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The Blame Game

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Abstract

We constantly assess and attribute blame in daily life and more momentously, in public politics. Blame is based on a simple cause-and-effect logic that reasons backwards from outcomes and their consequences to agents and their responsibility. Public debates over the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and over the Iraq war illustrate the processes of assigning and deflecting blame, and the varied logics actors appeal to in these processes.

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Notes

  1. www.alternet.org/story/48941.

  2. This essay’s basic ideas and much of its text come from Charles Tilly (2008).

  3. “Statement of Mindy Kleinberg to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, March 31, 2003,” www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing1/witness_kleinberg.html, viewed 11/10/03, p. 2.

  4. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report. New York: Norton, 2004. In November 2006, after a public flap over his pressing for action on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Zelikow resigned from his State Department post and returned to his endowed history chair at the University of Virginia.

  5. www.usip.org/isg/.

References

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  • Rutenberg, J. & Sanger, D. E. (2006). The struggle for Iraq: Bush aides seek alternatives to Iraq Study Group’s proposals, calling them impractical. New York Times, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CEFDD1431F933A25751C1A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=&&scp=2, viewed 10 December 2006.

  • Tilly, C. (2006). Why? Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ.

  • Tilly, C. (2008). Credit and blame. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Charles Tilly

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  1. Charles Tilly
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Correspondence to Charles Tilly.

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Tilly, C. The Blame Game. Am Soc 41, 382–389 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-010-9109-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-010-9109-7

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