Research on blame avoidance suggests that dictators should struggle to avoid blame for poor governance outcomes, since they are the most powerful and visible figures in their political systems. Nonetheless, citizens in authoritarian regimes often appear to believe sincerely that the dictator is not responsible when problems emerge. To address this puzzle, my paper develops a theory in which dictators encourage this myth by strategically delegating responsibility for policy implementation to subordinate institutions, which then become scapegoats for unpopular government policies. Delegating in this manner enables the dictator to strengthen perceptions of their good intentions while minimizing perceptions of their control, both of which play an important role in the psychological processes by which individuals assign blame. Drawing on thousands of news articles and social media posts in both Arabic and English from Jordan, the first section of the paper uses qualitative and quantitative text analysis methods to show how the Jordanian monarchy constructs a narrative in which the parliament and cabinet, but not the king, are responsible for contentious social and economic policy issues. In addition, this section leverages a dataset of more than 800 Jordanian ministers from 1946 to the present, as well as interviews with more than 50 Jordanian elites, to further demonstrate the monarchy’s use of delegation to avoid blame. The next section of the paper explores the extent to which this strategy actually shapes how the Jordanian public attributes blame within the political system. It uses observational survey data to show that Jordanians consider the cabinet and parliament to be responsible for policy implementation, and it uses experimental data to show that delegation protects the king by redirecting attributions of responsibility to other political institutions. The final section of the paper argues that autocratic monarchs can use this strategy more effectively than autocratic presidents because of divergent norms about the role these rulers are meant to play in the governing process. To make this argument, the paper uses historical process tracing and experimental survey data from Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia. The study illustrates how and when dictators are able to deflect popular dissatisfaction with poor policy outcomes despite their powerful positions.