2014).

Looking back today (in 2017) it is tempting to say that the liberali-sation of non-EU immigration and especially opening to EU migration were mistakes for the Labour Party. The large increase in immigration after 2004 enabled the Conservatives and then the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) to go on the offensive, abetted by the anti- immigrant right-wing press. Labour was forced on the defensive. Gordon Brown adopted an increasingly nationalist, control-oriented discourse—infamously, in his call for ‘British jobs for British workers’ in his 2007 speech to the party conference—and in the run up to the 2010 election a growing number of figures within the party called for a ‘tougher’ line. By the time of the 2015 general election, controls on immigration was one of Labour’s key pledges. As a piece of electoral politics, New Labour’s immigration policy certainly looks like a politi-cal mistake, a disaster even, and many Labour politicians are now will-ing to say as much. But at the time, immigration was widely viewed as economically beneficial, and the EU decision helped forge alliances with new EU member states. Even today, despite the near-political consensus that immigration should be reduced, most economists argue that the economic impact of immigration since 2004 has been positive. There is little doubt that the political fallout from the A8 decision was unintended, unlike the intended economic and diplomatic effects.

We can see here the problems of both perspective and temporality. Viewed through the lens of party politics, a strong case can be made that New Labour’s immigration policy was a mistake; viewed through the lens of macroeconomics or European diplomacy, it is far from clear cut. Indeed, many would argue that Labour has every reason to stand up for its immigration record.


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CaMeron’s suCCessful failure?In the run up to the 2010 general election, the Conservatives enjoyed a significant lead over Labour on immigration. At the same time, they faced a threat from UKIP, which since 2005 had increasingly campaigned on an anti-immigration message. Thus, both, their competition with Labour over the centre-ground and the prevention of defections to UKIP on the right, pointed towards a robust immigration policy.

In 2010, David Cameron announced in a television interview that if elected the Conservatives would reduce net migration ‘from hundreds to tens of thousands’ in the course of the next parliament, a promise which was then included in the Conservative Party manifesto. At the time, net migration was 255,000 per year, so Cameron had effectively committed to more than halving it in the space of just five years. When the 2010 election failed to produce a majority for any party, the Conservatives entered into negotiations with the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dem) over the formation of a coalition government. Although the net migration target was not included in the Coalition Agreement due to Lib Dem opposition, it nev-ertheless became de facto government policy, driving a restrictive policy agenda (Hampshire and Bale 2015). Work entry routes were closed or tightened, and an annual cap was put on the number of skilled workers that employers could recruit. Businesses, and some foreign governments, complained loudly about these changes, and indeed managed to extract some significant concessions, but economic migration policy shifted in a restrictive direction. Policy tightening was even more marked on interna-tional students and family migration. The financial requirements for spon-sors of family migrants were increased, as were English language requirements for foreign spouses. Financial and language requirements were raised for overseas students, and new restrictions were put on stu-dents’ rights to work or bring dependent relatives.

These policies failed to get net migration down over the course of the parliament. There was a significant decrease during the first two years of the Coalition, net migration reaching a low of 153,000 in the year to October 2012, but from late 2012 onwards, it started to rise to new levels. By the end of 2014, the last figures released before the election in May 2015, net migration was 318,000 (ONS 2015). This was not only three times the target and 63,000 higher than when the Coalition was formed, but higher than at any time since 2005. The level of net migration was driven partly by an increase in EU migration, which picked up again from 2012, but also by

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increases in immigration from outside the EU (despite the policy tighten-ing) and a decrease in the number of people emigrating from Britain, as fewer people went to work or retire abroad.

This meant that the Conservatives approached the 2015 election cam-paign having singularly failed to deliver on one of their headline policies. Despite this, Cameron reaffirmed his commitment to the target, presum-ably reasoning that reneging on his commitment would do more damage than reasserting it. As the campaign got under way it was unclear how this would play for the Conservatives, but given the salience of immigration and the level of public concern, there was every reason to think it would cost them votes. Moreover, those who were disgruntled about immigra-tion now had an option to the right of the Conservatives in the form of UKIP, which under Nigel Farage had morphed into a populist anti- immigrant party.

In the event, the Conservatives won a surprise victory in 2015, and there are good reasons to think that was partly because of their failure to reduce immigration. While neither Labour nor Conservatives focused on immigration in their campaigns, it was UKIP’s key message, and Farage repeatedly attacked the Conservative’s failure to meet the migration tar-get. UKIP received an unprecedented 12.6% of the popular vote across the UK and 14% in England. Although this only translated into a single seat in parliament, UKIP came second in over 120 constituencies. It was here that UKIP had a significant impact on the outcome. UKIP attracted both Conservative and Labour voters, but the more significant effect on the overall result was the defection of Labour voters to UKIP in key mar-ginal seats. As Steve Fisher has pointed out, in constituencies where UKIP did less well (up <7%), Labour managed to take six seats from the Tories. In contrast, where UKIP was polling strongly (up >14%) Labour did not take a single seat from the Tories (Fisher 2015). According to one post-election survey, in the North of England and the Midlands, UKIP took 10–15% more of its votes from Labour than the Conservatives (Makinson and Brione 2015). In short, a party which campaigned on immigration and specifically attacked the Conservatives’ migration target, stopped Labour from winning key marginal seats from the Conservatives and also resulted in them losing some supposedly safe seats. This throws a very dif-ferent light on Cameron’s migration target.

