Policy Implementation

Approaches

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Intro:
• When the adoption phase of the policy process has been completed and,
for instance, a bill has been enacted into law by a legislature, we can begin
to refer to something called public policy.
• The policies that are embodied in statutes, for example, often are rudimentary
and require much additional development.

Bye-
Order Rules Regulations Notification
Law

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Contd.
• Implementation (or administration) has been referred to as "what happens
after a bill becomes law.“
• More precisely, implementation encompasses whatever is done to carry a
law into effect, to apply it to the target population and to achieve its goals.
• The study of policy implementation is concerned with the agencies and
officials involved, the procedures they follow, the techniques (or tools) they
employ, and the political support and opposition that they encounter.
• In so doing, it focuses attention on the day-to-day operation of government.

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Contd.
• There is often considerable uncertainty about what a policy will
accomplish, how effective in terms of its goals it will be, or the
consequences that it will have for society.
• It is this uncertainty that makes the study of policy implementation
interesting and worthwhile.
• Policy implementation is not a very predictable process.
• Why some policies succeed, and others fail remains a challenging
puzzle.

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Approaches to Study Implementation:
• As Smith and Larimer note, there are three main eras of policy
implementation research.
• The first era, which emerged in the late 1960s through early 1970s, is
characterized by works such as Implementation and New Towns in Town.
• The authors undertook these studies to understand why particular policies,
such as the Economic Development Administration’s efforts to relieve poverty
in Oakland or the Johnson administration’s “New Towns in Town” efforts,
seemed to fall short of their goals.
• These studies focused on individual case studies and did not create more
generalizable theory that could be applied to and tested with other cases.
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Contd.
• A second era of implementation studies, which began in the mid-1970s, sought to
create systematic theories of the policy process that were generalizable to many cases,
rather than focused on one or a few cases.
• Two research approaches: First- a “top-down” perspective on policy implementation.
• Its proponents claim that one can understand policy implementation by looking at the
goals and strategies adopted in the statute or other policy, as structured by the
implementers of policy.
• These studies focus on the gaps between the goals set by a policy’s drafters and the
actual implementation and outcomes of the policy.
• The second approach emphasizes a “bottom-up” perspective, which suggests that
implementation is best studied by starting at the lowest levels of the implementation
system or “chain” and moving upward to see where implementation is more or less
successful

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Top-Down Approaches to Implementation
• Carl Van Horn and Donald Van Meter, Daniel Mazmanian and Paul Sabatier’s studies
of the factors that condition successful implementation.
• The top-down approach is based on a set of important assumptions:
➢• Policies contain clearly and consistently defined goals against which performance
can be measured.
➢• Policies contain clearly defined policy tools for the accomplishment of goals.
➢• The policy is characterized by the existence of a single statute or other
authoritative statement of policy.
➢• There is an “implementation chain” that “starts with a policy message at the
top and sees implementation as occurring in a chain.”
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Policy designers have good knowledge of the Capacity
and Commitment of the implementers.
• Capacity encompasses the availability of resources for an implementing
organization to carry out its tasks, including monetary and human resources, legal
authority and autonomy, and the knowledge needed to effectively implement policy.
• Commitment includes the desire of the implementers to carry out the goals of
the top-level policy designers; a high level of commitment means that the lower-
level implementers, particularly those at the “street level,” such as teachers, police
officers, or social workers, share the values and goals of the policy designers.
• In a top-down model of policy design, the implementer assumes that these features
are present or that any problems suggested by these assumptions can be
overcome.
• The focus then is on creating the proper structures and controls to encourage or
compel compliance with the goals set at the top.
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Some substantial Weaknesses with this approach.
• First Problematic Issue of this models is its emphasis on clear objectives or goals.
• Without a consensus on what program goals are, it is hard to set a benchmark for
program success and failure.
• For example, in 1973 US Congress established the fifty-five-mile-per-hour (mph)
speed limit on the nation’s freeways as a method for promoting energy conservation.
• However, this speed limit had a side benefit—it substantially reduced highway
fatalities in the early years of its enforcement.
• On what accomplishment, then, should the fifty-five mph limit be assessed?
• In terms of fuel economy, the results were inconclusive, but the safety benefits were
substantial.
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Contd.
• Highway safety advocates fought hard to keep the fifty-five mph limit in place and
were successful in this fight until the late 1980s.
• This is an example of how advocates for a policy will redefine policy goals to
justify the continuance of a program and how new groups can enter the debate to
highlight new goals and benefits of programs—or to argue that a program has
outlived its value.
• in the late 1990s with the advent of SUVs and the increased safety of most newer
cars. speed limit was generally unsuccessful, and its widespread unpopularity led
to its repeal.
• When policy makers fail to provide one goal or a coherent, mutually compatible set
of goals, implementation is likely to be difficult as agencies and people charged with
putting policies into effect pursue different goals.
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Another problem
• Another problem with top-down models is the assumption that there is a
single national government that can successfully structure policy
implementation and provide for direct delivery of services.
• But most policies made by the union government require considerable state
and, in many cases, local governmental cooperation.
• The state governments have constitutionally protected rights and
responsibilities, so they are often reluctant to surrender their power and
prerogatives to Union Government.

