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Implementation Perspectives: Status and Reconsideration

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  • VIVE - The Danish Centre for Social Science Research, Copenhagen, Denmark
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... Thus, as an interactive and dynamic process, implementation contains various components. On the top level, there exist the policy makers (implementers) and their implementing actors such as federal, regional, state and local government actors who play important role in success or failure of implementation (Winter, 2003b). On the bottom level, implementing actors engage enforcers who are called the intermediaries and street-level bureaucrats (frontline enforces) (Meyers & Vorsanger, 2003). ...
... The outcome of policy implementation should be distinctively differentiated from the output. While the outcome explains the behaviour of target groups, the output characterizes the performance of the implementers in enforcing a policy or delivery of services to target groups (Winter, 2003b). The output, thus, entails fashioning instruments and implementation approaches (means to implement the policy), which are consistent with the policy objectives (goal) at a much more operational level than a law (May, 2003). ...
... The predominant top-down research (forward mapping) pays special interest to higher level decision makers with a focus on specific political decision from above order while taking into consideration the policy instruments and resources (Schofield, 2001). On the other hand, the bottom-up approach (backward mapping) focuses on implementing actors with most direct contact with target groups who have problematic situations (Winter, 2003a(Winter, , 2003b). Such approaches model crucial variables of implementation. ...
Article
Ports are unavoidable hubs of anthropogenic emissions owing to the dependence of landside and seaside operations on fossil fuels. Additionally, designing and implementing decarbonisation measures to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in ports and beyond is a difficult issue. Therefore, this study aims to identify and analyse policy instruments and tools – implementation schemes – which ports implement to reduce GHG emissions, ultimately assisting in driving the uptake of technical and operational measures by port polluters, i.e. port, land transport, and shipping operators. This study was conducted by means of a systematic literature review (112 studies), and informed by a four-dimensional conceptual framework, i.e. port policymakers, port polluters, uptake of GHG emission reduction technical and operational measures, and the implementation schemes. The study differentiated between the technical and operational measures on one hand, and implementation schemes on the other. In addition to collating the schemes under five homogenous groups and nine categories; their characteristics, best practices, limitations and key issues, including opportunities, were discussed. Findings indicate that despite there being various challenges and issues in the implementation schemes, port policymakers, either public or port authorities, can utilise a variety of measures to reduce polluters' GHG emissions while at the same time maintaining business integrity. Nevertheless, monitoring of emissions, and identification of best performing combinations of implementation schemes along with inter-port and maritime stakeholders' and port policymakers' collaboration are the suggested way forward to better implement the measures and create a level playing field. While the results of this study contribute to improving the understanding of implementation of port GHG emission reduction, and enable port policymakers to make reliable decisions, it also contributes to academic knowledge and provides aspiring researchers with a fertile future research agenda.
... We build from prior comparative studies of implementation scholarship that trace trends in the intellectual scope, focus, and/or methods of published implementation literature (Saetren, 2005;O'Toole, 1986O'Toole, , 2000, and assess the extent to which research taking place in both streams is situated across multiple levels of the implementation system. The study of implementation within public affairs has theoretically embraced a multi-level framework of governance, where the outcomes of public policies and programs are best understood as resulting from multiple levels within a larger system (Berman, 1981;Hill & Hupe, 2014;Lynn, Heinrich, & Hill, 2001;Robichau & Lynn, 2009;Van Meter & Van Horn, 1975;Winter, 2003). Similar multi-level frameworks have been proposed for the new study of implementation science, but there are worries about whether or not the predominant theories or methods support this more holistic approach (Nilsen et al., 2013). ...
... The history of implementation scholarship within the field of public affairs has been welldocumented in prior literature (Hill & Hupe, 2014;Saetren, 2005;Sandfort & Moulton, 2015;Winter, 2003). One of the recurring themes of these reviews is the dissipation of research on implementation within the core discipline of public affairs, beginning in the 1990s with an increase in implementation literature published outside of the field (Meier, 1999;Saetren, 2005). ...
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Increased pressure for evidence-based practices in policymaking and administration has led to the growth of a new research stream of implementation science. Little is known about how this new stream of research compares with scholarship on policy implementation within public administration. This paper provides a comparative review of more than 1,500 journal articles on policy and program implementation published between 2004-2013. Using bibliometric analysis and a content analysis of abstracts, implementation articles within public affairs journals and in the emerging implementation science stream are analyzed in terms of their content, methods, and focus. Following a multi-level implementation framework, this analysis considers the level at which research is taking place within the different venues of implementation research. Through this systematic review, this paper provides new insights about the current state of research, opening up new avenues for scholars to substantively engage with and contribute to this important area of study.
... In our analysis, drawing on empirical data from the organisational implementation of a retirement pension reform in the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV), we focus on the institutional work undertaken by street-level bureaucrats in responding to the reform and its organisational implementation. In so doing, our approach responds to calls for approaches that put street-level organisations at the forefront of the analysis and which apply insights from (institutional) organisational theory to grasp how these organisations make use of their autonomy (Brodkin, 2013; Winter, 2012: 273). We thereby aim to add to and nuance discussions about the impact of streetlevel bureaucrats in two ways: first, by describing types of institutional work through which street-level bureaucrats modify public policies, and second, by demonstrating the applicability of an institutional work perspective to the study and understanding of front-line work behaviour and its implications for the services. ...
... However, rather than being relatively fixed, and based on relative autonomy from higher-level authority, discretionary space is actively created and used in various ways by the front-line workers to modify the discrepancies. Thus, our analysis provides organisational and institutional explanations of how street-level bureaucrats make use of their autonomy (Brodkin, 2013; Winter, 2012). We believe that the article makes two specific contributions to the literature on policy implementation and street-level bureaucracy. ...
Article
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The literature on policy implementation is divided with regards to the impact of street-level bureaucrats on the implementation of public policies. In this paper, we aim to add to and nuance these debates by focusing on ‘institutional work’ – i.e. the creation, maintenance and disruption of institutions – undertaken by central authorities and street-level bureaucrats during public reform processes. On the basis of a case study of the organisational implementation of a retirement pension reform in the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration, we argue that institutional work is a useful heuristic device for conceptualising the variety of responses available to street-level bureaucrats during public reforms. We also argue that the responses demonstrate the impact of street-level bureaucrats in these reforms in the context of managerial control and regulation. Finally, we argue that the effectiveness of policy change is dependent on the institutional work of street-level bureaucrats and, in particular, on institutional work that supports the institutions created by politicians and public administrations.
