*This paper is a truncated and revised version of our monograph, "The Implementation of Regulatory Policy: A Framework of
Analysis" (Davis, Ca.: Institute of Governmental Affairs, 1979).
We would like to thank Nelson Rosenbaum, Mark Nadel, Paul Culhane,
Eugene Bardach, Erwin Hargrove, Judy Rosenener, Robert Johnston,
Dale Marshall, Lloyd Musolf, Richard Liroff, Daniel Mandelker,
Lettie Wenner, Helen Ingram, Karl Kurtz and Paul Berman for their
helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper.
538
Throughout this paper, we focus primarily on traditional regulatory policies in which governmental agencies seek to alter the behavior of private target groups. Nevertheless, we strongly suspect thatwith a few minor modificationsthe framework developed
applies also to the following types of policies:
1) Attempts to change the behavior of field-level bureaucrats
through legal directives. Examples would include implementation of special-education programs, the Miranda rule, and
the National Environmental Policy Act.
2) Attempts to change the behavior of local (and state) officials
through attaching conditions to the disbursement of funds.
Examples would include implementation of Title I of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as well
as the court orders and statutes involving school
desegregation.
3) Attempts to change the behavior of private actors through
attaching conditions to the disbursement of funds. An example would be the job creation program examined by Pressman
and Wildavsky.
RECENT EFFORTS AT CONCEPTUAL INTEGRATION. To date
there have been at least four major efforts to provide some conceptual integration to the analysis of policy implementation. In one of
the first attempts, Martin Rein and Francine Rabinovitz suggested
that the implementation process be examined as the working out of
three "imperatives:" 1) the respect for legal intent; 2) civil servants' concern for instrumental rationality; and 3) the general
expectation that concerted action requires consensus both within the
implementing agencies and in their external political system. ^ Paiil
Berman focuses on the latter two "imperatives" in his analysis of the
implementation stages of federal social programs. He emphasizes
the adjustments that programs go through as they wind their way
through federal bureaucracies resistant to change and local service
delivery organizations which are sensitive to their immediate political
environments and to the desires of "street-level" professionals ( e . g . ,
classroom teachers).^ Eugene Bardach provides a somewhat different approach by focusing on potential obstacles to the marshalling of
the multitude of program elements necessary for the realization of
statutory objectives. The unifying metaphor permeating his analysis
is that the implementation process should be conceived as a series
of games involving the efforts of numerous semiautonomous actors
to protect their interests and gain, access to program elements not
under their controlall within the face of considerable uncertainty
and the context of general expectations that something will be
attempted consistent with the legal mandate.^"^ Whereas Bardach and,
to a lesser extent, Rein and Rabinovitz view implementation from the
standpoint of the strategizing behavior of various actors, Donald Van
Meter and Carl Van Horn provide a systems model of the implementation process involving the following factors affecting program performance: 1) policy standards and resources (basically funds),
539
2) support for those policies in the political environment, 3) economic and social conditions, 4) characteristics of the implementing
agencies, 5) communication of policy standards and other decisions
within and among implementing agencies, 6) incentives to promote
compliance with policy decisions, and 7) the policy dispositions of
implementing officials.^-^
Collectively, these efforts provide a reasonable overview of
policy-making in terms of its complexity and the variety of factors
that can either assure or impede successful implementation. But we
feel that more is needed. In the first place, more of an effort is
needed in conceptualizing and empirically exploring the linkage
between individual behavior and the political, economic, and legal
context in which it occurs. Second, all of the existing frameworks
seriously underestimate the ability of a statute to "structure" the
implementation process. While most of them discuss the importance
of clear and consistent policy objectives, adequate financial resources , and, to a lesser extent, the incentives provided for compliance, they neglect the capacity of a statute to determine the number of veto /clearance points, the formal access of various actors to
the implementation process, and, to some extent, the probable policy
predispositions of implementation officials. Third, none of the available frameworks explicitly addresses what might be termed the
"tractability" or solvability of the problem(s) addressed by a public
policy. For example, why was it easier to achieve the objectives of
the 1966 Voting Rights Act when the implementation of other civil
rights laws and court decisions has been so problematic? Fourth,
the frameworks of Berman and of Van Meter and Van Hornthe
former explicitly, the latter implicitlyapply only to programs which
seek to distribute goods and services. This neglects the large number
of programs which seek explicitly to regulate the behavior of private
actors in, for example, consumer and environmental protection,
worker safety, and interstate commerce. Finally, the most comprehensive framework to datenamely, that of Van Meter and Van Horn
suffers from some of the traditional defects of abstract systems
models. Many of the factors in their "model," while useful in orienting one's thinking, are essentially amorphous categories rather
than variables that can be easily operationalized.^^ In addition,
their framework does not identify which variables are controlled by
various actors and is, therefore, unlikely to be of much use to policy
practitioners.
