What Ever Happened to Policy Implementation? An Alternative Approach

Abstract

One of the earliest topics addressed by policy analysts was public policy implementation. Starting with the seminal work of Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, policy implementation has burgeoned from a largely overlooked interest to perhaps the policy analysis growth industry over the last thirty years. However, even though an enormous set of books and articles deals with implementation, it has been described by some as leading to an intellectual dead end because of its problematic relationship to a generalized theory of policy implementation. In this article we examine three generations of policy implementation theory research, emphasizing its basic reliance on a command (i.e., top-down) orientation, and we argue that an alternative framework, one stressing a more democratic (i.e., bottom-up) approach, would be a more fruitful line of inquiry.