... Para traducir los grandes objetivos públicos en acciones específicas, la instrumentación involucra a diversas instancias públicas, privadas y no gubernamentales que deben articular sus recursos, información y autoridad. Sin embargo, la articulación es entorpecida por diversos factores, incluyendo el hecho de que los actores no tienen la misma información ni los mismos recursos y persiguen objetivos diferentes, muchas veces contradictorios, por lo que sus acciones acaban respondiendo a intereses que no necesariamente coinciden con los objetivos estatutarios de las políticas (Winter, 2012). ...
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Este trabajo analiza la respuesta del sector salud en Jalisco a la pandemia de COVID-19 durante 2020 desde dos perspectivas: la del gobierno estatal y la del personal médico. La primera enfatiza cómo el gobierno de Jalisco buscó marcar una diferencia con el gobierno federal en su gestión de la crisis, específicamente en su mecanismo de vigilancia epidemiológica. La segunda, basada en entrevistas a profundidad con personal médico, da cuenta de las restricciones que dichos actores enfrentaron, destacando la escasez de recursos, las medidas de protección al personal, las características del entorno laboral y los efectos sobre la vida personal de los trabajadores de la salud. Se arguye que, en un contexto de institucionalización débil, la actuación discrecional del personal médico no busca deliberadamente distorsionar los objetivos de las políticas para enfrentar la crisis, sino es la manera de sortear los diversos obstáculos de para sacar adelante sus tareas.
... These findings are important in that they enable us to think of policy implementation not as one broad action, but as a series of specific acts dependent on various stakeholders and organizational context. They echo Lipsky's "Street-level Bureaucrats," meaning that managers and evaluators interpret and implement the policy elements differently based on their context and characteristics (Winter, 2012). Finally, our findings also show how practice can influence policy changes over time, and how this reverse policy-practice link is important to sustainable organizational improvement. ...
Article
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Organizational evaluation policies describe how evaluation practices should be structured and implemented. As such, they provide key insights into organizational priorities and values regarding evaluation. However, the link between evaluation policies and how evaluation policies translate into concrete practices has seldom been explored until now. Our study examines the implementation of two Canadian federal government evaluation policies over a 10-year timespan, through the secondary analysis of reports produced on behalf of governmental evaluation functions. Our findings show that some policy elements have been fully implemented, but the way in which these have been implemented varies between organizations. Further, we observed that the level of control of various organizational members responsible for implementing policy elements, as well as time, can influence implementation of certain policy requirements. We conclude by proposing further directions for research to examine the policy-practice link.
... Therefore, the approach they elect is important in this context. While the tripartite found in the analysis may resemble findings from, for example, leadership theory (Hansen and Pihl-Thingvad, 2019), implementation theory (Winter, 2007) or public governance , this study is concerned with individual managers at operative levels rather than general trends in public policy and governance. Therefore, the following discussion of implications draw on studies of frontline public management. ...
Thesis
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The thesis shows how frontline managers manage everyday innovation and thereby continuously develop their organization. Public innovation and value creation are explored from an organizational perspective. The dissertation consists of four articles, out of which one is based on a statistical dataset covering the entire Danish public sector, and the other three apply qualitative methods to provide detailed investigations of how innovation is conducted on the public frontlines. The data was collected in public childcare organizations. The theoretical framework of the thesis draws on Scandinavian institutionalism to investigate how frontline managers translate ideas about innovation into concrete everyday practices.
... Lots of policies failed in the past without adequate explanation. Today, we know more about the reasons thanks to the development of the study of policy implementation and the exerted effort of some scholars eager to identify factors along the way which may be responsible for failure or success in policy accomplishment (Saetren, 2014;Winter, 2012). However, the aforementioned development has brought not only clarity about the causes of policy failure, but also some controversies with regard to the best or ISSN: 2581-3358 Available online at Journals.aijr.org ...
Article
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Deductive models of policy implementation emerged as a response to the inability of inductive approaches to provide nuanced theories of policy implementation and performance. They are said to be parsimonious and precise in studying complex social interactions. Hence, over the last decade or so, there has been ascending interest in the use of deductive approaches to get deeper understanding of the mechanisms by which policy implementation is more likely to succeed. However, giving the fact that numerous programs and policies continue to fail despite being replicated from the best deductive models, one is entitled to wonder: what is the true value of these models? And how effective are they in translating the intentions of policymakers into desired policy outcomes? The present contribution seeks to provide answers to these questions by first, discussing some hands-on deductive models of policy implementation and second, analyzing the potential of each model, their strengths, their weaknesses, and appropriate contexts for use. To reach these aims, the study utilized the Contextual Interaction Theory (CIT) to gauge the assumptions of each of the following models: the Rational, Management, Organizational Development, Political, and Bureaucratic Process. The results have shown that, although deductive models of policy implementation (or at least, the models here-in discussed) seem to offer tangible promises to deliver more accurate and nuanced explanations of policy action, they fall short to combine the three criteria of Motivation, Information, and Power, necessary for any candidate model of policy implementation to be deemed effective. The results have also shown that an integrated model, one that combines the strengths of all the above cited models, but none of their weaknesses, could be a credible offer of a successful theory of policy implementation.
... Nevertheless, the implementation literature has not yet succeeded in sorting out the relative importance of the different explanatory factors accounting for the variation in policy success. Instead, it has created a long checklist of potential determinants (Winter, 2012). These include the extent to which implementers are willing and capable of implementing policies in the intended way (Gerston, 2010); the channels and venues through which central policy makers control the implementation process (De Mesquita & Stephenson, 2007;Jensen, 2007); the general need for both horizontal and vertical coordination across different administrative boundaries and levels (Lundin, 2007;Mayntz, 1978); and the attitude of the target groups toward governmental intervention and the policy at hand. ...
Chapter
Policy Accumulation and the Democratic Responsiveness Trap - by Christian Adam April 2019
... The fourth condition highlights the role of private landowners' policy resources in implementation games (Winter, 2012). Echoing the third condition, landowners are almost never passively receive policy implementation, particularly not in the field of land use planning (Lambelet, 2017). ...
Article
This study investigates how an institutional resource regime translates into a local regulatory arrangement and policy outcomes that enhance the sustainability of natural resource use. Empirically, it focuses on land use in Switzerland and examines the conditions under which land use policy objectives are achieved. A comparative analysis of twelve land use cases dealing with different policy problems in peri-urban and urban contexts shows how the policy expertise of public authorities, as well as acquired use rights held by private landowners, can influence local regulatory arrangement and policy outcomes. The general conclusion is that consideration of actors' implementation games is highly relevant in explaining the institutional resource regime's effects on the sustainability of natural resource uses.