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Contd.
• How do states resist mandates from the Union government?
• Malcolm Goggin have cited instances of “strategic delay” at the state level, where
states seek to slow implementation in order to develop ways to adapt the
program to local needs, or to induce the union government to provide more
funding or other incentives.
• However, not all delay is strategic—some delay or outright refusal to implement
policy is a reaction to local and state desires to not implement a policy at all.
• This is sometimes due to local political pressures.
• At other times, street level bureaucrats may refuse to implement a policy that
comes from the top: the police, for example, may resist changes in policing
procedure based on their professional experience.

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Final Point:
• Finally, top-down approaches assume that policy is contained in a single statute or
other authoritative statement.
• The fragmented and in some ways incrementalist nature of policy making in our
country means that, when one talks about “environmental policy” or “educational
policy” or “health policy,” one is discussing a wide collection of separate
policies.
• This is related to the tendency of top-down approaches to assume a relatively clear
division between policy enactment, on the one hand, and policy implementation,
on the other.
• Indeed, many of the studies of implementation from a public administration
perspective tend to adopt this distinction, which may be analytically useful but runs
the risk of assuming that the same pressures that work to shape policy adoption do
not exist in policy implementation.

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Bottom-Up Approaches to Implementation
• In a reaction to the overly structured top-down research approach—in
particular, to dissatisfaction with its ability to explain many unsuccessful
outcomes, and in reaction to the flaws of top-down policy design—
researchers began to view implementation from the perspective of “street-
level bureaucrats.”
• Richard Elmore, the key proponent of the bottom-up approach, calls this
“backward mapping,” in which the implementation process and the
relevant relationships are mapped backward, from the ultimate implementer
to the topmost policy designers.
• This approach is built on a set of assumptions that stand in marked contrast
to the implicit assumptions of “forward mapping” or top-down approaches.

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Assumptions:
• First, the bottom-up approach recognizes that goals are ambiguous rather
than explicit and may conflict not only with other goals in the same policy
area, but also with the norms and motivations of the street-level bureaucrats.
• As Rene Torenvlied notes, “The compliance problem arises when there is a
conflict of interest between implementation agencies and politicians.”
• Top-down models are most concerned with compliance, while bottom-up
approaches value understanding how conflict can be alleviated by
bargaining and sometimes compromise to maximize the likelihood of achieving
the policy goals.

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Contd.
• Second, the bottom-up approach does not require that there be a single
defined “policy” in the form of a statute or other form.
• Rather, policy can be thought of as a set of laws, rules, practices, and
norms,” that shape the ways in which government and interest groups
address these problems.
• Thus, implementation can be viewed as a continuation of the conflicts and
compromises that occur throughout the policy process, not just before it
begins and at the point of enactment.
• This makes for a more realistic depiction of the implementation process,
and clearly accommodates the type of policy tool bundling.
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Important Shortcomings
• Paul Sabatier argues that the bottom-up approach overemphasizes the ability of
the street-level bureaucrats to frustrate the goals of the top policy makers who are
not entirely free agents.
• They are constrained to act in a particular way based on their professional norms
and obligations, by the resources available to them, and by legal sanctions that
can be applied for noncompliance.
• Police officers, for example, who use “too much” discretion and thereby ignore
procedural rules for handling suspects or evidence can lose their jobs or face
criminal charges.
• States that fail to implement key features of Union policy put themselves at risk of
losing substantial amounts of central money, so states and local governments are
under pressure to bring their agencies into compliance.
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Contd.
• Bottom-up models of implementation also assume that groups are active participants in the
implementation process. This is not always true,
• However, Peter May argues that some policies can be categorized as “policies without
publics,” which are developed and implemented with relatively little public input,
particularly when those policy areas are highly technical.
• Along these lines, Sabatier also argues that the bottom-up approach fails to take into
account the power differences of the target groups.
• As Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram note, some target populations are more positively
constructed than others, with the result that those with greater power can have a greater
influence on the impact of policies that affect them than can other groups.
• Clearly, business interests are going to be treated differently in implementation design than
are the poor, and these treatments are reflected in the choice of policy tools.

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Significance:
• While these approaches to implementation have shortcomings, it is worthwhile to
consider how these two approaches to implementation contribute to our knowledge
of this essential element of public policy.
• The top-down approach is much more useful when there is a single, dominant
program that is being studied. There are examples that specific legislative enactments
that made important policy changes.
• Sabatier also argues that top-down approaches are appropriate when one has
limited resources to “backward map” the implementation of a particular issue.
• It is considerably easier to look up statutes and other pronouncements issued by
top-level policy designers than it is to map all the various interests, agencies, and
street-level officials that will carry out a policy.

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Contd.
• If you choose to write analysis of implementation, it is much more efficient to
start from the most visible policy changes rather than from the bottom, where
the less visible policies are made.
• On the other hand, bottom-up modeling makes sense when there is no
single dominant program (such as in a state’s penal code, which consists of
many policy statements regarding the nature and severity of crimes) and when
one is more interested in the local dynamics of implementation than in the
broad sweep of design.
• It is useful to consider the local factors, from both practical and academic
perspectives, since local experience with implementation success or failure can
yield important lessons for policy implementers.

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Synthesis: A Third Generation of
Implementation Research
• Because of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the top-down and
bottom-up approaches, researchers have sought to combine the benefits of
these approaches into one model or synthesis that can address the structuring
of policy from the top as well as the likelihood of its subversion or at least its
alteration at the point of implementation.
• Richard Elmore has sought to combine his idea of “backward mapping” with a
“forward mapping element.” Paul Sabatier also argues that a conceptual
framework should be developed that combines the best of the top-down and
bottom-up approaches.
• By looking both forward and backward, we can understand that top policy
makers can make choices of policy instruments or tools to structure
implementation, while realizing that the motivations and needs of lower-level
implementers must be taken into account.
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Contd.
• The top-down approach is best where there is a dominant program (i.e., law)
that is well structured and where the researcher’s resources for studying
implementation are limited, as when a student is researching the implementation of
a program for a term paper or an implementer needs a quick analysis to investigate
how to structure a program.
• By contrast, the bottom-up approach is best where one is interested in the dynamics
of local implementation and where there is no single dominant program.
• One begins by analyzing diffuse street-level behavior rather than focused, top-down
activity.
• Because of this diffuse behavior, gathering the needed data to tell the implementation
story can be challenging, as multiple sources must be consulted and analyzed.

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Advocacy Coalition Framework
• Sabatier’s synthesizes a framework for studying public policy known as the ACF.
• In this application of the ACF to implementation, Sabatier’s synthesis starts by
adopting the bottom-up perspective, which involves looking at “a whole variety
of public and private actors involved with a policy problem—as well as their
concerns with understanding the perspectives and strategies of all major categories
of actors.”
• This contrasts with the top-down focus on the topmost designers of policies.
• But Sabatier also adopts the top-down perspective by providing a simplified, abstract
model of a complex system and by recognizing the importance of the structural
features of policy emphasized by the top-down theorists.
• the ACF is one way to think about the organization of subsystems

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theory of policy implementation
• Refining and reconciling the top-down and bottom-up approaches, Goggin has
devised a theory of policy implementation that relies on the sending of
messages between policy makers and implementers.
• This study takes into account an important feature of most policy design: that
implementation is as much a matter of negotiation and communication
as it is a matter of command.
• Even commands are sometimes resisted because they are unclear or
inconsistent with the receiver’s expectations.

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Goggin sum up their argument in two key propositions:

1. Clear messages sent by credible officials and received by receptive

implementers who have or are given sufficient resources and who
implement policies supported by affected groups lead to implementation
success.
2. Strategic delay on the part of states, while delaying the implementation of
policies, can actually lead to improved implementation of policies through
innovation, policy learning, bargaining, and the like.

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Contd.
• In actual experience, messages are often unclear, officials often lack credibility, and
implementers are often not receptive or, if they are, do not receive sufficient
resources or are opposed by the affected groups.
• Goggin and his colleagues found, in certain policy areas, that states that “strategically
delayed” implementation—in order to seek clarification of a policy, raise more
funds, ensure support of affected groups, and so on—often had better success in
implementing a policy than did states that immediately implemented a policy.
• This delay on the part of a state or local government may in fact be a period of
strategic positioning and adaptation of a policy that actually improves the quality of
the service being delivered under the policy, as well as enhancing the likelihood of
any implementation.
• As long as policies fail or appear to fail, implementation studies will remain
important to policy makers and to students of the policy process.

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Policy Failure and Learning from It
• Helen Ingram and Dean Mann provide ways to think about policy failure.
• They argue that “success and failure are slippery concepts, often highly
subjective and reflective of an individual’s goals, perception of need, and
perhaps even psychological disposition toward life.”
• In other words, failure is perhaps in the eye of the beholder. And the beholder’s
vision is affected by his or her immediate perception of the policy in
question, e.g.- labor issue, likely to have very different perspectives on the
necessity of the minimum wage.
• One person may argue that a policy has failed, while another person might
look at it as a tentative first step toward a larger goal.
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Aashutosh Aahire/PPP/6 For Educational Purpose Only 28
Contd.
• Thus, policy failure may reflect popular dissatisfaction with a policy in particular, or
government in general, but fails to take into account the multiple reasons that
policies can at least be perceived as failures.
• But let’s continue to assume that policies do indeed fail—they either fail to deliver
what they promise, or they fail because of unintended or unforeseen consequences of
policies, which is a strong probability given that policies are complex and all the
variables are not always well known.
• We might assume that policy failure provides an opportunity to learn from the
erroneous or incomplete assumptions of the past.
• Thus, it is useful to think about how policy failure induces policy change through a
learning process. Indeed, many experts and commentators on important public
issues claim that certain phenomena can induce organizations to learn from their
mistakes.

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Peter May divides learning into three categories:
• Instrumental policy learning, Social policy learning, and Political
learning.
• In all three types of learning, policy failure provide a stimulus for learning
about how to make better policy.
• In the ideal case, learning reflects the accumulation and application of
knowledge to lead to factually and logically correct conclusions.
• May calls mimicking or copying policy without assessment or analysis
“superstitious instrumental learning.”

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Instrumental policy learning
• Instrumental policy learning concerns learning about “viability of policy
interventions or implementation designs.”
• This type of learning centers on implementation tools and techniques.
• When feedback from implementation is analyzed and changes to the design
are made that improve its performance, then this suggests that learning has
happened and was successful.

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Social policy learning
• involves learning about the “social construction of a policy or program.”
• This type of learning goes beyond simple adjustments of program management to
the heart of the problem itself, including attitudes toward program goals and the
nature and appropriateness of government action.
• If successfully applied, social policy learning can result in better understanding of
the underlying causal theory of a public problem, leading to better policy responses.
• Evidence of social policy learning involves learning the causes of problems and the
effectiveness of policy interventions based on those problems.
• May argues that prima facie indicators of social learning involve “policy redefinition
entailing changes in policy goals or scope—e.g., policy direction, target groups,
rights bestowed by the policy.

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Political learning
• Political learning is considerably different from instrumental and
social learning.
• Peter May defines political learning as focusing on “strategy for
advocating a given policy idea or problem,” leading potentially to
“more sophisticated advocacy of a policy idea or problem” and
effective political advocacy.
• Political learning occurs when advocates for or against policy
change alter their strategy and tactics to conform to new
information that has entered the political system.
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Conclusion
• For policy makers and public managers, policy implementation is one of the most
difficult aspects of the policy process, and policy failure is one of the most frustrating
parts of their jobs, because most managers and decision makers want their ideas to
work.
• For students of public policy, implementation is fascinating because implementation
brings together many actors and forces that cooperate and clash with each other in
order to achieve—or to thwart—policy goals.
• In that sense, it is truly a microcosm of the entire policy cycle.
• It is frustrating to research because the process has proven particularly hard to
model; contributing to this frustration is the tension between building and testing
good policy theory and implementation theory while providing useful information to
policy makers and implementers on how to structure programs for greater success.
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Contd.
• Given the complexity of our political system, it seems that policy failure—or, at best, very limited
success—would be the inevitable outcome of any public program.
• This may not be true, however, because failure is, like so much else in public policy, a subjective
condition that is more often grounded in the perceptions of a particular interest than in empirical
“fact.”
• Indeed, in areas such as crime control, terrorism, or environmental protection, one can argue
that a policy has failed if it hasn’t achieved 100 percent of its goal—but what would have
happened if the policy had not been adopted at all?
• Is 75 percent worse than perfection, or better than nothing?
• Clearly, this depends on the nature of the policy domain—in some systems, such as aviation
safety policy or policies regulating drugs, we expect near perfection.
• However, we can stipulate that some policies are much less successful than others and that policy
makers and others concerned with the management of public programs will learn from the
purported failure of the policy.
• In this way, policy development is an ongoing process with no discernible beginning and no
obvious end, but with plenty of opportunities for refinement and fine tuning.

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References:
• Anderson, James E. (2000). Public Policy-Making: An Introduction. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin.
• Birkland, Thomas A. (2001). An Introduction to the Policy Process: Theories, Concepts and
Models of Public Policy Making. New York:
• Dye, Thomas R. (1998). Understanding Public Policy. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall Inc.
• Sapru R.K., and Y. Sapru (2019). Public Policy: Formulation, Implementation And
Evaluation. Sterling Publishers.
• Public Administration in a Globalizing World Theories and Practices by Bidyut Chakrabarty
Prakash Chand, Sage Publications
• Public Administration by M Laxmikanth, Tata McGraw Hill PVT. LTD,
• Implementing Public Policy: Governance in Theory and in Practice by Michael Hill and
Peter Hupe, SAGE Publications

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