Commissioned Book Review: Neil Mitchell, Why Delegate
| Author | David L Cingranelli |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211052909 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(4) NP9 –NP10
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
1052909PSW0010.1177/14789299211052909Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2021
Commissioned Book Review
Why Delegate by Neil Mitchell. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2021, 202 pp.,
Paperback, $21.95, ISBN 9780190904203.
Neil Mitchell explores the incentives to delegate
and the risks associated with delegation. Using
well-known scandals including child abuse in
the Catholic Church, the Volkswagen pollution
scandal and FIFA corruption, Mitchell scruti-
nizes moments when delegation went wrong.
By drawing on multidisciplinary research to
address complex questions of motivation, con-
trol, responsibility and accountability, the book
builds a broader, more useful logic of delega-
tion. The new logic spotlights systematic and
tenacious agent resistance to control and empha-
sizes the complexities of administering punish-
ment to agents on whom the principal depends,
but who purposefully deviate from the princi-
pal’s directives.
Each chapter of the book is organized
around one reason why principals delegate
tasks. For example, the first substantive chap-
ter is titled “Time and Effort.” In it, Mitchell
explains that one reason why principals dele-
gate tasks is that they do not want to devote
their own time and energy to them. The chapter
goes on to provide many examples of mundane
and weighty tasks in the real world delegated
for this reason. Essentially, each chapter pro-
vides a different answer to the question posed
by the book’s title—Why Delegate.
According to Mitchell, delegation occurs for
several reasons besides saving the principal’s
own time and effort. Those other reasons are
topics discussed in other chapters. Sometimes
principals do not have the expertise to success-
fully complete the task themselves (chapter
three). They may need a way to resolve disa-
greements (chapter four). Principals may want
to ensure that they keep their own commitments
(chapter five), and they often want to avoid
blame (chapter six).
This book leaves the reader with several
important “take away” points. First, when prin-
cipals delegate, some agency loss is inevitable,
so things may and often do go wrong. Second,
it is often easier to understand why things went
wrong if one pays attention to who is doing
what for whom and why. Third, avoiding
blame is the reason for delegating that should
be emphasized when analyzing public policy
making and implementation. The “blame
game” frequently undermines good govern-
ance by making it difficult to hold principals,
who often hold public office or high-level mili-
tary positions, responsible for the bad deeds of
their agents.
The book is short, well-organized, jargon-
free, and engagingly written. It will be enjoya-
ble and useful reading for college students,
scholars, policy makers, members of the media,
and the public. It should appeal to students in
many disciplines, policymakers in many fields,
and to all citizens who care about holding their
leaders accountable. While it is accessible to a
broad audience by design, it also is challenging
enough to be considered for adoption as
required reading in public policy courses.
Like nearly all other short books written for
a general audience, Mitchell’s book can be criti-
cized for its omissions. The author’s treatment
of principal–agent analysis will not be technical
enough for some. Mitchell says that he adopts
the useful terms of principal and agent, but not
the mathematical language of a principal–agent
theorist. Scholars at the frontier of work on prin-
cipal–agent theory may be disappointed.
Others in the wider audience may be sad-
dened that the author did not devote more of
his book to understanding the principal–
agent relationships central to solving some
important challenges currently at the fore-
front of contemporary public debate. Why
focus so much on mundane tasks rather than
weightier ones? Weightier domestic policy
tasks that might have been given more atten-
tion include holding the police accountable
for the use of deadly force against unarmed
civilians and solving the problem of wide-
spread homelessness.
On the international level, weighty prob-
lems given little attention in the book include
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