재난상황 초기 대응실패에 대한 정책행위자의 비난회피 행태 분석: 메르스 사태를 중심으로

초록

This study aims at exploring the blame avoidance behavior of government regarding the failure of initial responses to MERS in Korea. For this purpose, this study combines blame avoidance theory with brokerage theory to propose a research framework for analyzing blame avoidance behavior from a structural perspective. The case for empirical research is the MERS outbreak in Korea, which spanned around two months in 2015. The results of the analysis can be summarized as: 1) most of the blame came from the press, mostly directed at the President and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, which hold e main responsibility for national disaster management. 2) Out of five blame avoidance strategies, the 'pass the buck' strategy was dominant. However, policy actors facing massive blame actively avoided the blame by applying varieties of blame avoidance strategy such as 'blaming the messenger,' 'finding a scapegoat', 'circling the wagons' in addition to 'passing the buck'. In addition, 3) when it comes to massive blame, policy actors also diversified the targets of blame avoidance. The results suggest that the MERS disaster management system not only malfunctioned, but was also made worse because the government, facing massive blame, actively tried to hide or pass the buck to other policy actors instead of taking responsibility for the failure.

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