Policy Implementation

Literature Review on Policy Implementation

In the Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy, [1] Ann O'M. Bowman offers the following summary about the topic of Policy Implementation: Implementation makes a policy happen; it gives a policy life. Policy formulation and adoption are necessary precursors, but implementation adds sufficiency. That may seem easy enough but several decades of research on policy implementation have demonstrated the complexity of putting policies into action. Few policies are self-implementing; most require concerted, coordinated action by actors other than those who adopted the policy. Implementation may stall, it may be diverted or subverted by implementors with conflicting interests, it may attenuate due to insufficient resources, or it may encounter any number of pitfalls. A flawed implementation process makes the accomplishment of policy objectives all the more difficult. Since the early 1970s, researchers have sought answers to a fundamental question: What makes implementation successful?

Resources

Notes and References

1. Entry about Policy Implementation in the Encyclopedia of Public Administration and Public Policy (2015, Routledge, Oxford, United Kingdom)

See Also

Further Reading

• Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance (2018, Springer International Publishing, Germany)