When you discuss policy directives in development circles words like project management, stakeholders, target groups/beneficiaries, participatory monitoring and evaluation and program design, baselines, and adaptability studies, will be thrown around. Often times, policies are adapted to be used in a different country than it was initially designed for, and that adaptation can include many interested parties take part including ministries, large international NGOs, finance organizations, influential worker and education organizations, and other stakeholders, or not. This is not to say that the decision about which policies will be pursued and programs implemented is participatory, nor is it always unilateral, but that there are diverse influences in such policy design, even in adaptation, who should not be discounted. The diffusive process of policies in the implementation stage without proper adaptation can be detrimental to the newly identified target group.
The readings this week offered a glimpse of the implementation stage of policy studies. We are offered evaluations of the successes or failures of policies pursued based on the design of the policy (whether it had clarity and was consistent with previous policies); the actors engaged in implementation (state-level bureaucrats, stakeholders and beneficiaries); and the rules of procedures surrounding the implementation (level of decentralization, empowerment of beneficiaries and stakeholders, number of decision-makers). Howlett and Ramesh provide us with this generalization and a brief history of the study of the implementation stage where Osborne argues that through decentralization less bureaucratic and a more entrepreneurial spirit in government may be more beneficial.
Regardling the three generations of implementation studies, Howlett and Ramesh, claim the first generation is defined by Pressman and Wildavsky’s argument that implementation, as a stage heuristic, matters because it can undermine and interpret the goals and priorities of the policies. Looking to Pressman and Wildavsky’s article we see through the ERA program which was rolled-out in Oakland in the 1960s they offered examples of ambiguity of goals, unshared sense of urgency, and lack of cooperative measures between stakeholders, that were part of the ills of the program that led to it’s inability to produce the outcomes it had set out to produce. In generation two of implementation studies that top down approaches are contrasted by more communal approaches to development and in the 3rd generation more testable theories are provided.
In hindsight, it seems common sense to argue that through empowerment and ownership, both centerpieces in the bottom up approaches to implementation, programs that are developed can be sustained in the long-term, which is one of Osborne’s claims. Through a ten-point plan, Osborne argues that governments can be less bureaucratic, centralized and discretionary and become more empowering, enterprising and thus entrepreneurial. The goal is to create “…institutions that empower citizens rather than simply serving them” (Osborne, 15).
This kind of empowerment of beneficiaries to promote development is seen as a bottom up approach to development practices (Howlett and Ramesh). It is a characteristic of the decentralization movement of public schools in metropolitan cities in the United States, including New York. Through decentralization the school board promoted an entrepreneurial culture that afforded schools more control over the everyday task of running the school and less bureaucratic red tape. At the same time, they were held to higher standards of performance and expected to provide more services with the same resources. Schools that had the capacity to take advantage of this new culture succeeded and those who did not were not provided many other resources, and were closed.
Decentralization included increasing school choice by allowing students to vote with their feet through exit, those who could. It is argued that the students who could afford to leave their neighborhood schools did, and this caused a decrease in social capital and creaming negatively affecting the poorest school districts. Through this perspective decentralization of public schools is a top down approach to providing accountability to schools. Whether this policy was a success or failure depends on whom one speaks to. However, it is a good example of how the implementation of a policy might not have considered the stakeholders and beneficiaries, or even teachers as street-level bureaucrats, in the design and implementation stages.
Lastly, although policies generally diffuse between cities, states and nation-states, it is possible that ministries or boards of education would apply a policy that worked in another area. However, without properly adapting it for the newly identified beneficiary/target group and their characteristics (student demographics, testing scores, parental education rates, etc.) this could cause more harm than good.
Kelsey
References
Howlett and Ramesh, Chapter 7: “Policy Implementation.”
Osbourne, David and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, Introduction and Chapter 11, Addison-Welsey, 1992.
Pressman J. and Wildavsky A. ( 1973/1984) Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Or, Why It’s Amazing that Federal Programs Work at All, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation of Ruined Hopes. Berkeley: University of California Press.
The readings this week offered a glimpse of the implementation stage of policy studies. We are offered evaluations of the successes or failures of policies pursued based on the design of the policy (whether it had clarity and was consistent with previous policies); the actors engaged in implementation (state-level bureaucrats, stakeholders and beneficiaries); and the rules of procedures surrounding the implementation (level of decentralization, empowerment of beneficiaries and stakeholders, number of decision-makers). Howlett and Ramesh provide us with this generalization and a brief history of the study of the implementation stage where Osborne argues that through decentralization less bureaucratic and a more entrepreneurial spirit in government may be more beneficial.
Regardling the three generations of implementation studies, Howlett and Ramesh, claim the first generation is defined by Pressman and Wildavsky’s argument that implementation, as a stage heuristic, matters because it can undermine and interpret the goals and priorities of the policies. Looking to Pressman and Wildavsky’s article we see through the ERA program which was rolled-out in Oakland in the 1960s they offered examples of ambiguity of goals, unshared sense of urgency, and lack of cooperative measures between stakeholders, that were part of the ills of the program that led to it’s inability to produce the outcomes it had set out to produce. In generation two of implementation studies that top down approaches are contrasted by more communal approaches to development and in the 3rd generation more testable theories are provided.
In hindsight, it seems common sense to argue that through empowerment and ownership, both centerpieces in the bottom up approaches to implementation, programs that are developed can be sustained in the long-term, which is one of Osborne’s claims. Through a ten-point plan, Osborne argues that governments can be less bureaucratic, centralized and discretionary and become more empowering, enterprising and thus entrepreneurial. The goal is to create “…institutions that empower citizens rather than simply serving them” (Osborne, 15).
This kind of empowerment of beneficiaries to promote development is seen as a bottom up approach to development practices (Howlett and Ramesh). It is a characteristic of the decentralization movement of public schools in metropolitan cities in the United States, including New York. Through decentralization the school board promoted an entrepreneurial culture that afforded schools more control over the everyday task of running the school and less bureaucratic red tape. At the same time, they were held to higher standards of performance and expected to provide more services with the same resources. Schools that had the capacity to take advantage of this new culture succeeded and those who did not were not provided many other resources, and were closed.
Decentralization included increasing school choice by allowing students to vote with their feet through exit, those who could. It is argued that the students who could afford to leave their neighborhood schools did, and this caused a decrease in social capital and creaming negatively affecting the poorest school districts. Through this perspective decentralization of public schools is a top down approach to providing accountability to schools. Whether this policy was a success or failure depends on whom one speaks to. However, it is a good example of how the implementation of a policy might not have considered the stakeholders and beneficiaries, or even teachers as street-level bureaucrats, in the design and implementation stages.
Lastly, although policies generally diffuse between cities, states and nation-states, it is possible that ministries or boards of education would apply a policy that worked in another area. However, without properly adapting it for the newly identified beneficiary/target group and their characteristics (student demographics, testing scores, parental education rates, etc.) this could cause more harm than good.
Kelsey
References
Howlett and Ramesh, Chapter 7: “Policy Implementation.”
Osbourne, David and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, Introduction and Chapter 11, Addison-Welsey, 1992.
Pressman J. and Wildavsky A. ( 1973/1984) Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Or, Why It’s Amazing that Federal Programs Work at All, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation of Ruined Hopes. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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