... The power relation between programme implementers and beneficiaries in the PM&E process is common in the most development programme. Some scholars have argued that PM&E has been on 'bottomup' over the years (Winter, 2003;Pasudel, 2009). Contrary, Maguire (1987 have expressed that, the failures in most economic development projects are as a result of the emphasis on 'top-down' PM&E and therefore needs to be more bottom-up. ...
... The power relation between programme implementers and beneficiaries in the PM&E process is common in the most development programme. Some scholars have argued that PM&E has been on 'bottomup' over the years (Winter, 2003;Pasudel, 2009). Contrary, Maguire (1987) have expressed that, the failures in most economic development projects are as a result of the emphasis on 'top-down' PM&E and therefore needs to be more bottom-up. ...
Article
Participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) in project evaluation has gained impetus in recent literature. This paper interrogates youth participation in intervention programmes in Ghana with special reference to Local Enterprise and Skills Development Programme (LESDEP). With the aid of primary and secondary data, this paper unpacks the questions around programme target beneficiaries, their mode of participation and the impacts of current models on PM&E. The study reveals the key constraints of youth participation in PM&E, the evolving disapproval of the top-down approach while probing into the existing opportunities. The case study reveals that youth intervention programmes in Ghana are not only confronted with uncoordinated and overlapping ministries, department and agencies, but also there are power dynamics between stakeholders, in particular, target beneficiaries and programme implementers. The elusive intersection between beneficiaries and the implementing agency impacted negatively on the programme sustainability. The poor PM&E in youth intervention programmes in Ghana is a key reason that has hampered mainstream socio-economic development. The key lesson to be drawn from the case study is the need for matching perspectives of PM&E as well as a recognition and management of power disparities between target beneficiaries and programme implementers. Thus, realizing desired programme objectives will require a different approach to structuring, implementing and monitoring of youth intervention initiatives in Ghana.
... Drawing on methods employed from political sociology (Clayton & Pontusson, 1998 ), our study innovatively modeled the stateonly family planning and abortion service expenditures both in per capita terms (per woman, age 15–44) and as fraction of total state spending. An additional strength is that our exposure variable (actual state funding) avoids reliance on defining exposures in relation to laws that may or may not be implemented or enforced (Winter, 2012; Cole & Fielding, 2007) and, given the time period examined, also avoids complications of comparisons before and after passage of the Affordable Care Act (SACIM, 2016). Furthermore, in contrast to the handful of prior analyses of US state reproductive health funding and birth outcomes (Grossman & Jacobwitz, 1981; Corman & Grossman, 1985; Joyce, 1987a Joyce, , 1987b; Table 2Rate ratios for state spending on family planning and abortion services on US infant death rates a , net of specified county-level sociodemographic and socioeconomic covariates: 1980, 1987, 1994, 2001, 2006.14 (1.09, 1.20) 5 (highest; referent group) 1.0 (ref) 1.0 (ref) 1.0 (ref) 1.0 (ref) 1.0 (ref) 1.0 (ref) 1.0 (ref) 1.0 (ref) 1.0 (ref) ...
Article
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Introduction: Little current research examines associations between infant mortality and US states' funding for family planning services and for abortion, despite growing efforts to restrict reproductive rights and services and documented associations between unintended pregnancy and infant mortality. Material and methods: We obtained publicly available data on state-only public funding for family planning and abortion services (years available: 1980, 1987, 1994, 2001, 2006, and 2010) and corresponding annual data on US county infant death rates. We modeled the funding as both fraction of state expenditures and per capita spending (per woman, age 15-44). State-level covariates comprised: Title X and Medicaid per capita funding, fertility rate, and percent of counties with no abortion services; county-level covariates were: median family income, and percent: black infants, adults without a high school education, urban, and female labor force participation. We used Possion log-linear models for: (1) repeat cross-sectional analyses, with random state and county effects; and (2) panel analysis, with fixed state effects. Results: Four findings were robust to analytic approach. First, since 2000, the rate ratio for infant death comparing states in the top funding quartile vs. no funding for abortion services ranged (in models including all covariates) between 0.94 to 0.98 (95% confidence intervals excluding 1, except for the 2001 cross-sectional analysis, whose upper bound equaled 1), yielding an average 15% reduction in risk (range: 8 to 22%). Second, a similar risk reduction for state per capita funding for family planning services occurred in 1994. Third, the excess risk associated with lower county income increased over time, and fourth, remained persistently high for counties with a high percent of black infants. Conclusions: Insofar as reducing infant mortality is a government priority, our data underscore the need, despite heightened contention, for adequate public funding for abortion services and for redressing health inequities.
Chapter
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Chapter
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Chapter
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Over the past 40 years, implementation of public policy has been developed into a mature but heterogenous field of research. Despite much attention paid to the context in which implementation occurs, studies thus far has only to a limited extent been concerned with how major socio-technological transitions affect the conditions for implementing policy. As societies experience major socio-technological transitions that radically change our ways of living and working, these changes also affect the implementation process. But how? This paper explores how theories of socio-technological changes can be drawn upon to add layers of explanations to a canonized model of integrated implementation. Recent technological developments in the transport sector are applied to this discussion to illustrate the usefulness of the suggested layered approach. The paper concludes by suggesting how the integrated implementation model and implementation theory can be combined.
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Federal land-management agencies are increasingly developing policies to support multiscale monitoring for land-management planning and decisionmaking. Regulations for national forest planning promulgated in 2012 require US Forest Service Regions to develop “broader-scale” monitoring strategies conducted at scales greater than a single planning unit that can complement forest plan monitoring strategies. Given that this requirement is relatively new, we conducted research to investigate the advantages, challenges, and opportunities associated with implementation. We conducted and analyzed interviews with 95 interviewees from forest and regional levels of the agency, and federal, state, nongovernment, and research organizations who could provide insight on broader-scale monitoring challenges and opportunities. We also drew on findings from four interagency workshops. We found that broader-scale monitoring strategies have the potential to generate efficiencies for forest planning processes and improve coordination and communication across levels of the agency and with external partners. Major challenges for implementation relate to limited human and financial resource capacity and the agency’s decentralized organizational structure and culture. Opportunities for addressing these issues include building capacity for implementation through partnerships and investing in regional capacity for coordination and implementation.