Looked at on its own terms the migration target was—and remains—a high-profile policy failure. As many commentators pointed out when it was first announced, since both EU free movement and emigration are


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out of the government’s control, and even control of non-EU immigra-tion is constrained by a number of factors, it was always a hostage to for-tune. It is hard to conclude that this was anything other than a policy mistake: a commitment that the government was highly unlikely to be able to deliver and indeed did not deliver. Assuming Cameron genuinely intended to reduce migration, the policy clearly failed. But viewed through the lens of domestic politics, Cameron’s mistake is less clear cut. Missing the target and overseeing a rise in net migration to record levels contrib-uted towards the increased political salience of immigration. The chief beneficiaries of this were UKIP, who did more electoral damage in 2015 to Labour than the Conservatives. Viewed through the lens of electoral politics, then, the target might be thought a successful failure.

iMMigration poliCy and the road to Brexit

Just a year later, however, things looked very different. Almost nobody expected the Conservatives to form a majority government in May 2015. Polls predicted a hung parliament, and most Conservatives thought that another coalition with the Lib Dems was the best result they could hope for. Manifestos were almost certainly written with this in mind. In the event, the Conservatives’ outright victory meant that they had to face their manifesto commitments in full, including the restated migration tar-get and, even more significantly, a promise to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU by 2017.In those early post-election days, buoyed by his surprise success, there was no great reason for Cameron to fear that these commitments would be his undoing. But that is precisely what they became. Having led his party to an unexpected victory, just one year later Cameron would resign as prime minister having failed to per-suade the electorate to vote to remain in the EU. The road to Brexit, and his personal downfall, was paved with his intention to reduce migration.

When Cameron set about his renegotiation with other member states ahead of calling the referendum, he put free movement at the top of his agenda. Before the election, Cameron had made vague promises about new controls on immigration from the EU, but when it became apparent that European leaders would not compromise on freedom of movement, he watered his demand down to limits on access to benefits for EU work-ers. In February 2016, when the outcomes of the negotiations were announced, it was clear that he had achieved very little: some limits on in-work benefits for EU migrants were agreed, but these would be

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introduced on a sliding scale for four years and apply to new arrivals immi-grants only. Cameron claimed that his renegotiation had been a success and announced that he would campaign for Britain to remain in the EU ahead of a referendum on 23 June. Meanwhile, the net migration figures continued to go in the wrong direction. In late May 2016, just a month before the vote, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released its quar-terly migration statistics, which showed that net migration in the year to December 2015 had reached 333,000. This was not a statistically signifi-cant increase on the previous quarter’s figure of 323,300, but nor was it a decrease, and the anti-immigrant press duly reported the news in hysterical terms.

This is not the place to rehearse the story of the EU referendum cam-paign, suffice to say that both the official Vote Leave group and the unof-ficial Leave. EU group mobilised on immigration during the campaign. The most visible campaigner for Leave. EU, Nigel Farage, deployed neo- Nazi imagery of refugees under a slogan announcing ‘Breaking point’, while the Vote Leave campaign’s jester-in-chief, Boris Johnson, claimed that Britain would be flooded with Turkish migrants if it remained in the EU. Immigration control was also implicit in the Vote Leave campaign’s main slogan, ‘Take back control’, a floating signifier which tapped any number of discontents and framed the choice to leave as a positive, deci-sive action, compared to the largely negative approach of the official Remain campaign, Britain Stronger in Europe. There is little doubt that immigration and opposition to free movement—conflated in various ways—were central, and possibly decisive. On 23 June 2016, 51.9% of those who turned out voted in favour of leaving the EU. Having failed to carry the public on the most important political decision of his career, Cameron resigned immediately. There is strong evidence that opposition towards immigration was an important factor for many leave voters—per-sons who thought Britain should have many fewer EU migrants were 32% more likely to vote for Brexit than those who wanted more migrants (Hobolt 2016: 1270)—and Cameron’s successor, Theresa May, has cer-tainly interpreted the result as such, making an end to free movement central to her Brexit proposals.

The outcome of the EU referendum, and the role of immigration in shaping that outcome, cast a new light on both Labour and Conservative immigration policies since the early 2000s. Labour’s decision to open up to the A8 in 2004 was the beginning of a growing politicisation of immi-gration and free movement. While the Conservatives and of course UKIP


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have contributed towards pushing immigration up the agenda, they would have had fewer chances to do so had the Blair government imposed transi-tional labour market controls to slow the growth of EU migration. For the majority of the Labour Party that thinks leaving the EU is a bad decision, the 2004 decision has been recast by the EU referendum result: not only was it a mistake of domestic politics, contributing towards the current dif-ficulties of the party, it now looks like a decision with profoundly negative international consequences. For Cameron (and Conservative Remainers) counterfactual speculation is unnecessary. Cameron committed his party to a target they spectacularly failed to meet, he put free movement at the centre of his renegotiation with the EU and he failed to persuade most of his party to support him in the referendum. The migration target, which in June 2015 could be described as a successful failure, now looks like an unmitigated mistake, which contributed directly to his own downfall and, for those who think that Britain’s interests are best served within the EU, to one of the worst blunders in modern British politics.

the indeterMinaCy of poliCy Mistakes

The case of UK immigration policy illustrates the analytical difficulties of studying policy mistakes and highlights the three conceptual indetermina-cies discussed earlier in the chapter: contested criteria, unclear intentional-ity and the timing of analysis. Immigration policy shows how multiple perspectives with different evaluative criteria make even the first step in identifying policy mistakes far from straightforward. If categorising an action or decision as a mistake presupposes a negative evaluation of its consequences, and multiple and possibly incommensurable frames can be mobilised to make those evaluations, then the identification of mistakes is inherently contestable. For those engaged in the vita activa of political life, mobilising different frames to support or undermine political actions is all part of the game; for those doing political analysis, multiple frames make it difficult to classify policies as mistakes.