Despite the limitations of these efforts at conceptualization, each
has made important first steps to our understanding of policy implementation, b u r debt to them will be readily apparent throughout the
remainder of this paper. At this point, however, our purpose has
been to indicate the directions which "second-generation" frameworks
should move.
A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK OF THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS.
Implementation is the carrying out of a basic policy decision, usually
made in a statute (although also possible through important executive orders or court decisions). Ideally, that decision identifies the
problem(s) to be addressed, stipulates the objective(s) to be pursued,
and, in a variety of ways, "structures" the implementation process.
In the case of a statute regulating private economic behavior, the
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Moreover, many programs are predicated upon the availabiUty of technologies without which changes in target group behavior will not achieve the desired objectives. For example, reduction
in sulfur emissions from power plants is contingent upon finding
a reliable and relatively inexpensive technology for removing sulfur
from coal either before or after it is used in power generationwith
considerable dispute between utilities and the Environmental Protection Agency over whether such a technology is presently available.
Other social problems beset by serious technological difficulties
include pollution emissions from automobiles, the storage of nuclear
wastes, and agricultural pest control.
The absence of a valid causal theory and/or the requisite technology in turn poses a number of difficulties for the successful implementation of statutory objectives. First, any program poses costs to
taxpayers (in the form of program administration) and to target
groups. To the extent that these costs cannot be justified by measurable improvements in the problem being addressed, political support for the program will almost surely decline and thus statutory
objectives will be either ignored or modified. Second, disputes over
the availability of the requisite technology will produce strong pressures for delaying deadlines for achieving statutory objectives and/or
considerable uncertainty over the most effective means of encouraging
technological innovationas the very problematic implementation of
the "technology-forcing" provisions of the 1970 Federal Clean Air
Amendments amply demonstrates.
(2) Diversity of behavior being regulated. The more diverse the
behavior being regulated, the more difficult it becomes to frame clear
regulations and thus the less likely that statutory objectives will be
attained. For example, one of the major obstacles confronting the
implementation of the 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments
has been the extreme diversity in the type and seriousness of discharges from the nation's estimated 62,000 point sources. Such variation makes the writing of precise overall regulations essentially impossible, with the result that regulations for each industry and firm have
to be negotiated on an ad hoc basis with considerable discretion left
to field personnel.
(3) Percentage of population within a political jurisdiction whose
behavior needs to be changed. In general, the smaller and more
definable (isolatable) the target group whose behavior needs to be
changed, the more likely the mobilization of political support in favor
of the program and thus the more probable the achievement of statutory objectives. For example, the successful implementation of the
1965 Voting Rights Act derived in large part from the fact that it
applied to a fairly specific set of abuses among voting registrars in
only seven southern states. This facilitated the formation of a
strong constituency in support of the legislation. In contrast, civil
rights have been notably less successful when dealing with countrywide problems such as housing discrimination and de facto school
segregation.
(4) Extent of behavioral change required of target groups. The
amount of behavioral modification required to achieve statutory objectives is a function of the (absolute) number of people in the ultimate
543
(1) Validity of the causal theory underlying statute. Explicitly or implicitly, a statute implies an underl3ang causal theory:
Given a stipulated objective and the assignment of certain rights and
responsibilities to various implementing institutions, the target
groups will behave in the prescribed fashion and the objective will
be attained. Within this theory, however, there are two separate
components: "technical validity" and "implementation effectiveness."^-^ The former refers to the relationship between target
group behavior and the attainment of statutory objectivesin the
case of air pollution control, the relationship between pollutant emissions , on the one hand, and the protection of human health and property on the other.^5 The latter concerns the ability of implementing
institutions to produce the requisite behavioral changes in the target groups, preferably with a minimum of adverse side effects.
