This paper explores the ways in which adopting national health policy initiatives might appeal to the interest patterns of political leaders. It first introduces a theoretical framework that bridges the concepts of office-keeping and office-seeking to blame avoidance and credit claiming, starting from the assumption that elected officials are systematically interested in the former and therefore conform to the latter. It then applies this framework to four national cancer control programmes. Text presented at the Policy Research Group, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh.