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Implementation. What is implementation?. Process by which policies are put into effect. Is crucial A policy is generally useless if it isn’t implemented. Implementation battles are also where power and debate come in. . Reasons for implementation conflict.
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What is implementation? • Process by which policies are put into effect. • Is crucial • A policy is generally useless if it isn’t implemented. • Implementation battles are also where power and debate come in.
Reasons for implementation conflict • Agreement about the goals; differences on methods • Pre-enactment opposition becomes post implementation conflict
Is implementation technical, or political? • The old idea: administration simply does the will of the legislature • The modern view: politics matters in administration
Who implements? • The executive branch • The legislative branch • The judicial branch • Other levels of government • Private actors
A History of the Study of Implementation • The first generation: case studies • Martha Derthick’s New Towns in Town • Pressman and Wildavsky’s Implementation • Lessons • Need commitment in the executive branch • Consider local needs • Consider and adapt to local conditions • There is no “one” policy • The complexity of joint action
The second generation: attempts at theorizing • Systems like models of implementation • Bottom up and top down models • Strengths: first attempts at creating some kind of unified theory of implementation • Weakness: top down, roles of actors underspecified.
Synthesis: top down and bottom up models of implementation • Top down—start from the highest level policy maker and design a policy to influence the lowest level actor (target or implementer) • Bottom-up—starts from the perspective of the target or implementer • How can policy be designed to induce implementer compliance/enthusiasm?
A third generation (Malcolm Goggin et al) • Implementation is communication between policy makers and implementers • Propositions: • Clear messages sent by credible officials and received by receptive implementers who have/are given sufficient resources and who implement policies supported by affected groups lead to implementation success • 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. • Synthesis: top down and bottom up models of implementation • Why all this attention? Policy failure?
Why Public Policies May Not Work • Inadequate resources • Policies may be administered so as to lessen their potential effect. • Public problems are often caused by a multitude of factors, but policy may be directed at only one or a few of them. Why?
Why Public Policies May Not Work • People may respond or adapt to public policies in a manner that negates some of their influence. • Policies may have incompatible goals that bring them into conflict with one another. • Solutions for some problems may involve costs and consequences greater than people are willing to accept.
Why Public Policies May Not Work • Many problems simply cannot be solved, or at least not completely • New problems may arise that distract attention from a problem • Many national problems and policies are actually implemented by state and local agencies, and are sometimes designed at the local level
Responses to these problems • Adjustments in enforcement • More money is put into the program • Challenge to legality or constitutionality • The program is simply ignored • The program is left to locals to improve on and pursue • The program is actually repealed
Deborah Stone: Types of Policy tools • Inducements • Facts • Rules • Rights • Powers
Inducements • Based on rewards, or their withdrawal • Involves the inducement giver, the receiver, and the inducement itself. • Assumes the target is a rational actor • Examples: tax deductions, pay raises, bonuses for completing work early, bonuses for increased efficiencies, etc.
Problems with inducements: • The target’s perception of the inducements • The target is not often a sole unitary actor • The inducement may disrupt personal and social relationships • Slow, time-consuming • Applying a penalty hurts the very thing one is trying to protect, • People and organizations will try to reap the reward without making the desired change in behavior.
Facts • Use of facts to persuade people is a very common tool in American politics. • Good as an appeal to rationality and logic • Bad when it’s just propaganda, questionable science, or dogma • Just because you lay out some rational, sound facts doesn’t mean that they will be met with unquestioning acceptance and behavior based on that acceptance.
Rules • Statute laws, case law, regulations,etc. • prescribing or proscribing behavior • How rules work • They are indirect (they work broadly over all classes or groups of people or organizations) • They work because they are assumed to be legitimate (the government has a right to make the rules) • Tend to have a conditional/situational aspect: if...then.
Rules • The challenge: striking a balance between precision and flexibility • Anatole France: “The law in its majesty equally prohibits the rich and the poor from stealing bread and sleeping on park benches.”
Why precision is good: • Treating like alike • Shield from the whims of government • predictability
Problems with precision • Leads to different cases being treated alike • Stifle creative response to new situations • Leads to a belief that a certain amount of vagueness and discretion is good.
Rights • The government can create rights, but more often it is individual action, through the courts, that creates new rights or enhances enforcement of existing ones.
Rights are not self enforcing • First, the right must be claimed by an individual, making the rights-seeker sort of weak. • Second, the right must be proclaimed by some legitimate, authoritative body such as a court • Third, the right must be enforced. This can be difficult sometimes. • “The courts as “the least dangerous branch”
Your challenge • To be a credible sender of a signal • To make that signal clear • To identify and address the willing implementers (policy targets) • To identify a kind of policy that your targets or implementers will agree too • To be sufficiently flexible to accommodate or circumvent “strategic delay” or outright resistance (this is the point of the first three bullets here)