From the expansive post-war citizenship regime of the BNA 1948, to the Blair government’s A8 decision and Cameron’s migration target, UK immigration policies may be considered mistaken or not depending upon the lens through which they are viewed: the category of CUKC helped the transition from formal Empire to Commonwealth, but it caused head-aches for immigration control in the 1950s and 1960s; Blair’s openness towards citizens of the new EU member states may have helped foreign relations and the British economy, but it increased the political salience of

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immigration, which has been an electoral albatross for the Labour party ever since; finally, Cameron’s migration target, at first a ‘successful failure’ which helped the Conservatives to victory in 2015, ultimately contributed towards the Brexit vote and his personal demise. Thus, depending upon whether each of these policies is viewed through the lens of immigration control (which is of course the primary lens through which immigration policy is often assessed!), foreign relations, labour market policy or elec-toral strategy, they can look more or less like failures. And as the idea of a successful failure suggests, the same policy may be both at the same time.

A second obstacle to the analysis of policy mistakes is the difficulty of recovering the intentions of policy actors, especially given the incentives they often have to conceal or misrepresent their objectives. Again, we can see this in the cases discussed above. The most clear-cut example of an unintended consequence in post-war British immigration policy is the BNA 1948. Given the absence of any discussion about immigration dur-ing the parliamentary debates, it is safe to say that legislators did not intend to facilitate colonial immigration, nor tie the hands of future policymakers. But this is exactly what they did. In this case, then, intentionality is rela-tively determinable. Similarly, New Labour’s liberalisation of immigration policy relating to non-EU workers clearly was intended to enable migra-tion to the UK: this was the explicitly stated policy goal and the demon-strable effect of the policy. But the A8 decision is less clear. The government’s intention appears partly to have been about foreign rela-tions and partly about securing a ready supply of low-wage labour. But Labour ministers significantly underestimated the number of EU citizens who would come to the UK and probably did not intend to increase levels of immigration by so much. They certainly did not intend to provoke an anti-immigrant onslaught from the right-wing press. David Cameron’s migration target was intended as a political tactic to stop defections to UKIP and exploit Labour’s unpopularity on immigration. But he presum-ably did not intend to fail so spectacularly in achieving that target. The point in all of these examples is that intentionality is often unclear or ambivalent; actors do not always reveal their intentions and they some-times have more than one objective in mind. Given that mistakes are unin-tentional, it is often hard to identify policy decisions as such.

Finally, recent developments in British politics show how policy deci-sions can undergo fundamental re-evaluations as their consequences unfold over time. As discussed earlier in the chapter, a policy considered successful at one point in time may come to look like a failure later. Indeed, sometimes the success or failure of a policy only becomes apparent after a


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specific point in time—as in the case of calling a high-stakes referendum. But regardless of whether the consequences of a policy evolve incremen-tally or become apparent at a specific moment, the temporality of policy evaluation means that apparent successes, whether based on shrewd judge-ment or luck, may come to look like mistakes. All of the policies discussed above could be used to substantiate this point, but there is no better example than David Cameron’s migration policy. For about five years after it was first announced, the migration target looked like a ‘successful failure’, a policy which failed on its own terms, but which appeared to come at no political cost to its chief architect, and may even have helped him. By exacerbating a perception that immigration was out of control, the Tories’ policy failure contributed towards Cameron’s unexpected elec-toral success by driving former Labour voters to UKIP in key marginal seats. But just a year later it also contributed towards his downfall. His successful failure had become a personal disaster. This sharply illustrates how our understanding of policy decisions, indeed of politics as a whole, unavoidably changes over time. Our interpretations are always temporally situated, shaped by the ‘horizon of understanding’ from which we view the past. When discussing policy mistakes, we should always bear this con-tingency in mind.

ConClusion

It has not been my aim in this chapter to argue that the concept of policy mistakes is of no analytical value. This would be a conclusion too far. The idea of making mistakes, and the practice of claiming others’ policies to be mistaken, is so ubiquitous and integral to political discourse that it cannot be removed from the lexicon of political analysis. However, I have tried to show that this apparently simple descriptor is conceptually complex and often empirically indeterminate. Given the multiple frames used to repre-sent policies as successes or failures, the often unrecoverable or ambivalent intentions of policy actors and temporal shifts in evaluations, policy mis-takes are an indeterminate object of study. Political analysis cannot be founded upon an objective measure to identify mistakes or falsify claims made about them. Rather, it must examine how mistakes are constructed through political discourse, try to recover actors’ intentions (recognising that it is not always possible to do so) and acknowledge that political sci-entists, no less than policymakers, are bound to a time horizon that ren-ders their interpretations contingent.

J. HAMPSHIRE

303

note

1. In MacIntyre’s teleological account of morality, the grandmaster would be sacrificing the ‘internal good’ of playing chess well for an ‘external good’ of an early night or envelope full of cash (1985: 188–191).

