Editors' introduction Maarten A. Hajer and Hendrik Wagenaar Part I. Policy Conflict and Deliberation in the Network Society: 1. Collaborative policy making: governance through dialogue Judith Innes and David Booher 2. Place, identity and local politics: analysing initiatives in deliberative governance Patsy Healey, Claudio de Magelhaes, Ali Madanipour and John Pendlebury 3. A frame in the fields. Policy making and the reinvention of politics Maarten Hajer Part II. Rethinking Policy Practice: 4. Democracy through policy discourse Douglas Torgerson 5. Understanding policy practices: action, dialectic and deliberation in policy analysis Hendrik Wagenaar and Scott Noam Cook 6. Reframing practice David Laws and Martin Rein Part III. Foundations of a Deliberative Policy Analysis: 7. Beyond empiricism: policy analysis as deliberative practice Frank Fischer 8. Accessing local knowledge: policy analysis and communities of meaning Dvora Yanow 9. Theoretical strategies of post-structuralist policy analysis: towards an analytics of government Herbert Gottweiss.

Deliberative policy analysis : understanding governance in the network society

A review of the policy implementation literature finds the field split into two major schools, top-down and bottom-up. Previous 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 offactors crucial to the implementation process are identified as varyingly dependent on a policy's ambiguity and conflict level. Four policy implementation 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 conflict-high ambiguity (symbolic implementation), and low conflicthigh ambiguity (experimental implementation).

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1181674.pdf

Synthesizing the Implementation Literature: The Ambiguity-Conflict Model of Policy Implementation

http://nurmandi.staff.umy.ac.id/files/2012/02/10.1.1.108.71611.pdf

An institutional perspective on performance measurement and management in the `new public sector'

The case for undertaking policy analysis has been made by a number of scholars and practitioners. However, there has been much less attention given to how to do policy analysis, what research designs, theories or methods best inform policy analysis. This paper begins by looking at the health policy environment, and some of the challenges to researching this highly complex phenomenon. It focuses on research in middle and low income countries, drawing on some of the frameworks and theories, methodologies and designs that can be used in health policy analysis, giving examples from recent studies. The implications of case studies and of temporality in research design are explored. Attention is drawn to the roles of the policy researcher and the importance of reflexivity and researcher positionality in the research process. The final section explores ways of advancing the field of health policy analysis with recommendations on theory, methodology and researcher reflexivity.

/pdf/doing-health-policy-analysis-methodological-and-conceptual-3eh3hfi1iq.pdf

Doing health policy analysis: methodological and conceptual reflections and challenges

Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Or Why It's Amazing That Federal Programs Work at All . By Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron B. Wildavsky. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Pp. xviii, 182. $7.50.)

Despite several decades of research on public policy implementation we know surprisingly little, not only about cumulative research results, but also about several other key aspects of this research field. This article tries to amend these deficiencies by presenting the results of a comprehensive literature survey. Its main purpose is to challenge, revise, and supplement some conventional wisdom about implementation research. A second motivation is to lay the foundation for and initiate a much needed synthesis of empirical research results. The main results are: The overall volume of publications on policy implementation has not stagnated or declined dramatically since the mid 1980s as is commonly asserted. On the contrary, it has continued to grow exponentially through the 1990s and into the twenty-first century. Even more surprising is that a large number of publications are located outside the core fields. Hence, the literature is substantially larger and more multidisciplinary than most commentators realize. Doctoral dissertations are the most ignored, but probably the richest, largest, and best source of empirical research results. Tracing the origin as well as the location of the disciplinary and geographical cradle of implementation studies must also be readjusted significantly. The ethnocentric bias of this research field toward the Western hemisphere has been, and still is, strong and some policy sectors are given much more attention than others. Although positive in many ways, the predominant multidisciplinary character of implementation research still poses some serious problems with respect to theory development. Thus, I discuss whether a resurgence of interest in policy implementation among policy scholars may already be occurring. Finally, I suggest that the time is long overdue for efforts to synthesize research results in a more rigorous scientific manner than has hitherto been done.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1541-0072.2005.00133.x

Facts and Myths about Research on Public Policy Implementation: Out-of-Fashion, Allegedly Dead, But Still Very Much Alive and Relevant

Implementation and ambiguity

A comprehensive literature review a few years ago found, contrary to a commonly held belief, research on public policy implementation to be still alive and have developed further well into the 21st century in quantitative terms. We pursue this line of inquiry by asking whether this conclusion also applies to progress in qualitative terms. All articles published in core journals in political science, public administration/management and public policy under the label implementation or implementing were used to investigate this research question. Key defining features of the plea for a more rigorous third generation research paradigm was used as benchmark to measure progress or lack thereof in the policy implementation literature over more than four decades of research. Our investigation basically supports conclusions from more intuitively based earlier state-of-the-art reviews: (1) policy implementation research has reached a relatively mature stage of development, (2) more progress has been achieved on met...

Implementing the third generation research paradigm in policy implementation research: An empirical assessment

This is a diachronic comparative case study of three successive efforts by Norwegian governments over several decades to move central agencies in Oslo, Norway, to other locations outside the capital region. The key research question is how to explain the unexpected success of the latest governmental relocation program of the 2000s, in view of two previous spectacularly dismal efforts. How was it possible to realize this highly contested policy program against apparently quite adverse odds? We use a modified extended version of the MS framework through three full policy cycles to demonstrate how a remarkably audacious policy entrepreneur in cabinet position employed manipulation strategies within an open policy window to fashion a legislative optimal policy program design by organizing adversely affected stakeholders out of the policy formulation process, thus ensuring its adoption and implementation.

From controversial policy idea to successful program implementation: the role of the policy entrepreneur, manipulation strategy, program design, institutions and open policy windows in relocating Norwegian central agencies

The study of policy implementation developed steadily and considerably in the 1970s and 1980s through two generations of research. Since then progress towards a more rigorous scientific “third generation research paradigm”, assumed to be crucial for further theoretical development, has been much slower and more uneven. Comparative studies figure prominently in this respect. On one hand they are strongly encouraged but on the other they are difficult to conduct according to best practice advice in the textbooks. Comparative implementation research is the theme of this special issue. In this Introduction the articles included are presented, focusing on how they deal with some of the issues posed by the norms of a rigorous “third generation” approach. Reasons for the state of affairs in implementation research are discussed. Some inherent dualities and tensions in contemporary comparative implementation research are identified as particular challenges.

Harald Sætren

Papers

Facts and Myths about Research on Public Policy Implementation: Out-of-Fashion, Allegedly Dead, But Still Very Much Alive and Relevant

Implementation and ambiguity

Implementing the third generation research paradigm in policy implementation research: An empirical assessment

From controversial policy idea to successful program implementation: the role of the policy entrepreneur, manipulation strategy, program design, institutions and open policy windows in relocating Norwegian central agencies

Comparative Implementation Research: Directions and Dualities