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This chapter explores how customization affects the degree to which European Union (EU) food safety policies are successfully implemented. It empirically assesses the contradictory views of the relevance of discretion for effective problem-solving that prevail in the fields of policy implementation and better regulation. Focusing on the policy “in action”, I conceive of successful implementation as the absence of problems in the delivery of domestic outputs and outcomes. Results of a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of four member states and of Switzerland illustrates how customization serves as a strategy for problem-solving within an overarching framework of successful policy implementation. The evidence relativizes the EU’s “no gold-plating” policy. Depending on the regulatory context, extensive customization frequently contributes to implementation success. Keywords: customization, discretion, implementation success, practical implementation
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It is well-established that population health is influenced by a multitude of factors, many of which lie outside the scope of the health sector. In the public health literature it is often assumed that intersectoral engagement with non-health sectors will be instrumental in addressing these social determinants of health. Due to the expected desirable outcomes in population health, several countries have introduced Health in All Policies (HiAP). However, whether this systematic, top-down approach to whole-of-government action (which HiAP entails) is efficient in changing government policies remains unclear. A systematic evaluation of HiAP is therefore much needed. Lawless and colleagues present an evaluation framework for HiAP in their article: "Developing a Framework for a Program Theory-Based Approach to Evaluating Policy Processes and Outcomes: Health in All Policies in South Australia. " This work is an important endeavor in addressing this problem (of uncertainty as to whether HiAP is effective) and represents an essential contribution to the HiAP literature. Nonetheless, in the spirit of encouraging ongoing reflection on this topic, we wish to highlight some challenges in the presented framework, which may pose difficulties in operationalization. We find that the evaluation framework faces two main limitations: its unclear causal logic and its level of complexity. We argue that in order to function as a tool for evaluation, the framework should be explicit about the mechanisms of change and enable us to trace whether the assumed causal relations resulted in changes in practice. Developing manageable evaluation frameworks, albeit simplified, may then be an important part of cumulating the theoretical insights aspired in theory-based evaluation. On this basis, we highlight how HiAP processes and healthy public policies respectively involve different mechanisms, and thus argue that different program theories are needed.
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For decades, the European legislators and the Court of Justice have extended the rights to free movement and cross-border welfare in the European Union (EU). Strong assumptions on the impact of these rules have been made. It has been held by some that they will lead to welfare migration and thus to be a fundamental challenge to the welfare state. However, studies of how these rules are implemented and what become the de facto outcomes hereof remain scarce. We address this research gap, by examining domestic responses to and outcomes of dynamic EU rules. We based our research on a unique set of administrative data for all EU citizens living in the universalist, tax-financed welfare state of Denmark between 2002 and 2013. We find that domestic responses have been restrictive and outcomes limited.
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This chapter makes five claims: (1) Corruption has a detrimental effect on overall human well-being. (2) Most existing programs for combatting corruption have not delivered. (3) Increased gender equality seems to be one important factor behind getting corruption under control. (4) Impartiality in the exercise of public power, not least when it “translates” into meritocracy in the public administration, has a powerful effect both on increasing gender equality and for lowering corruption. (5) As an ideal, impartiality in the exercise of public power turns out to be difficult to reach. It is therefore reasonable to take a “Churchillian” (non-ideal) approach to this. As with democracy, impartiality is not a perfect system, but all other systems for delivering quality of government have turned out to be worse.
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Background: For more than 30 years policy action across sectors has been celebrated as a necessary and viable way to affect the social factors impacting on health. In particular intersectoral action on the social determinants of health is considered necessary to address social inequalities in health. However, despite growing support for intersectoral policymaking, implementation remains a challenge. Critics argue that public health has remained naïve about the policy process and a better understanding is needed. Based on ethnographic data, this paper conducts an in-depth analysis of a local process of intersectoral policymaking in order to gain a better understanding of the challenges posed by implementation. To help conceptualize the process, we apply the theoretical perspective of organizational neo-institutionalism, in particular the concepts of rationalized myth and decoupling. Methods: On the basis of an explorative study among ten Danish municipalities, we conducted an ethnographic study of the development of a municipal-wide implementation strategy for the intersectoral health policy of a medium-sized municipality. The main data sources consist of ethnographic field notes from participant observation and interview transcripts. Results: By providing detailed contextual description, we show how an apparent failure to move from policy to action is played out by the ongoing production of abstract rhetoric and vague plans. We find that idealization of universal intersectoralism, inconsistent demands, and doubts about economic outcomes challenge the notion of implementation as moving from rhetoric to action. Conclusion: We argue that the 'myth' of intersectoralism may be instrumental in avoiding the specification of action to implement the policy, and that the policy instead serves as a way to display and support good intentions and hereby continue the process. On this basis we expand the discussion on implementation challenges regarding intersectoral policymaking for health.
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Reporting on an interview and observation-based study in Danish municipalities, this article deals with local policy workers and takes it's departure in the great variation we observed in implementation of centrally issued health promotion guidelines. We present five types of local policy workers, each of whom we found typified a specific way of reasoning and implementing the guidelines. This typology illustrates the diversity found within a group of local policy workers and helps explain the variability reported in most studies on policy/guideline implementation. On the level of individuals, variation in implementation is often explained by the implementers’ perceptions of need for, and potential benefits of the policy, self-efficacy and skill proficiency. We add ‘professionally related experiences’ as another explanation. We introduce the concepts of translation and hinterland to understand how and why people in the same positions receiving the same set of guidelines implement them differently and suggest that local policy workers’ professionally related experiences affect the frames in which they translate the guidelines and decide upon the strategies of implementation. As such, this article illustrates a residual order of implementation practice: the unruly and elusive part of public policy implementation, ordered only partly by the centrally issued policies.
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Four main findings stand out in this state-of-the-art analysis of policy implementation research. First, after a sudden rise in research interest and publications on this topic since the early 1970s up to the mid–late 1980s, scholarly interest stagnated and declined until the late 1990s and beginning of the new century. Then research publications started to rebound to an unprecedented new high level. Second, during these five decades or so, research on this topic has made great progress towards a ‘third generation’ research paradigm. The latter implies the application of more rigorous scientific research designs and methodologies. Third, advances towards a more parsimonious theory of policy implementation that motivated the call for a third-generation research design has been less than one could hope for. Finally, a major shift in regional focus and origin of implementation research away from North America towards Europe and other regions has taken place especially during the last decade.
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This article examines the implementation of regional innovation policies by focusing on a selected group of bureaucrats and evaluating the characteristics of the doctrines of action they utilize when creating innovation. The data used in the article were collected through in-depth interviews conducted with 21 employees in the Trade and Industry Departments in two county administrations, the offices of Innovation Norway in two counties and the Agricultural Departments of two County Governors’ offices. The primary task for all the interviewed employees is to facilitate innovation within their respective counties. The analysis shows that the employees’ doctrines are characterized by being interpretations of what, according to different theories of innovation, is necessary to create innovation. The strategies used by the employees in both the Trade and Industry Departments and the Innovation Norway offices are very similar to what is prescribed by the theories of innovation, while the doctrines of the officials in the Agricultural Departments deviate from these theories.