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305© The Author(s) 2018A. Kruck et al. (eds.), Political Mistakes and Policy Failures in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68173-3

Index1

NUMBERS & SYMBOLS2000 World Health Report, 207

AAdvanced Measurement Approach

(AMA), 158–159Afghanistan, 41, 56, 84, 88, 91,

93–95, 128, 135–139Agency, 3, 14, 18, 45, 49, 65,

104–106, 132, 134, 137, 149, 162, 164, 203, 205, 218, 221, 229, 230, 241, 245, 288

human, 96n8identification, in foreign

policymaking, 104–106market failures and problems of,

150situational, 18

Agents, characterization of, 60–62, 66, 67, 70

Aid and Trade Provision (ATP), 244, 247, 249–251, 253, 254, 256, 257

Allison, G., 12AMA, see Advanced Measurement

ApproachAnkel, D., 19, 21, 25Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security

Act (2001) (UK), 47Archimedean view of framing

contests, 287Ash, G., 108Asian Flu, 195Asselborn, J., 93ATP, see Aid and Trade ProvisionAttribution theory, 9Australia, 41, 166n9Authority, concept of, 141,

141n1Authority hypothesis, 172–175,

180, 182

1 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refers to note.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68173-3

306 INDEX

BBahrain, swine flu in, 195Balfour Beatty, 247Bali Action Plan, 262Basel Committee on Banking

Supervision (BCBS), 157–159, 163

BASIC, 267, 270, 271Bateson, G., 166n2BBC, 37, 109, 113BCBS, see Basel Committee on

Banking SupervisionBeck, K., 87Belarus, 268“Better Together” campaign, 291Biden, J., 139BIJ, see Bureau of Investigative

JournalismBildt, C., 93Black-Scholes-Merton framework,

160Blackwater trial, 138–139Blair, J., 105Blair, T., 37, 102–116, 294, 300Blame, 2, 5, 14, 16–20

avoidance, 265, 277narrative attribution of, 18–19

Blyth, M., 147BMJ, see British Medical JournalBNA, see British Nationality ActBolivia, 269, 272, 274Bosnia and Herzegovina, 89Botswana, 256Bovens, M., 5–7, 34, 35, 103, 267,

286, 287Brazil, 67, 271, 273Brexit, 102, 104, 159, 298–301Britain, 22, 47, 101–104, 106–108,

111, 114, 116, 219, 223, 241–243, 246, 248, 249, 251, 254, 256–258, 285, 286, 291–295, 297–300

airport planning (see United Kingdom (UK))

“Britain Stronger in Europe” campaign, 291, 299

British Medical Journal (BMJ), 200British Nationality Act (BNA) of

1948, 292–294, 300, 301Brown, G., 102, 104–107, 113–115,

261, 295Brüggemann, M., 184n4Bundeswehr deployments, 81, 92Bureaucratic mentality, 265Bureaucratic Politics model, 12Bureau of Investigative Journalism

(BIJ), 200Burma, 222, 224

political conditionality, 222Bush, G. W., 61

CCAIT, 279n5Cameron, D., 12, 102, 116, 286,

298–301failure to reduce immigration,

296–298Campbell, A., 105, 109, 113, 114Canada, 41, 166n9, 196

swine flu, 196Cancún Agreements, 275Carruthers, B., 162CEECs, see Central and East European

countriesCementation International, 247Central and East European countries

(CEECs), 295Centres for Disease Control and

Prevention, 198Chalker, L., 251, 259n1Chamberlain, N., 289Chan, M., 204Chandler, C., 245, 259n3

307 INDEX

Chávez, H., 68Cheney, D., 38China, 15, 67, 68, 262, 263,

270–273, 276SARS outbreak, 207swine flu, 195, 196

Christopher, W., 88Churchill, W., 267Citizenship of the United

Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC), 292–294, 300

Civil society organizations (CSOs), 193

Clemencon, R., 275Cliff effects, 148, 150, 161Clinton, B., 11Cochoy, F., 154Committee of Sponsoring

Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO), 154, 155

Complexity hypothesis, 19, 172–176, 180, 182

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (1999), 11–12

Conditional aid policy, UK objectives in, 217–234

political conditionality (see Political conditionality (PC))

Conference of Parties (COPs), 261, 272, 274, 275, 278, 279n10

Conservative Party, 109, 112, 231, 296

Cook, R., 105, 107Copenhagen Accord, 263, 266, 267,

277, 278n3Copenhagen climate conference, 7,

15, 23, 261–278analytical framework, 264–266expectations and misconceptions of,

269–272failure of, 15, 22, 23, 266–272

procedural failure of, 267–269

thin and thick learning on process and politics, 272–276

COPs, see Conference of PartiesCORF, see Corporate operational risk

functionCorporate operational risk function

(CORF), 157COSO, see Committee of Sponsoring

Organizations of the Treadway Commission

Council of Europe, 200Counter-terrorism, 7, 15, 20, 24,

33–51effectiveness and value for money,

38–42mistakes in, 20, 34–38preventative policing, misapplication

of, 45–47risks and mistakes in policies of,

42–45unintended consequences and

suspect communities in policing of, 47–50

CRAs, see Credit rating agenciesCreative Commons Attribution

License, 234n1Credit rating agencies (CRAs), 161,

162, 164See also Private governance failures

and consequencesCredit risk, 128, 129, 132, 147, 155,

160–162Critical realism, 264Croatia, 88, 89CSO, see Civil society organisationsCUCK, see Citizenship of the United

