Implementation

Implementation refers to the carrying out of policy or authoritative actions in support of policy goals. Implementation is closely affiliated with the classic political function of executing laws, but implementation research also focuses on the execution of authoritative policies other than laws, such as administrative rules issued by government and policies made by local governments. Several stages, factors, and actors are involved in the implementation process and affect its results. Implementation is a continuation of the policy formation process, but it also involves new actors. The implementation process and its results depend on whether the policy design is valid and on what policy instruments have been selected. Also, the number and interests of the actors that are involved in carrying out the policy and the relationships between them affect the implementation process and results. Managers have an important but difficult task in transforming and communicating the policy down to the frontline workers. Because of the discretion that these workers typically have, they play a key role in delivering the policy to citizens or firms and enforcing the rules associated with it.

While most implementation studies analyze the implementation of one particular policy or a set of related policies, some bottom-up implementation scholars are more interested in local problem solving. These problems are typically defined by the researchers themselves, for example, Christopher Hull and Benny Hjern. They would often focus on a set of policies that have an impact on a given policy problem, for example, chronic youth unemployment or helping small firms grow. The relevance of this kind of research depends on whether the reader accepts the definition of the problem. This entry focuses on official public policy goals and mandates as a standard for implementation is warranted from a democratic effectiveness perspective. Democracy concerns not only how policies are made but also whether or not they are executed. Policy goals formulated in legislatures, governments, and local governments have a particular legitimate status and are relevant for holding government accountable.

The start of implementation research was stimulated by evaluation research. President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society social policy reforms in United States in the 1960s and 1970s fostered a lot of evaluation research. The effects of the new welfare state programs were assessed and improvements in social engineering suggested. As most [Page 1158]evaluation studies actually showed little or no effect of the social program interventions, the first interpretation suggested that the program was a failure and based on wrong program theory. However, gradually, another interpretation emerged that the causal theory behind the planned policy intervention might after all be valid, but the intervention had not taken place as intended. This led to an interest in studying the relation between planned and actual interventions and the administrative process in between policy making and social interventions.

Most people consider Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky's 1973 book Implementation to be the first major piece of implementation research. It was a case study of a federal economic development program in Oakland, California, that had been created to enhance minority employment. It failed to do so, however, due to the complexity of many actors having to work together and because it was based on an invalid causal theory of how to stimulate minority employment. The book certainly opened the field of implementation research, yet some pieces of earlier research by, for example, Herbert Kaufman and Jerome Murphy had actually focused on implementation problems.

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