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Research on implementation in the European Union (EU) is characterized by a strong focus on legal conformance with EU policy. However, this focus has been criticized for insufficiently accounting for the implications of the EU’s multilevel governance structure, thus providing an incomplete picture of EU implementation, its diversity and practice. The contributions of this collection represent a shift toward a more performance-oriented perspective on EU implementation as problem-solving. They approach implementation fundamentally as a process of interpretation of superordinate law by actors who are embedded within multiple contexts arising from the coexistence of dynamics of Europeanization, on the one hand, and what has been termed ‘domestication’, on the other. Moving beyond legal compliance, the contributions provide new evidence on the diversity of domestic responses to EU policy, the roles and motivations of actors implementing EU policy, and the ‘black box’ of EU law in action and its enforcement.
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Initial state implementation of the Affordable Care Act health exchanges was marked by political polarization. More than half of the states initially chose not to create their own health exchanges, leading the federal government to adopt a new strategy: dividing the implementation of health exchanges into a series of smaller tasks. States could choose which of four core functions of the exchanges they would implement, with the federal government handling the remaining functions. This strategy induced some resistant states to administer some core functions. Why did some states take part in the exchanges while others did not? Ordered logistic regression analyses provide evidence that both state political context and other factors affected this decision. The analyses also suggest that state officials considered state workforce capacity and financial inducements from the federal government and that they were influenced by divided government.
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In frontline bureaucracy research, the dominant view holds that frontline workers resist managerial pressure to “blame the poor” by bending the rules based on moral considerations, a practice labeled “citizen agency.” We suggest that frontline responses to managerial pressure are filtered through welfare state regime type. Based on in-depth study of caseworker reasoning in Sweden and Denmark, we find a “structural problem explanation” that sees reasons for clients seeking support as rooted in the structures of society—not in the individual client. We find and present two narratives hitherto not problematized in frontline bureaucracy research: the “statesperson” and the “professional.”
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The individual placement and support approach (IPS) has become a widely recognized evidence-based practice to provide work for more people with severe mental illness. The aim of this literature review was to identify and evaluate research on implementation of IPS, focusing on facilitators and barriers. Contextual, local organizational, cooperation/team and individual factors influence the implementation process. Key facilitators are the use of a fidelity scale to measure and develop quality and the employment of skilled local leaders and IPS specialists. Barriers are located at the contextual level, when the national employment policy and regulation contradict the IPS scheme, and at the local level, where mental health professionals’ negative attitudes towards the IPS scheme and a culture based on a medical approach challenge the implementation of IPS. The evaluation of research in IPS implementation show that most studies are empirically driven, using different understandings of implementation and have a poor theoretical underpinning of the studies. The need for further studies based on comparative methods and more developed theoretical framework is discussed.
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This study explores campus-based victim advocates’ perspectives on the process of implementing campus rape reforms mandated by federal policy. Interviews with 14 victim advocates and sexual assault prevention specialists were analyzed qualitatively using thematic analysis techniques. Participants described an increased focus on compliance as a means of managing the liability risks associated with inadequate policy implementation. These shifts toward compliance not only increased the motivation to accomplish reform but also limited those reforms by narrowing the focus. Participants described how narrow compliance resulted in decisions that may actually harm victims. Suggestions for improving policy and the implementation process are discussed.
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Intense partisan conflict characterized the Affordable Care Act’s passage and continues to influence its implementation. The Act granted state officials significant discretionary authority over the implementation of health insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion. Decisions by state officials vary from full state involvement to partial involvement to refusal to administer a state health exchange or expand Medicaid. The federal government administers a health exchange in those states choosing not to operate an exchange. The article examines whether variation in state program choices affects citizen decisions to enroll in an exchange. Also examined is whether health insurance premiums vary by which level of government administers the exchange. The analysis provides evidence that the Act’s goals of increased enrollment in health insurance and affordable premiums are influenced by state government decisions on the extent of state involvement in health exchanges and Medicaid expansion.
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Durch den so genannten „Vermittlungsskandal“ von 2002 wurde die Bundesanstalt für Arbeit in eine existenzbedrohende Organisations- und Legitimationskrise versetzt. In der Krise und nachfolgenden tiefgreifenden Organisationsreform war die (2003 umbenannte) Bundesagentur für Arbeit (BA) mit hoher Unsicherheit konfrontiert, aus der die BA schließlich neuerlich gestärkt hervorging. Der Beitrag zeichnet die wichtigsten Schritte der Organisationsreform nach und diskutiert die maßgeblichen Faktoren für die umsetzungstechnisch geglückte Restrukturierung und Stabilisierung der Großorganisation. Bei der stark zentralistisch und in einem relativ kurzen Zeitfenster vollzogenen Reform traten zwar auch Folgeprobleme und Reformparadoxien auf, die dysfunktionalen Nebeneffekte waren aber nicht stark genug, die Reformumsetzung ernsthaft zu gefährden. Zugleich beförderte die Reform auf vielfältige Weise eine zunehmende Anpassung und Vereinheitlichung der Politik der örtlichen Arbeitsagenturen.
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This study contributes to the understanding of how those street‐level bureaucrats who are at the front lines of regulatory enforcement help to bring about compliance with regulations. Hypotheses concerning the impact of inspectors' differing enforcement styles on compliance are examined for data concerning municipal enforcement of building codes. Building inspectors vary in their day‐to‐day style of interaction with homebuilders with respect to facilitation—how helpful and supportive they are—and with respect to formalism—how rigid and picky they are. We fail to find a direct effect of differing enforcement styles on compliance. However, enforcement styles influence homebuilders' knowledge of rules and the degree of cooperation between homebuilders and inspectors. We attribute the limited impact of enforcement style to inconsistencies in inspection that tend to immunize homebuilders to stylistic differences among inspectors. This suggests a downside to “responsive regulation” as a preferred mode of regulatory enforcement: such inconsistencies undermine regulatees' understanding of rules and the development of shared expectations concerning compliance.