Both components must be valid if statutory objectives are to be
attained.
The remaining variables in this section all relate to the "implementation effectiveness" component. At this point we would simply
like to underline the point that a sound "technical" component must
not only be available but also must be incorporated into a statute if
its objectives are to be attained.
(2) Precision and clear ranking of statutory objectives. Statutory objectives which are precise and clearly ranked in importance
serve as an indispensable aid in program evaluation, as unambiguous
directives to implementing officials, and as a resource available to
supporters of those objectives.^6 with respect to the last, for example, implementing officials confronted with objections to their programs can sympathize with the aggrieved party but nevertheless
respond that they are only following the legislature's instructions.
Clear objectives can also serve as a resource to actors within and
external to the implementing institutions who perceive discrepancies
between agency outputs and those objectives (particularly if the
statute also provides them formal access to the implementation
process, e.g. via citizen suit provisions).
While the desirability of unambiguous policy directives within
a given statute is normally understood, it is also important that a
statute assigned for implementation to an already existing agency
clearly indicate the relative priority that the new directives are to
play in the totality of the agency's programs. If this is not done,
the new directives are likely to undergo considerable delay and be
accorded low priority as they struggle for incorporation into the
agency's operating procedures. In short, to the extent that a statute
provides precise and clearly ranked instructions to implementing
officials and other actorscontrolling for required departure from
the status quo antethe more likely that the policy outputs of the
implementing agencies and ultimately the behavior of target groups
will be consistent with those directives.
(3) Financial resources available to the implementing agency.
Money is obviously necessary to hire the staff and to conduct the technical analyses involved in the development of regulations, the administration of permit programs, and the monitoring of compliance. Moreover, we shall subsequently argue that there are tremendous pressures
545
assign authority to make final decisions within implementing institutions to those officials who are most likely to support statutory
objectives. Finally, when multi-membered commissions are involved,
the statute can stipulate the majority required for specific actions.
In the case of regulatory agencies which operate primarily through
the granting of permits or licenses, decision rules which make the
granting of a permit contingent upon substantial consensus, e.g. a
2/3 majority, are obviously conducive to stringent regulation.
(6) Assignment to implementing agencies/officials committed to
statutory objectives. No matter how well a statute structures the
formal decision process, the attainment of statutory objectives which
seek to significantly modify target group behavior is unlikely unless
officials in the implementing agencies are strongly committed to the
achievement of those objectives. Any new program requires implementors who are not merely neutral but sufficiently persistent to
develop new regulations and standard operating procedures, and to
enforce them in the face of resistance from target groups and from
public officials reluctant to make the mandated changes.
In principle, there are a number of mechanisms available to
statutory framers to reasonably assure that implementing officials
have the requisite commitment to statutory objectives. First, the
responsibility for implementation can be assigned to agencies whose
policy orientation is consistent with the statute and which will accord
the new program high priority. 20 This is most likely when a new
agency is created specifically to administer the statute, as the program will necessarily be its highest priority and the creation of new
positions opens the door to a vast infusion of statutory supporters.
Alternatively, implementation can be assigned to a prestigious
existing agency which perceives the new mandate to be compatible
with its traditional orientation and is looking for new programs.
Second, the statute can often stipulate that top implementing officials be selected from social sectors which generally support the
legislation's objectives. For example, several studies of state and
regional land use agencies have shown that local elected officials are
generally more likely to approve developments than appointees of
state officials. ^^ In fact, it is the generally limited practicability of
statutes to assign implementation to agency officials committed to its
objectives which probably lies behind many cases of suboptimal
accomplishment of statutory objectives.
(7) Extent to which opportunities for participation by actors
external to the implementing agencies are biased toward supporters
of statutory objectives. Just as a statute can bias the implementation process through design characteristics of implementing agencies, it can also affect the participation of two groups of actors
external to those institutions: a) the potential beneficiaries and
target groups of the program and b) the legislative, executive, and
judicial sovereigns of the agencies.