Kingdom and ColoniesCultural memory, 58Cuomo, M., 291Cutler, F., 175

308 INDEX

DDAC, see Development Assistance

CommitteeDaddow, O., 21Daily Mail, 112, 231DD, see Distance-to-defaultde Boer, Y., 269de Gaulle, C., 286de Haan, J., 177De Menezes, J. C., 36,

42–45, 51Decolonisation, 293Defence Exports Sales Organization

(DESO), 245Democratic Republic of Congo, 203

Ebola virus disease, 203Denmark, 270, 274, 277Department for International

Development (DFID), 219, 220, 223, 224, 226–233, 258

political conditionality, applications of, 225

Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), 244, 247, 249–251, 254, 257

DESO, see Defence Exports Sales Organization

Development Assistance Committee (DAC), 243

DFID, see Department for International Development

Dick, C., 44Dimitrov, R., 263Distance-to-default (DD), 160Dodd-Frank Act (USA), 132–134Domestic politics, political

conditionality and, 229–231Donnelly, B., 109DTI, see Department of Trade and

IndustryDubash, N., 263

EEBA, see European Banking AuthorityEBF, see European Banking FederationEbola virus disease (EVD), 200–203,

205–2092014 outbreak in West Africa,

management of, 205ECGD, see Export Credits Guarantee

DepartmentEconomic and Finance Ministers

(Ecofin), 176, 179, 183EDF, see Expected Default FrequencyEEC, see European Economic

CommunityEfficiency, 130, 230, 265,

272, 273Efficient market hypothesis, 149Egypt, swine flu in, 195Emotions, 9, 10, 272Emplotment, 15, 57, 59, 62–64,

67–70, 106of narratives, 62, 63, 67–70

Enterprise risk management (ERM), 154, 155, 159

ESMA, see European Securities and Markets Authority

Espinosa, P., 274, 279n8Ethiopia, 225, 226

political conditinality, 226EU, see European UnionEuro crisis, and Germany, 96n2European Banking Authority (EBA),

163European Banking Federation (EBF),

159European Commission, 176, 179European Economic Community

(EEC), 101, 102, 293European Securities and Markets

Authority (ESMA), 133, 162, 163

309 INDEX

European Union (EU), 15, 82, 84, 101, 107, 109, 171–185, 286, 291, 294–301

referendum, role of immigration in, 286

Europhile grouping, 108Europhilia, 102EVD, see Ebola virus diseaseExchange-traded funds, 150Expectations management, 23, 270,

273, 277Expected Default Frequency (EDF),

160–161Export Credits Guarantee Department

(ECGD), 256

FFabius, L., 275, 279n10Falls Road Curfew, 39FAO, see Food and Agricultural

OrganizationFarage, N., 297, 299FAZ, see Frankfurter Allgemeine

ZeitungFCO, see Foreign and Commonwealth

OfficeFear, 9, 33, 34, 39, 41, 48, 50, 106,

149, 218, 254, 263, 273, 298Fiascos, see German foreign policy

fiascos, in news mediaFiji, 222, 224

political conditionality, 222Financial risk management, 145–166

conventional, 152–162market failures, 148–152regulatory response, 162–164risk discourse performativity and,

164–165Fischer, J., 55, 79, 84, 88, 90, 91,

97n10

Fisher, J., 22, 24Fisher, S., 297Food and Agriculture Organization

(FAO), 196Foreign and Commonwealth Office

(FCO), 105, 106, 114, 223, 227, 245, 246, 249, 253, 254

Foreign policy fiasco references, most frequent, 84

Forest Gate incident, 49Foucault, M., 154France, 56, 88, 93, 107, 129, 136,

173, 177, 179, 180, 184n5, 257, 286

airport planning, 286Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

(FAZ), 64, 83, 88, 92, 93Freedom of Information Act of 2000,

220

GG77, 272Gabon, 203

Ebola virus disease, 203Gadamer, H. -G., 291Gaddafi, M., 68Galtung, J., 221Garton, T., 107Gates, R., 88General Budget Support (GBS), 218,

219, 223, 224, 228, 231General Electric Company (GEC),

247, 248, 256Genschel, P., 185n10, 185n11German foreign policy fiascos, in news

media, 79–96issues and events, 83–86non-fiascos and, 91–94norms and media frames and, 80–83voices and blaming, 86–91

310 INDEX

Germany, 13, 20, 55–75, 79–82, 85, 86, 88, 90–95, 96n2, 96n4, 107, 129, 136, 173, 177, 179, 180, 184n5, 289

GHEW, see Global health emergency workforce

Global Financial Crisis, 128, 129, 131, 230, 231

2007–2008, 230Global health emergency workforce

(GHEW), 206, 207, 209Global Outbreak Alert and Response

Network (GOARN), 201Global South, 218Glos, M., 96n7GNP, see Gross national productGOARN, see Global Outbreak Alert

and Response NetworkGood governance, 217, 224, 229, 251Gostin, L. O., 204, 205Governance, 19, 20, 87, 103, 106,

123, 125–128, 132, 133, 140, 141, 141n1, 146, 155, 157, 163, 223, 224, 226, 264, 278, 291