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Qualitative studies have identified similar coping behaviors among front-line staff in different policy and national settings as claimed by Lipsky in his street-level bureaucracy theory, although most studies have focused on social policies. However, because the theory is stronger in identifying than explaining coping behaviors, this paper develops a conceptual model for explaining variation in coping in social as well as regulatory policies. It is tested by two sets of quantitative survey data, one from 378 municipal Danish front-line staffs that are implementing an Integration Act for refugees and immigrants, the other one from 216 inspectors that are implementing agroenvironmental policy, also in Danish municipalities. Strong empirical support for most hypotheses is obtained in both policy contexts with remarkably similar findings, which suggests that coping as well as some of the factors triggering it might have some universal validity. While local politicians’ policy preferences do not affect coping directly, they have an indirect impact through the “power of the purse,” as greater capacity reduces coping. Nevertheless, bureaucrats’ own preferences are more important for coping than is capacity, and perceived capacity/workload is the most important factor. Coping is also affected by bureaucrats’ policy preferences in terms of their attitudes towards the policy target group and of how effective they perceive the available policy-instruments to be. The findings suggest that bureaucrats work, apply leisure shirking or political shirking depending on their own preferences, and that street-level bureaucrats have a more individual, value-based role in policy-making than claimed by Lipsky.
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Abstract We address the differences between direct and indirect provision of governmental services in the implementation of employment policy inDen mark. A natural experiment in the implementation
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A review of the policy implementation literature finds the field split into two major schools, top-down and bottom-up. Pre- vious attempts to reconcile these models are described, followed by an alternative model. This model reconciles these approaches by concentrating on the theoretical significance of ambiguity and conflict for policy implementation. A number of factors crucial to the implementation process are identified as varyingty dependent on a policy's ambiguity and conflict level. Four policy implemen- tation paradigms are identified and the relevance of the existing literature to these conditions is discussed. The four paradigms are low conflict-low ambiguity (administrative implementation), high conflict-low ambiguity (political implementation), high con- flict-high ambiguity (symbolic implementation), and low conflict- high ambiguity (experimental implementation).
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According to the theory of representative bureaucracy, passive representation among public employees will lead to active representation in bureaucratic outputs. Existing research demonstrates that the link between passive and active representation exists for race but not for sex. Past research on this topic has not, however, taken into account the contextual environment that affects whether sex will translate into gender and lead to active representation in the bureaucracy. In this paper, we create a framework that specifies the conditions that affect whether passive representation results in active representation for sex and then test this framework using the case of education. We find that passive representation of women in education leads to active representation and that the institutional context affects the extent to which this link between passive and active representation occurs.
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This article addresses the influence of politicians, managers, and the dispositions of street-level bureaucrats in shaping actions at the frontlines of policy implementation. We investigate these for the implementation of employment policy reforms in Denmark. Our findings show a large percentage of caseworkers emphasizing actions that are consistent with the national employment reform goal of getting clients into jobs quickly. The influence of politicians and managers in bringing this about is relatively limited in comparison to the influences of caseworkers' understanding of policy goals, their professional knowledge, and their policy predispositions. Our main contribution is an unpacking of the political and managerial influences on caseworkers' policy emphases. We find direct effects and, more notably, indirect effects that operate on the influence of caseworkers' perceptions of policy goals and their knowledge. These findings provide a more nuanced and positive assessment than much of the implementation literature of the way that higher level policies are translated into actions at the frontlines.
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A combination of calculated, normative, and social motivations as well as awareness of rules and capacity to comply are thought to foster compliance with regulations. Hypotheses about these factors were tested with data concerning Danish farmers' compliance with agro-environmental regulations. Three key findings emerge: that farmers' awareness of rules plays a critical role; that normative and social motivations are as influential as calculated motivations in enhancing compliance; and that inspectors' enforcement style affects compliance differently from that posited in much of the literature. It was also found that formalism in inspection can be helpful to a point, while coercion by inspectors can backfire. Taken together, these findings counter arguments concerning the harm of legalism and the benefits of flexible enforcement. This study contributes to the understanding of factors that shape compliance with social and environmental regulations. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
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A perennial problem when political decisions are to be implemented is how to make authorities work together. Previous research shows that resource interdependence, goal congruence, and mutual trust increase interorganizational cooperation. In this article, it is argued that interaction effects must also be considered in order to fully understand how these variables affect cooperation. The study is based on 203 dyads of Swedish Public Employment Service offices and municipalities in 2003. I find that mutual trust is necessary if goal congruence is to increase cooperation between these agencies. Furthermore, mutual trust only has a positive effect if organizations have similar objectives. However, trust is not required for resource interdependence to affect cooperation, and the effect of trust is not dependent on the organizations' mutual dependence. The results imply that trust and goal congruence must exist simultaneously in order to promote joint actions. Thus, if a management strategy aimed at increasing cooperation only focuses on the organizations' objectives or the level of trust between them, it will fail. An important lesson for future research is that including interaction terms in the analysis improves our understanding of interorganizational cooperation.
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Evidence from sixty‐five empirical studies of the determinants of public service performance is critically reviewed. The statistical results are grouped on the basis of five theoretical perspectives: resources, regulation, markets, organization, and management. The analysis suggests that the most likely sources of service improvement are extra resources and better management. A research agenda for further work is identified, and recommendations are made to enhance the theoretical and methodological quality of studies of public service improvement.
Book
'A timely and important set of analyses on how and why businesses respond to regulation in the way that they do from some of the leading authors in the field, covering business responses to both state and non-state regulatory systems.' - Julia Black, London School of Economics, UK. © The Editors and Contributors Severally 2011. All rights reserved.
Article
From the introduction: The realities of regulation are shaped by the choices made by regulatory agencies and inspectors. This chapter considers variation in agency enforcement approaches, inspectors’ enforcement styles, and their implications for compliance. Despite a substantial body of research about these topics, basic issues are largely unresolved as to what constitutes enforcement style and the effects it has on compliance. Consideration of this topic may seem old fashioned given that much of the literature has moved away from addressing enforcement to considering how to bring about compliance through less coercive means and how to foster voluntary actions that go ‘beyond compliance’ – topics addressed in other chapters in this volume. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the dominant approach to regulation throughout the world still consists of monitoring adherence to rules and taking actions to bring violators into compliance with those rules.
Article
This study contributes to the understanding of informational approaches to bringing about compliance with environmental regulations with particular attention to differences in the influence of information provided by different information sources. Based on theorizing from a combination of information processing and interest group literatures, we develop hypotheses about regulatees' reliance upon and the influence of different sources of information. We test these hypotheses for Danish farmers' compliance with agro-environmental rules. Our findings show that information plays a role in bringing about regulatory compliance, but its influence is not as strong and is less direct than might be thought to be the case. In addition, we show that not all information sources have the same influence. The findings demonstrate that interest groups have important roles in information provision and legitimization of policies that have often been assumed in the literature but have rarely been empirically examined.