In most regulatory programs, for example, the target groups do
not have problems with legal standing nor do they generally lack the
financial incentives to pursue their case in court if displeased with
agency decisions. In contrast, the beneficiaries of most consumer
and environmental protection legislation individually do not have a
sufficiently direct and salient interest at stake to obtain legal standing
547
the legislative and executive sovereigns of the implementing agencies. Alternatively, implementing officials may respond directly
(i.e. without any intervening variables) to changes in environmental conditions, particularly if they perceive those changes to be
supportive of their programs or preferences.
(2) The amount and continuity of media attention to the problem
addressed by a statute. The mass media are important m the implementation process for at least two reasons. First, they are generally
a crucial intervening variable between changes in socio-economic
conditions and perceptions of those changes by the general public
and, to a lesser extent, political elites. This is particularly true
for events beyond the local political arena, where most individuals
have little direct experience.
Secondly, the tendency for most television stations and newspapers to play an issue to the hilt and then go on to something else
is a real obstacle to the constant infusion of political support from
the very diffuse beneficiaries of most environmental and consumer
protection programs. ^5 This tendency of the media to have a short
"issue-attention span" is, in turn, a function of many factorsone
of the most important of which is the tendency of most communications organizations to rely on general assignment reporters rather
than specialists on specific topics. This suggests that programs
which are monitored by specialist reporters will receive above normal
media attention over a sustained period of time andgiven media
support or at least neutralityare more likely to be effectively
implemented. 26
(3) Variations over time and jurisdiction in public support for
statutory objectives. The previous discussion has suggested that
interest among the general public in a statute or the problem it
addresses tends to be cyclical which, in turn, makes it difficult
for any program to receive sustained political support. Similarly,
variation among political jurisdictions in support for a particular
program is likely to result in pressures for ambiguous regulation
and considerable discretion to local officialsboth of which probably make behavioral change more difficult to achieve.
The general public can influence the implementation process in
at least three ways: 1) Public opinion (and its interaction with the
mass media) can strongly affect the political agenda, i . e . , the
issues to be discussed by legislatures. 2) There is substantial evidence that legislators are influenced by their general constituents
on issues of salience to those constitutents, particularly when
opinion within the district is relatively homogenous.27 3) Finally,
public opinion polls are often employed by administrators and sovereigns to support particular policy positions. For example, the
Environmental Protection Agency sponsored a survey in 1973-74 to
refute the conventional wisdom that the Arab oil embargo had substantially undermined public support for pollution control measures;
when the poll essentially confirmed the agency's position, it used
this information extensively in an effort to convince Congress not
to emasculate the 1970 Clean Air Amendments. 2^
Changes in the resources and attitudes of constituency
groups toward statutory objectives and the policy outputs of
550
implementing institutions. The basic dilemma confronting proponents of any regulatory program seeking a change in the behavior
of one or more target groups is that public support for their position
will almost invariable decline over time. Normally, such statutes are
the result of very heightened public concern with a general problem
such as environmental quality or consumer protection. Such concern
soon wanes as the public and the media turn to other issues and as
the costs of such programs on specific segments of the population
draw away previous supporters and intensify opposition. ^^ The
6^entialand very problematictask confronting proponents is to
translate the diffuse support which helped pass the initial legislation into viable organizations with sufficient membership, cohesion,
and expertise to be accepted as legitimate and necessary participants in important policy decisions by both implementing officials
and their legislative/executive sovereigns.
On the other hand, the opponents of the mandated change generally have the resources and incentives to intervene actively in the
implementation process. Their organizational resources and access
to expertise enable them to make an effective case before administrative agencies and, if displeased with their decisions, to initiate
appeals to the legislative sovereigns, to the courts, and to public
opinion. Because opponents can generally intervene more actively
over a longer period of time than proponents, it has long been noted
that most regulatory agencies eventually recognize that survival in
an unbalanced political environment necessitates some accommodation
with the interests of target groups and thus less departure from the
status quo than envisaged by the original statutory mandate. ^'^
Constituency groups interact with the other variables in our
framework in a number of ways. 31 First, their membership and financial resources are likely to vary with public support for their position
and with the amount of behavioral change mandated by statutory objectives. Second, constituency groups can intervene directly in the
decisions of the implementing agencies both through commenting on
proposed decisions and through supplementing the agency's resources.
Finally, such groups have the capacity to affect agency policy indirectly through publishing studies critical of the agency's performance, through public opinion campaigns, and through appeals to its
legislative and judicial sovereigns.
