Definition of "buck-passing" [buck-passing]

• Informal The shifting of responsibility or blame to another: "smothered in avalanches of recriminations and orgies of buck-passing” ( Forbes). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Time thus throws its flyweight avoir du poids on the side of the political class in the lengthy finger-pointing and buck-passing contest between the politicians and the financial community about whose responsibility the crisis was."
• "Mr. Obama's embrace of the International Criminal Court is typical of his buck-passing approach to world affairs."
• "The really clever bit is that NuLabour do this all over the place but always build in enough layers between them and us that they can employ many denials and excuses, (buck-passing) when it goes wrong (aka is unpopular)."