Government Accountability Office, 130

Greece, 129Greenhouse gas emissions, 261Gross national product (GNP), 243Groupthink, 10–11Guinea, 201–205

Ebola virus disease, 202–205

HHague, W., 112Hampshire, J., 22, 25Hansel, M., 19, 21, 25Hart, P., 267Harvard University/London School of

Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola, 205

He Yafei, 270Health emergency contingency fund

(HECF), 200, 206, 207, 209HECF, see Health emergency

contingency fundHeinkelmann-Wild, T., 6, 19, 21Helsinki Agreement, 257H5N1 ‘Bird Flu’ virus, 194Higgins, A., 177Hillyard, P., 47Hobbes, T., 289Hobolt, S. B., 174Holland, F., 279n10H1N1 influenza pandemic, WHO

handling of, 22, 194–200pandemic guidelines, removal of,

197–200swine flu, 195–197

Hong Kong Flu, 195Hood, C., 265, 267House of Commons Committee on

Foreign Affairs, 251, 254House of Commons Select Committee

on Foreign Affairs, 247Howe, G., 246, 247, 252Howlett, M., 3, 104, 265, 267, 276Hurd, D., 242, 247, 252, 253, 255,

259n1

IIbrahim, M., 43ICOC, see International Code of

Conduct for Private Security Service Providers

IHR, see International Health Regulations

Iksil, B., 157Immigration policy mistakes, in

United Kingdom, 22, 285, 292, 298

Implementer hypothesis, 173, 175, 176, 179–183

311 INDEX

Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), 43–45

Independent Television Network, 113Indexing hypothesis, 86, 93India, 67, 271–273, 275Indonesia, 195, 256

swine flu, 195Institutional annihilation, 218Intergovernmental decision-making, 174International Code of Conduct for

Private Security Service Providers (ICOC), 138

International Development Act of 2002, 223, 232, 234n3, 258

International development, success and failures in, 233

International economic climate, 230–231

changing, and political conditionality, 231

International Health Regulations (IHR), 198–200

Phase 4 (community-level outbreaks), 198

Phase 5 (sustained community transmission), 198, 199

International New York Times, 177, 184n5

International Relations (IR), 1–25, 263, 286

Intersubjective approach, to failure, 6–8, 15, 24

Intersubjective perspective, to failure, 3–5

comparison with subjectivist approach, 5

IPCC, see Independent Police Complaints Commission

IR, see International RelationsIran, 10, 12Iraq, 12, 41, 60, 80, 84, 85, 88, 90,

91, 95, 103, 104, 107, 115, 116, 128, 130, 136–139, 291

swine flu, 195Ireland, 230, 294Ischinger, W., 65Italy, 129

JJachtenfuchs, M., 185n10Janis, I., 10Japan, 150Jarvis, L., 49Jervis, R., 8, 12Johnson, B., 299Jung, F. J., 92

KKamradt-Scott, A., 22–24Kanter, J., 177Kenya, 222, 224–226

political conditionality, 222, 225, 226

Kerviel, J., 150Kinnock, N., 110Klein, G., 91–93Kohl, H., 67Kosovo, 81, 82, 84, 111Kouchner, B., 93Kratos policy, 43, 44Kriesi, H., 184n4Kruck, A., 19, 21, 24Kulovesi, K., 278n2Kunduz incident, 80, 91–95Kyoto Protocol, 266, 269, 271

LLabour Party, 102, 109–112, 223,

231, 244, 257, 295, 300, 301immigration policy mistake,

294–295Lammert, N., 65Lankester, T., 22

312 INDEX

Lassa Fever, 201Le Pen, M., 68Leblond, P., 177Leeson, N., 150, 157Legrand, M., 20, 24Lépinay, V. -A., 153Liberal Democrats (Lib Dem), 109,

113, 296, 298Liberia, 201, 201, 201, 202, 202,

202, 203, 204, 205Ebola virus disease, 201–205

Liberty, 46, 47Libya, 13, 20, 55–71, 79, 80, 84, 85,

88, 90, 91, 94Liddle, R., 102Lima conference, 276Lindsay, J., 221, 222, 227Lister, M., 49Long-Term Capital Management

(LTCM), 156, 157LTCM, see Long-Term Capital

Management

MMacIntyre, A., 288, 289, 303n1MacKenzie, D., 156Macroeconomic externalities,

148–150Mahathir bin Mohamad, 247–251,

255, 256Major, J., 112, 252Malawi, 222, 224, 225, 226, 227

political conditinality, 226, 227Malaysia, 15, 22, 241, 242, 244–254,

256, 257Pergau Dam Affair, 258

Mandelson, P., 105, 114Market failures

agency problems and, 150–151macroeconomic externalities and,

148–150

poor judgement and, 151–152Market/systematic risk, 155–157Marx, K., 278May, T., 102, 299McChrystal, S., 92, 93McConnell, A., 3, 35, 39, 221, 233,

264Merkel, A., 86, 87Metropolitan police service (MPS),

London, 49, 50Mexican Flu, 195, 197Mexico

H1N1 influenza pandemic, 194, 198

swine flu, 195–197Miliband, D., 107Miliband, Ed, 262Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction

Act (2005) (USA), 138Military restraint, 66, 79, 80, 82, 83,

86, 88, 93–95Ministry of Defence (MoD), 245, 246,

253, 257Misperceptions, 8Mistakes and failures

causes of, 8–15concepts of, 2–8and responsibility attribution, 16–20

MoD, see Ministry of DefenceModi, N., 273Mohammed, R., 43Monrovia, 202

Ebola virus disease, 202Montserrado, 202

Ebola virus disease, 202Moody’s Analytics, 160Morality, teleological account of, 289,