(5) Continued support for statutory objectives among sovereigns of implementing institutions via a) amount and direction of~
oversight and b) extent of new (i.e. after original statute) and
conflicting legal mandateFi The sovereigns of an implementing
agency are those institutions which control its legal and financial
resources. They will normally include the legislature (and, more
specifically, the relevant policy and fiscal committees); the chief
executive; the courts; and, in intergovernmental programs, hierarchically superior agencies.
One of the major difficulties in the implementation of intergovernmental programs is that implementing agencies are responsible to
different sovereigns who wish to pursue different policies. In such
situations, we would suggest that, when an intergovernmental subordinate is faced with conflicting directives from its intergovernmental
superiors and its coordinate sovereigns, it will ultimately lean toward
551
the directives of the sovereigns who will most affect its legal and
financial resources over the longest period of time. For example,
when a state agency is faced with conflicting directives from a federal agency and the state legislature, institutional survival requires
that it give its primary loyalty to the sovereign most likely to affect
its vital resourceswhich, in almost any conceivable case, will be
the state legislature. In relations between a local agency and its
state superiors, however, the situation is not nearly so predictable,
in large part because local governments generally have less constitutional autonomy vis-a-vis states than do the states vis-a-vis the
federal government.
These difficulties in intergovernmental programs aside, sovereigns can affect the policies pursued by implementing agencies
through both informal oversight and formal changes in the agency's
legal and financial resources.
Oversight refers to the continuous interaction between an
agency and its legislative (and executive) sovereigns in the form of
formal oversight hearings, consultation with staff and legislators on
the key committees, routine requests from legislators concerning constituent complaints, etc. On the one hand, there appear to be
rather strong reasons for legislative policy committees to become increasingly sympathetic to target groups over time, in part as a reflection of changes in the balance of interest group support, in part
because constituency casework appears to be weighted toward complaints . On the other hand, legislative sovereigns supportive of a
stringent regulatory program can play a crucial role in the successful implementation of such statutes if they have the resources and
the desire to do so. Here we come to Eugene Bardach's extremely
interesting concept of a "fixer," i.e. an important legislator or executive official who controls resources important to crucial actors and
who has the desire and the staff resources to closely monitor the
implementation process and to intervene on an almost continuous
basis.
On a more formal level, sovereigns have the authority to
alter and /or undermine the legal and financial resources of implementing agencies. There have, for example been statutes which have
been essentially emasculated by the courts or through the appropriations process. ^^ Legislatures also have the authority to substantially
revise and even revoke statutes; in fact, the first major effort to do
so marks the end of what we have termed the short-term implementation process. But the most frequent effects may well be of a more
indirect nature. As indicated previously, almost any statute is
affected by policies outside its specific domain. Changes in any of
these can strongly affect support for statutory objectives and/or the
number of veto points involved in statutory implementation. The role
of an agency and its legislative supporters is to be aware of these
ramifications and to make sure that they are explicitly addressed by
(subsequent) legislation. In short, the very interrelatedness of
policy areas in any complex society enormously increases the monitoring responsibility of the protectors of any particular statute and
thus the probability that the statute will gradually be undermined
through subsequent tangential legislation.
552
(6) Commitment and leadership skill of (supportive) implementing officials. We finally come to the variable most directly affecting the policy outputs of implementing agencies, namely, the
commitment of agency officials to the realization of statutory objectives. This comprises at least two components: First, the direction
and ranking of the statutory objectives in officials' preference orderings, and, second, their skill in realizing those preferences
i.e. their ability to go beyond what could reasonably be expected in
using the available resources. The importance of both attitudes and
skill will, of course, vary with the amount of discretion afforded
administrators.
The commitment of agency officials will partiallyand, in some
cases, largelybe a function of the capacity of the statute to
institutionalize a bias in the implementing agencies through its selection of institutions and top officials (see p. 547). It will also be
a function of professional norms, personal values, and support for
statutory objectives among interest groups and sovereigns in the
agencies' political environment. In general, the commitment of agency
officials to statutory objectivesand the consequent probability of
their successful implementationwill be highest in a new agency with
high visibility which was created after an intense political campaign.