Article
While policy implementation no longer frames the core question of public management and public policy, some scholars have debated appropriate steps for revitalization. And the practical world stands just as much in need now of valid knowledge about policy implementation as ever. Where has all the policy implementation gone? Or at least all the scholarly signs of it? And why? What has the field accomplished? Should a resurgence of attention to the subject be exhorted? And if so, in what directions? This article considers these questions as foci of an assessment of the state of the field, and the argument reaches somewhat unconventional conclusions: There is more here than meets the eye. While modest to moderate progress can be noted on a number of fronts, an initial assessment is likely to understate the extent of work underway on matters quite close to the implementation theme. Research on policy implementation-like questions has partially transmogrified. One has to look, sometimes, in unusual places and be informed by a broader logic of intellectual development to make sense of the relevant scholarship. Policy implementation work, in short, continues to bear relevance for important themes of policy and management. But some of the discourse has shifted, the questions have broadened, and the agenda has become complicated. Research on implementation, under whatever currently fashionable labels, is alive and lively.
Article
In this paper, organization theory is used to develop some predictions about what is likely to happen when policy makers ask two or more administrative agencies to work together implementing a policy. This analysis incorporates several variables from the current implementation literature and then explores the utility of an additional factor-the pattern, or structure, of interdependence among the implementing units. One important conclusion is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, with certain structures of interdependence the chances of implementation may actually increase with the number of units involved. A sample of cases from U.S. General Accounting Office reports is used to check the applicability of this theory.
Article
The cumulative findings of two generations of implementation research have contributed significantly to our understanding of what implementation is and how and why it varies. Yet because they rely on relatively few observations of a complex and dynamic process, these studies have had little to say about the variety of implementation outcomes, the causal patterns associated with these outcomes, the frequency with which they occur, and the relative importance and unique effects of various factors on implementation performance. This article analyzes the "too few cases/too many variables" problem, suggests a research agenda for a third generation of implementation researchers, and outlines several research designs, including the combined use of small N comparative studies and large N statistical correlation studies, and the experiment and quasi-experiment, to minimize this cases/variables problem.
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‘Presidents are more likely to be punished for not making promises of administrative reform than for not implementing them.’ (March & Olsen 1983, 291) Policy-making and implementation have usually been treated as two distinct disciplines. In this article it is argued that implementation is affected by the prior policy-making process. Hypotheses regarding such impacts are derived from the policy-making theories resting on a) the rational decision-making model. b) the conflict-bargaining model, and c) the garbage-can model: Implementation failures are more likely 1) if goals are absent or vague and if alternatives and their consequences have not been considered; 2) if the policy-making process involves participants with conflicting interests and compromising; 3) if there are many and changing participants with limited attention and if symbols are important in the poky-making process. These hypotheses are tested and discussed in relation to a reorganization case, the decentralization of the disablement pension administration in Denmark in 1976.
Article
This study of enforcement of building codes addresses two issues in the growing body of research about regulatory enforcement. One issue is the definition of key concepts. We undertake empirical analyses to clarify distinctions between enforcement philosophy and strategy. We identify two enforcement philosophies that underlie agency actions and that are consistent with prior theorizing. A second issue is the distinction between descriptions of stylized enforcement strategies and what actually happens in practice. We find that code enforcement agencies vary in the degree to which they have embraced the two enforcement philosophies. This, in turn, leads them to pursue one of three different enforcement strategies that we identify. Two of these – what we term strict enforcement and creative enforcement– correspond to previous conceptualizations. The third strategy, which is also one of the most frequently used, is an accommodative enforcement strategy found where enforcement philosophies are highly unsystematic, are only moderately facilitative, and entail little overall agency effort.
Article
This article reports on our systematic effort to measure and model the impact of management on public programs. Using a parsimonious, nonlinear model of management built by Meier and O'Toole from the extensive case study literature, empirical papers have focused on managerial networking, managerial quality, managerial stability, and personnel stability; and how they relate to overall performance. There is now a substantial body of empirical work that demonstrates that management matters for performance and that this impact is often nonlinear in form. This article recaps the research agenda and sets out a series of unanswered questions for future research.
Article
This paper first reviews the implementation literature of the past fifteen years, with particular emphasis on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches. It also argues that the 4–6 year time-frame used in most implementation research misses many critical features of public policy-making. The paper then outlines a conceptual framework for examining policy change over a 10–20 year period which combines the best features of the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches with insights from other literatures.
Book
* The Study of Public Policy Processes Hank C. Jenkins-Smith and Paul A. Sabatier. The Advocacy Coalition Framework * Policy Change over a Decade or More P. A. Sabatier. * The Dynamics of Policy-Oriented Learning H. C. Jenkins-Smith and P. A. Sabatier. Qualitative Case Studies Of Policy Change And Learning * An Advocacy Coalition Approach to Change in Canadian Education Hanne B. Mawhinney. * Competing Advocacy Coalitions, Policy Evolution, and Airline Deregulation Anthony E. Brown and Joseph Stewart Jr. * California Water Politics: Explaining Policy Change in a Cognitively Polarized Subsystem John F. Munro. * Managing Technological Change in Federal Communications Policy: The Role of Industry Advisory Groups Richard P. Barke. Quantitative Analyses Of Policy Change * The Politics of Offshore Energy: Empirically Testing the Advocacy Coalition Framework H. C. Jenkins-Smith and Gilbert K. St. Clair. * From Vague Consensus to Clearly Differentiated Coalitions: Environmental Policy at Lake Tahoe, 19641985 P. A. Sabatier and Anne M. Brasher. Conclusion * The Advocacy Coalition Framework: Assessment, Revisions, and Implications for Scholars and Practitioners P. A. Sabatier and H. C. Jenkins-Smith. Methodological Appendix * Measuring Longitudinal Change in Elite Beliefs Using Content Analysis of Public Documents H. C. Jenkins-Smith and P. A. Sabatier. *
Article
Differences in performance across different locations of a human service program may be driven by client, managerial, organizational, policy, or environmental characteristics. While many of these factors are outside the control of local managers, other factors may be open to influence by local discretion and may have independent effects on performance. One issue facing local managers is how to divide job tasks among frontline staff, but little evidence is available regarding whether job design is related to performance. In this article, I examine the relationships between different casework task configurations and welfare-to-work office performance. Controlling for a number of client and office characteristics, I find that clients' average earnings are higher over a two-year period in offices that primarily use unified case management and in offices with a specialist who develops job opportunities. I find no effects on earnings in offices that use other kinds of specialists and no effects of unified case management or specialists on welfare benefit receipt in the two-year period. Overall, the findings suggest that local managerial decisions regarding job design help explain the variation in performance across offices and suggest a possible lever through which performance can be improved.