303n1Morgan, J. P., 155MSF, 202Mueller, J., 36, 40, 41Müller, H., 56

313 INDEX

Multilateralism, 21, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88, 90, 91, 94, 95, 263, 274, 277

Multipolar systems, 12Munich Agreement, 289Murdoch, R., 109, 110

NNAO, see National Audit OfficeNarrative analysis, 18, 20, 57–59, 64,

70National Audit Office (NAO), 242,

254, 258National Defense Authorization Act

(2008) (USA), 137Natsios, A., 230Neorealists, 12Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), 177,

184n5“Never again” norm, 81–82New Labour, 21, 101–116, 286,

295, 301decision to open UK labour market,

286New Labour’s European policy

failureframe contestation and,

106–110methodological challenges,

104News International, 109, 110News value, and foreign policy

contents, 86NGOs, see Non-governmental

organisationsNigeria, 226

political conditinality, 226Non-governmental organizations

(NGOs), 193, 202, 246, 251, 252, 255

NZZ, see Neue Zürcher Zeitung

OObama, B., 269, 270, 273Objectivist perspective, to failure, 3, 4,

16comparison with intersubjective

approach, 5–6Objectivist view of policy failure,

289–290ODA, see Overseas Development

AdministrationOECD-DAC, see Organisation for

Economic Co-operation and Development-Development Assistance Committee

Oestreich, J., 209Office for National Statistics (ONS),

299Omar, Y., 43ONS, see Office for National StatisticsOPEC, see Organisation of the

Petroleum CountriesOperational Riskdata Exchange

(ORX), 166n9Operational/business risk, 157–160Oppermann, K., 264Organisation for Economic

Co-operation and Development (OECD), 148, 150, 230, 231, 243–245, 247, 253

Development Assistance Committee, 243

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development- Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC), 217

Organisation of the Petroleum Countries (OPEC), 268, 271

Organizational process approach, 10–11

ORX, see Operational Riskdata Exchange

Osman, H., 43

314 INDEX

Ottersen, T., 209Overseas Development Administration

(ODA), 220, 223, 224, 226, 227, 230, 234n2, 241–246, 248–258, 259n5

PPan American Sanitary Bureau, 203Pantazis, C., 47Paris Agreement, 262, 277, 279n10Paris conference, 276Patel, P., 231, 258Paudyn, B., 20, 21, 24PC, see Political conditionalityPemberton, S., 47Pergau Dam Affair

aid and trade, 243–244aid for, 247–256arms and aid, relations between,

245–247Pergau Dam project, failure of, 15Philippines, swine flu in, 195, 196Pierson, P., 290Pisoiu, D., 40Poland, 295Policy mistakes

conceptualisation of, 286–292immigration, in United Kingdom,

298indeterminacy of, 300–302

Political conditionality (PC)applications of, 224, 225changes and continuities in,

222–223changing international economic

climate and, 230–231and domestic politics, 229effects on policy, 223expressive, 228, 232instrumental, 226–228, 232

primary motivation spectrum for, 222

rise of ownership and failure of old conditionalities, 229–230

success and failure, implications for, 232–233

under scrutiny, 220–222universe of cases, 224–226

Political discourse, 4, 5, 8, 13–15, 25, 57, 70, 71, 264, 286, 302

Political failure, 3, 4, 35, 50, 67Popper, K., 36Portugal, 129Powell, J., 103Power, M., 155Pragmatism, 264Precautionary principle, 15, 37, 38, 42Prevention of Terrorism Act (UK), 47Price, L., 115Principal-agent dilemma, 150, 151Private governance failures and

consequencespath-dependent power-political

response, 125–127post-crisis moves for CRAs legal

control enhancement, 131–135post-Iraq and Afghanistan moves,

towards PMSCs legal control enhancement, 135–139

power without accountability, and institutional change demand in finance and security, 127–131

state responses to, 131Private military and security companies

(PMSCs), see Private governance failures and consequences

Process failure, 3, 114, 115Process management, 274–276Programme failure, 4, 34, 35, 47, 50,

102Project Fear, 291

315 INDEX

Prospect theory, 9Public Accounts Committee, 253,

258Public responsibility attribution, in

European UnionEU fiscal stability and, 177–180harmful tax competition and,

180–182research design, 176–177theory, 173–176

Putin, V., 86

QQualculation, 154, 156, 160, 161,

164, 165

RRajamani, L., 266Ramesh, J., 279n6Rasmussen, L. L., 269Red Lion episode, see New Labour’s

European policy failureRed-green foreign policy, 84–86, 91Report of the Iraq Inquiry, 115Responsibility attribution, 2, 16–20,

90, 171–185Rethinking Conditionality, 228Rhodesia, 221Rittberger, B., 6Russia, 67, 68, 268

swine flu, 195Rwanda, 225

political conditionality, 225

SSageman, M., 40Sambo, L. G., 204SARS outbreak, 207

Saudi Arabia, 268, 271Al Yamamah contract, 246

Sawers, J., 111SCAP, see Supervisory Capital

Assessment Program (United States)

Schröder, G., 84, 86, 96n7Schwarz, P., 185n11Scott, D., 111Securities and Exchange Commission

