Policy Implementation

Required to follow rules

Discretion to make decisions, judgements about clients

Routine and stereotypical approach to work

Manipulate (non-voluntary) clients

Uncertainty and pressure (large caseloads) in their jobs

Limited resources

Sense of cog in a machine

Survival tactics

Top-down

Academic analysis historically focused more on policy formation (and evaluation) than implementation

Why concern ourselves with implementation?

Types of Questions

Define the problem

Source Kraft and Furling 2013: 118

Define and analyse the problem

Failure to follow through from policy formulation to policy goal...

What is the problem faced?

Where does it exist?

Who or what is affected?

How did it develop?

What are the major causes?

How might the causes be affected by policy action?

Think of deficit and excess

Make the definition evaluative

'Uncertainty' is central to evaluation

Quantify if possible

Diagnose conditions that cause problems

Identify latent opportunities

Don't define the solution into the problem

Don't accept causal claims too easily (e.g. cocaine use may cause family and health problems; but do all suffer this?)

Construct policy alternatives

What policy options might be considered for dealing with the problem?

• Bottom-up approach uses 'backward mapping' (i.e. think how individuals/organisations will act and work back to identify policy instruments that will achieve policy objectives)

• Recognitioon that implementation actors forced to choose between conflicting/interacting programmes

• Less assumptions made between cause and effect

• Acknowledge changing and changeable policy direction, complex interactions from outside, difficult-to-control implementation actors

Assemble some evidence

Develop evaluative criteria

Implementation assumes a prior act (formulation)

What criteria are most suitable for the problem and the alternatives?

What are the costs of action?

What will be the costs if no action is taken?

What is the likely effectiveness, social and political feasibility, or equity of alternatives?

Think before you collect; why type?

Review the available literature

Survey 'best practices'

Use analogies

Start early

Seek credibility, consensus

Be open minded

Assess the alternatives

Construct the alternatives

Which alternatives are better than others?

What kind of analysis might help to distinguish better and worse policy alternatives?

Is the evidence available?

If not, how can it be produced?

Select the criteria

Project the outcomes

Questions that need to be asked:

Who is the formulator?

Who is the decision maker?

Who is the implementator?

Are they the same or different?

If different do they have more power, legitimacy, capacity?

Confront the trade-offs

Draw conclusions

Delivering public service

Stop, Focus, Narrow, Deepen, Decide!

Which policy option is the most desirable given the circumstances and the evaluative criteria?

What other factors should be considered?

Tell Your Story

Source: Bardach and Patashnik 2016

Bureaucracy (Weber)

US army structure

What both have in common is:

• hierarchy
• public service ethos
• rules (fixed) and discretion (flexible)

Policy Implementation

Making policy!

'I argue that the decisions of street-level bureaucrats, the routines they establish, and the devices they invent to cope with the uncertainties and work pressures, effectively become the public policies they carry out.' (Lipsky)

• 'Policy' is slippery concept (includes action and inaction)

• Clear stance/position but complex when implementing

• Symbolic (i.e. politicians care but not interested in action)

• Separation between policy making and implementing institutions (e.g. federal system, central/local government)

• Policy making the result of negotiation/compromise (i.e. different values, interests, objectives, little attention to impact in other areas)

• Adjustments to existing policies/programmes/budgets (i.e. no new resources or actions)

• Structural change (e.g. transfer of responsibilities from one entity to another, different/competing rules)

• Decisions avoided at formulation stage (e.g. inability to resolve conflict, give decisions to implementers at implementation stage, political expedience)

Alienation

Passivity and action present at street level

Top-level responses:

• public choice (market incentives)
• changes in organisational practices
• professional development

Street level bureaucracy

Bottom-up