Article
Welfare sanctions are financial penalties applied to individuals who fail to comply with welfare program rules. Their widespread use reflects a turn toward disciplinary approaches to poverty management. In this article, we investigate how implicit racial biases and discrediting social markers interact to shape officials' decisions to impose sanctions. We present experimental evidence based on hypothetical vignettes that case managers are more likely to recommend sanctions for Latina and black clients - but not white clients - when discrediting markers are present. We triangulate these findings with analyses of state administrative data. Our results for Latinas are mixed, but we find consistent evidence that the probability of a sanction rises significantly when a discrediting marker (i.e., a prior sanction for noncompliance) is attached to a black rather than a white welfare client. Overall, our study clarifies how racial minorities, especially African Americans, are more likely to be punished for deviant behavior in the new world of disciplinary welfare provision.
Article
This study addresses enforcement styles of regulatory inspectors, based on an examination of the municipal enforcement of agro-environmental policies in Denmark. Our findings make three contributions to the regulatory literature. One contribution is to add empirical support for theorizing about inspectors enforcement styles as consisting of multiple components, rather than a single continuum. We show that inspectors enforcement styles comprise the degree of formalism and the degree of coercion that they exercise when carrying out inspections. A second contribution is in showing the relationship of different types of enforcement styles to the two underlying dimensions of the concept. A third contribution is an examination of the ways in which inspectors enforcement styles relate to their enforcement actions. The consistency of our findings with those of other studies suggests that the dimensions and types of inspectors enforcement styles that we observed in Denmark can be generalized to other settings.
Article
Policies are implemented in complex networks of organizations and target populations. Effective action often requires managers to deal with an array of actors to procure resources, build support, coproduce results, and overcome obstacles to implementation. Few large-n studies have examined the crucial role that networks and network management can play in the execution of public policy. This study begins to fill this gap by analyzing performance over a five-year period in more than 500 U.S. school districts using a nonlinear, interactive, contingent model of management previously developed by the authors. The core idea is that management matters in policy implementation, but its impact is often nonlinear. One way that public managers can make a difference is by leveraging resources and buffering constraints in the program context. This investigation finds empirical support for key elements of the network-management portion of the model. Implications for public management are sketched.
Article
This study of municipal enforcement of agro-environmental regulations in Denmark provides an empirical understanding of how enforcement affects compliance. A key contribution is sorting out the relative influence of inspectors' different styles of enforcement and choices made by enforcement agencies. The latter are shown to be more important in bringing about compliance than are inspectors' enforcement styles. Municipal agencies are shown to increase compliance through the use of third parties, more frequent inspection, and setting priorities for inspection of major items. The findings about enforcement styles of inspectors suggest it is necessary to get tough up to a point, but beyond that the threat of coercion can be counterproductive. These findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of overly legalistic enforcement styles, particularly for the Danish culture with its strong emphasis on cooperation and consultation in regulation. But the findings also advise us to be cautious about the use of cooperative styles of enforcement in that we find evidence for capture of the enforcement process by agricultural organizations. This leads to a more nuanced view of enforcement rather than the broad generalizations found in the literature concerning legalism and cooperation. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. <@:>
Article
This paper addresses the question: How does implementation influence the effectiveness of mandatory welfare-to-work programs? Data from three large-scale, multi-site random assignment experiments were pooled; quantitative measures of program implementation were constructed; and multilevel statistical modeling was used to examine the relationship between program implementation and effects on short-term client earnings. Individual-level data were analyzed for 69,399 sample members and group-level implementation data were analyzed for 59 local programs. Findings indicate that, other things being equal, earnings effects are increased by: an emphasis on quick client employment, an emphasis on personalized client attention, staff caseloads that do not get too large, and limited use of basic education. Findings also show that mandatory welfare-to-work programs can be effective for many types of people, and that focusing on clients who are especially job-ready (or not) does not have a consistent influence on a program's effectiveness. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management
Article
Bureaucrats perform most of the tasks of government, profoundly influencing the daily lives of Americans. But who, or what, controls what bureaucrats do? John Brehm and Scott Gates examine who influences whether federal, state, and local bureaucrats work, shirk, or sabotage policy. The authors combine deductive models and computer simulations of bureaucratic behavior with statistical analysis in order to assess the competing influences over how bureaucrats expend their efforts. Drawing upon surveys, observational studies, and administrative records of the performance of public employees in a variety of settings, Brehm and Gates demonstrate that the reasons bureaucrats work as hard as they do include the nature of the jobs they are recruited to perform and the influence of both their fellow employees and their clients in the public. In contrast to the conclusions of principal-agency models, the authors show that the reasons bureaucrats work so hard have little to do with the coercive capacities of supervisors. This book is aimed at students of bureaucracy and organizations and will be of interest to researchers in political science, economics, public policy, and sociology. "This book is breathtaking in its use of models and techniques. . . . The approach developed by Brehm and Gates allows us to re-open empirical questions that have lain dormant for years." --Bryan D. Jones, University of Washington John Brehm is Associate Professor of Political Science, Duke University. Scott Gates is Associate Professor of Political Science, Michigan State University.
Article
Evidence shows that real-effort investments can affect bilateral bargaining outcomes. This paper investigates whether similar investments can inhibit equilibrium convergence of experimental markets. In one treatment, sellers’ relative effort affects the allocation of production costs, but a random productivity shock ensures that the allocation is not necessarily equitable. In another treatment, sellers’ effort increases the buyers’ valuation of a good. We find that effort investments have a short-lived impact on trading behavior when sellers’ effort benefits buyers, but no effect when effort determines cost allocation. Efficiency rates are high and do not differ across treatments.
The Effects of Casework on Vulnerable Children and Youth. Paper presented at the XXI World Congress of the International Political Science Association in Santiago
  • Siddhartha Baviskar
  • Winter
  • C Søren
Baviskar, Siddhartha and Winter, Søren C. (2009) The Effects of Casework on Vulnerable Children and Youth. Paper presented at the XXI World Congress of the International Political Science Association in Santiago, 12-16 July.
The Relationship between Street-Level Bureaucrats' Attitudes and Their Coping Behavior toward Vulnerable Children and Youth. Paper presented at the meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association Conference in Chicago
  • S Baviskar
  • S C Winter
Baviskar, S. and Winter, S.C. (2011) The Relationship between Street-Level Bureaucrats' Attitudes and Their Coping Behavior toward Vulnerable Children and Youth. Paper presented at the meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association Conference in Chicago, 31 March to 3 April.