(SEC), 133, 134, 162Seldon, A., 108Short, C., 111, 223Sierra Leone, 201–205

Ebola virus disease, 201–205Slovenia, 89SMA, see Standardized Measurement

ApproachSmith, J., 37, 110Social construction, of mistakes, 13,

14, 15, 16, 18, 25, 55–75and narratives, 57–60See also Germany

Social framing, 90, 96n8Social learning, 25, 290Somalia, 96n4, 226

political conditinality, 226SO19 unit special police operatives,

43–45SOPs, see Standard operating

proceduresSouth Africa, 166n9, 267, 271Soviet Union, 254

breakup of, 254Spain, 129Spanish Flu, 195Spencer, A., 264Standard operating procedures

(SOPs), 11, 204Standardized Measurement Approach

(SMA), 159

316 INDEX

Stephens, P., 111Stewart, M., 36, 40, 41Sub-Saharan Africa, 219Sudan, 270, 272, 279n7

Ebola virus disease, 203political conditinality, 226

Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), 64, 83, 87, 92, 93

Sun, 109, 112, 114Supervisory Capital Assessment

Program (SCAP) (United States), 163

Supranational decision-making, 174Sweden, 294Swine flu, 193–210

WHO handling of, 197Syria, 81SZ, see Süddeutsche Zeitung

T‘t Hart, Paul, 5–7, 103, 286, 287Tagesspiegel, Welt, Tageszeitung (TAZ),

64Tail risks, 155Tanzania, political conditionality, 225,

227, 228Telegraph, 112Temporality problem, 290, 291Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB), 248,

250, 251, 253, 256Terrorism Act (2000) (UK), 45, 47Thatcher, M., 61, 241, 244, 246–253,

293Through-the-cycle (TTC) EDF, 160,

161Tilley, J., 174Times, The, 109, 113, 114TNB, see Tenaga Nasional BerhadToolan, M. J., 59Toynbee, P., 109Treasury, 105, 106, 113, 115, 246,

252, 256–258

UUganda

Ebola virus disease, 203GBS suspension, 228political conditionality, 225–227

Ukraine, 81, 268UN High Level Panel on the Global

Response to Health Crises, 205, 208

Uncertainty and risk, comparison of, 166

UNFCCC, see United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Unilateralism, perceived, 86United Kingdom (UK), 15, 41, 56,

128, 136, 137, 219Department for International

Development, 219, 220, 223–233

Freedom of Information Act of 2000, 220

International Development Act of 2002, 223, 234n3, 258

mistakes in immigration policies, 292–298

objectives in conditional aid policy, 217–233

See also New Labour’s European policy failure

United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), 295–299, 301, 302

United Nations (UN), 13, 20, 23, 55–75, 79, 82, 90, 201, 202, 205, 207, 209, 262, 263, 265, 267–269, 271, 272, 274–278

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 261–263, 266, 268, 269, 274–278

United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), 201, 205

317 INDEX

United States of America (USA), 10–12, 15, 40, 41, 56, 60, 88, 90, 92, 107, 128–130, 132–139, 149, 159, 162, 163, 166n9, 185n10, 196, 257, 263, 266, 267, 270, 272, 273, 276, 290

swine flu, 196UNMEER, see United Nations

Mission for Ebola Emergency Response

UN Security Council, 13, 20, 55–75UN Security Council Resolution

1973, see GermanyUSA, see United States of AmericaUS National Academy of Medicine’s

Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future, 205

VValue-at-Risk (VaR), 155–157, 163‘Value-for-money’ criteria, 42, 230,

231van Dongen, T. W., 39van Um, E., 40VaR, see Value-at-RiskVellu, S., 251Venezuela, 272, 275Viehrig, H., 19, 21, 25Vihma, A., 22–24

WWalker, D., 109Wall, S., 106Wasserfallen, F., 180WDM, see World Development

MovementWebster, P., 113West African Ebola outbreak 2014,

management of, 205official reports, 201–203

poor coordination of effort, 203–205

Westerwelle, G., 13, 64–66, 69, 70, 90, 91, 97n10

WHA, see World Health AssemblyWHE, see WHO Health Emergency

ProgrammeWhelan, C., 104, 106, 113, 114,

116Whitworth, A., 250WHO, see World Health

OrganizationWHO Health Emergency Programme

(WHE), 208, 209Williams, P., 108Wilson, W., 11Winkler, H. A., 55World Bank, 219, 243World Development Movement

(WDM), 255World Health Assembly (WHA), 199,

202, 208World Health Organization (WHO),

193–210African regional office (AFRO),

202–205Ebola Interim Assessment Panel,

205Health Emergency Programme (see

WHO Health Emergency Programme)

H1N1 influenza pandemic, handling of, 194–200

learning from mistakes, 205–209

mistakes of, 14, 22–24West African Ebola outbreak

2014, management of, 200–205

World Organization for Animal Health, 196

World Trade Organization (WTO), 195, 196

318 INDEX

XXi Jinping, 273, 277

YYalta conference, 267Al Yamamah contract, 246Younger, G., 245–247Yugoslavia, 84, 85, 88, 91, 94, 95, 96n4

ZZainuddin, D., 245Zaire, Ebola virus disease, 203Zambia, 224, 225

political conditionality, 225Zangl, B., 6, 19, 21Zapatero, J. L., 93Zeit, 64