After the initial period, however, the degree of commitment will
probably decline over time as the most committed people become
burned out and disillusioned with bureaucratic routine, to be replaced by officials much more interested in security than in taking
risks to attain policy goals. 33
But commitment to statutory objectives will contribute little to
their attainment unless accompanied by skill in using available resources to that end. Usually discussed under the rubric of "leadership," this comprises both political and managerial elements. The
former refers to the ability to develop good working relationships
with sovereigns in the agency's subsystems, to convince opponents
and target groups that they are being treated fairly, to mobilize
support among latent supportive constituencies, to adroitly present
the agency's case through the mass media, etc. Managerial skill
involves developing adequate controls so that the program is not
subject to charges of fiscal mismanagement, to maintaining high
morale among agency personnel, and to managing internal dissent in
such a way that outright opponents are shunted off to noncrucial
positions.
On the whole, however, leadership skill remains a rather elusive
concept. While everyone acknowledges its importance, its attributes
vary from situation to situation and thus it is extremely difficult
to predict whether specific individuals will go beyond what could
reasonably be expected in using the available resources in support
of statutory objectives.
Stages (or Dependent Variables) in the Implementation Process.
The discussion thus far has focused on the generic factors affecting
the implementation process as a whole. But that process must be
viewed in terms of its several stages: (1) the policy outputs (decisions) of the implementing agencies; (2) the compliance of target
groups with those decisions; (3) the actual impacts of agency decisions; (4) the perceived impacts of those decisions; and finally,
(5) the political system's evaluation of a statute in terms of major
553
1.0
Conformity of
policy outputs
with
statutory
objectives
Initial
start-up
problems
Gradual erosion of
constituency support
and consequent "nibbling
away" at statute-exacerbated by loss of
corrjnitted staff
.5
Death of "fixer"
0
5
10
15
20
Years after passage of initial statute
555
CD
he
U CO
CO O
1.0
Original
staff
leave
Continued strong public
and constituency suppor
cQ r ^
&
CO
.5
00
oV
=1
o '3
-M E
g o
E o
4-l
r-i
Ol
10
15
20
25
Confronted with a rather limited and well-defined set of problems, the proponents of regulation mobilize sufficient public and
legislative support to pass a strong statute which establishes a new
agency with virtually exclusive jurisdiction over the problem area.
The agency is staffed intially by officials strongly committed to its
objectives. Backed by strong public and constituency support,
they quickly establish policies consistent with those objectives.
Target group compliance is high, in part because non-compliance
is very visible and in part because agency staff are assisted by
supportive constituency groups. After a few years, the original
staff leave to go on to more exciting jobs, but the conformity of
policy outputs and target group compliance with statutory objectives remains high because of the limited nature of the problem,
the continued presence of strong public and constituency ^ o u p
support, no substantial decline in the local economy, and continued support from local legislators. Because target group compliance is directly related to the achievement of statutory objectives, the statute continues to have the desired impacts over
time.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom concerning the ineffectiveness of governmental regulation, this scenario is not
simply a fair3r tale but instead bears a rather close resemblance
to the experience of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and
Development Commission.
556
4) The leaders of the implementing agency possess substantial managerial and political skill and are committed to
statutory goals.
5) The program is actively supported by organized constituency groups and by a few key legislators (or a chief
executive) throughout the implementation process, with
the courts being neutral or supportive.
6) The relative priority of statutory objectives is not undermined over time by the emergence of conflicting public
policies or by changes in relevant socio-economic conditions
which undermine the statute's causal theory or political
support.
NOTES
^Jerome Murphy, State Education Agencies and Discretionary
Funds (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1974); Milbrey McLaughlin,
Evaluation and Reform; ESEA, Title I (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger,
1975); Richard Weatherly and Michael Lipsky, "Street Level Bureaucrats and Institutional Innovation: Implementing Special Education
Reform," Harvard Educational Review, 47 (May 1977), 171-197.
^Martha Derthick, New Towns In-Town (Washington, D.C.: Urban
Institute, 1972); Rufus Browning and Dale Marshall, "Implementation
of Model Cities and Revenue Sharing in Ten Bay Area Cities: Design
and First Findings," in Public Policy Making in a Federal System,
ed. by Charles Jones and Robert Thomas, Vol. Ill of Sage Yearbook in Politics and Piiblic Policy (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1976) ,
191-216.
Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Carl Van Horn,
"Implementing CETA: The Federal Role," Policy Analysis, 4
(Spring 1978), 159-183.
Harrel Rodgers and Charles Bullock, Coercion to Compliance
(Lexington: Lexington Books, 1976); Gary Orfield, The Reconstruction of Southern Education: The Schools and the 1964 Civil
Rights Act (N.Y.: Wiley, 1969).
^Charles Jones, Clean Air (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University
Press, 1975); Bruce Ackerman et al.. The Uncertain Search for
Environmental Quality (N.Y.: Free Press, 1974); Harvey Lieber,
Federalism and Clean Waters (Lexington: Heath, 1974); Richard
Liroff, A National Policy for the Environment: NEPA and Its Aftermath (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976).
Robert Alford, Health Care Politics (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1975).
'Erwin Hargrove, The Missing Link: The Study of the Implementation of Social Policy (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, 1975);
Harold Luft, "Benefit Cost Analysis and Pxiblic Policy Implementation," Pxjblic Policy, 24 (Fall 1976), 437-462; Martin Rein and
Francine Rabinovitz, Implementation: A Theoretical Perspective,
Working Paper No. 43 (Cambridge: Joint Center for Urban Studies,
March 1977); Eugene Bardach, The Implementation Game (Cambridge:
557
MIT Press, 1977); Donald Van Meter and Carl Van Horn, "The
Policy Implementation Process: A Conceptual Framework," Administration and Society, 6 (Feb. 1975), 445-488; Paul Berman, "The
Study of Macro- and Micro-Implementation," Public Policy, 26
(Spring 1978) , 157-184; Lawrence Baxam, "Implementation of Judicial
Decisions," American Politics Quarterly, 4 (January 1976), 86-114;
Giandomenico Majone and Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation as Evolution (N.Y.: Russell Sage Discussion Papers, 1977); Walter Williams
and Richard Elmore, ed., Social Program Implementation (N.Y.:
Academic Press, 1976), Chapter 2.
and Rabinovitz, Implementation, p. 39.
^Berman, "Macro- and Micro-Implementation," pp. 157-184.
l^Bardach, The Implementation Game, Chaps. 3-6, especially
pp. 51-57.
Meter and Van Horn, "The Policy Implementation Process."
for example, "political environment." While the
amount of support for policy objectives among various actors in
the agency's political environment undoubtedly influences agency
decisions, one needs to distinguish support among the agency's sovereigns (who control its financial and legal resources) from that
among organized interest groups, peer agencies, and the general
public because each has different resources and pursues different
strategies for influencing agency decisions.
"inherent" we mean inherent in the nature of the problem
itself, given technical and practical constraints that cannot be
removed through hiiman effort (at least not in the short-term) .
Hence our focus on the availability of a valid technical theory,
variation in target group behavior, etc. We do not include the
political resources of target groups, as these are discussed later
under "political resources of constituency groups." For an excellent discussion of intractable problems, see Richard Nelson,
"intellectualizing about the Moon-Ghetto Metaphor," Policy Sciences,
5 (Dec. 1974), 376-377.
terms are taken from Berman, " Macro- and MicroImplementation," p. 163; see also Pressman and Wildavsky,
Implementation, preface.
^^In their analysis of the implementation of the Public
Works and Economic Development Act in Oakland, for example. Pressman and Wildavsky argue persuasively that the underlying technical
theory that minority employment can be improved through s\ibsidizing
capital was simply invalidor certainly very inefficientin a
generally healthy economy such as Oakland's. A far more valid
strategy would have been a direct labor subsidy to businesses
which hired minority workers (Pressman and Wildavsky, Implementation, pp. 149-159).
would like to suggest that the clarity and consistency
of statutory objectives be conceptualized along the following
ordinal scale:
i) Ambiguous objectives. These include both meaningless
injunctions to regulate "in the public interest" and mandates to balance potentially conflicting objectives, e.g.
air quality and industrial employment, without
establishing priorities among them.
558
559
LEGAL STRUCTURING
OF IMPLEMENTATION
THE INFLUENCE OF LEGISLATURES AND APPELLATE COURTS
OVER THE POLICY IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS
Lawrence Baum
The Ohio State University