Policy Implementation

• Policymaking does not end with the passage of a law by the

Parliament and its signing by the King.

• Rather, it shifts from the Parliament to the bureaucracy-to the

departments, agencies, and commissions of the executive branch

• The bureaucracy is not constitutionally empowered to decide policy

questions, but it does so, nonetheless, as it performs its task of
implementation.
• As society has grown in size and complexity, the bureaucracy has increased its
role in the policymaking process.

• The standard explanation for the growth of bureaucratic power is that Prime
Minister and the cabinet do not have the time, energy, or technical expertise to
look after the details of environmental protection or occupational safety or
equal employment opportunity or transportation safety or hundreds of other
aspects of governance in a modern society.

• Prime Minister’s Office, 10 ministries, departments, commissions, government

corporations

• Bureaucratic agencies receive only broad and general policy directions in the
laws of Parliament. They must decide themselves on important details of policy.
• This means that much of the actual policymaking process takes place within
the National Environmental Commission, MOLHR, public health department,
RSTA, MOWHS, etc.

• Parliament and the PM can take political credit for laws promising "safe and
effective" drugs, "equal opportunity”, employment, the elimination of "unfair"
labor practices, and other equally lofty, yet vague and ambiguous, goals.

• It then becomes the responsibility of bureaucratic agencies, for example, the

BNCA, BAFRA, MOLHR, Health ministry to give practical meaning to these
symbolic measures.

• Indeed, if the policies developed by these agencies turn out to be unpopular,

Parliament and the PM can blame the bureaucrats.
Regulation and Policymaking:
• Policy implementation often requires the development of formal rules and
regulations by bureaucracies.

• Rule making by the bureaucracy is central to the policymaking process. Formal

rules that appear in the BCSR have the force of law.

• Bureaucratic agencies may levy fines and penalties for violations of these
regulations, and these fines and penalties are enforceable in the courts.

• The courts usually do not overturn bureaucratic regulations unless they exceed
the authority granted to the agency by law or unless the agency has not
followed the proper procedure in adopting them.
Adjudication and Policymaking:

• Policy implementation by bureaucracies often involves adjudication of

individual cases.

• In adjudication, bureaucrats must decide whether a person, firm, corporation,

and so on has complied with laws and regulations and, if not, what penalties
or corrective actions are to be applied.

• They have established procedures for investigation, notification, hearing,

decision, and appeal; individuals and firms involved in these proceedings often
hire lawyers specializing in the field of regulation.
• Administrative hearings are somewhat less formal than a court trial, and the
"judges" are employees of the agency itself.

• Losers may appeal to the law courts, but the history of agency successes in
the courts discourages many appeals.

• The record of agency decisions in individual cases is a form of public policy.

Just as previous court decisions reflect judicial policy, previous administrative
decisions reflect bureaucratic policy.

• ACC, RAA
Bureaucratic Discretion and Policymaking
• It is true that much of the work of bureaucrats is administrative routine-
collecting and filing income tax returns, delivering the mail, etc.

• But bureaucrats almost always have some discretion in performing even

routine tasks.

• Often individual cases do not exactly fit established rules; often more than one
rule might be applied to the same case, resulting in different outcomes.

• But even in more routine tasks, from processing audit clearance, business
license, to forwarding mail, individual bureaucrats can be friendly and helpful,
or hostile and obstructive.
Policy Bias of Bureaucrats
• Generally bureaucrats believe strongly in the value of their programs and the
importance of their tasks.

• But in addition to their professional motives, bureaucrats, like everyone else, seek
higher pay, greater job security, and added power and prestige for themselves.

• Professional and personal motives converge to inspire bureaucrats to expand the

powers, functions, and budgets of their agencies.

• "Budget maximization"-expanding the agency's budget as much as possible is a driving

force in government bureaucracies

• The bureaucratic bias toward new functions and added authority and increases in
personnel and budgets helps explain the growth of government over time.
 Policy Evaluation
• Even if programs and policies are well organized, efficiently operated, widely
utilized, adequately financed, and generally supported, we may still want to ask,

• Do they work? Do these programs have any beneficial effects on society?

• Are the effects immediate or long range? Positive or negative?

• What is the relationship between the costs of the program and the benefits to
society?

• Could we be doing something else with more benefit to society with the money
Policy evaluation is learning about the consequences of public policy.

Definitions:
• "Policy evaluation is the assessment of the overall effectiveness of a national
program in meeting its objectives, or assessment of the relative effectiveness of
two or more programs in meeting common objectives."

• "Policy evaluation research is the objective, systematic, empirical examination of

the effects ongoing policies and public programs have on their targets in terms of
the goals they are meant to achieve.“

• We will not limit our notion of policy evaluation to the achievement of goals.
Instead, we will concern ourselves with all of the consequences of public policy,
that is, with "policy impact."
POLICY EVALUATION: ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC POLICY

• Policy implementation produces impacts. Policy impact refers to what actually

happens when the policy is implemented.

• Policy impact is a major component of the evaluation of public policy.

• Policy evaluation focuses principally on the impact of policy, because it is

largely from the performance and consequences of policy that we assess its
success or failure.
The impact of a policy is all its effects on real world conditions, including:

• Impact on the target situation or group

• Impact on situations or groups other than the target (spillover effects)
• Impact on future as well as immediate conditions
• Direct costs, in terms of resources devoted to the program
• Indirect costs, including loss of opportunities to do other things

Ideally, all the benefits and costs, both immediate and future, should be
measured.
Evaluation attempts:
• To assess the outcomes of policies (the effects on society)
• To compare the outcomes with the policies’ intended goals
• To balance the actual benefits of a policy with its cost.

• It asks whether the goals have or have not been met, with what costs, and
with what unintended consequences.
• Policy evaluation involves collecting and analyzing information about the
efficiency and effectiveness of policies.

• The purpose is to determine whether goals of policy have been achieved and
to improve policy performance.

Specifically, policy evaluation is used to:

1. Determine which goals are being met and to what degree (including
unintended consequences)
2. Identify reasons for success and failure
3. Allocate (or reallocate) resources
4. Make changes to improve policies or decide to end policies that are not
working.
• The evaluation determines whether the program should continue or end or
what improvements should be made in it.

• Public administrators are responsible for performance management, the

ongoing review of accomplishments and problems.

• Evaluation goes beyond performance management reviews and involves a

systematic process of data collection and analysis of a program’s goal
achievement over a particular period of time.
• Evaluations may be process (often called formative) or outcome (often
called summative) evaluations.

• Process evaluation assesses the activities and structures of the policy

implementation.

• For example, whether a community policing program follows procedure,

how many police are assigned to the program, or what kind of patrol is
practiced.
• Outcome evaluations focus on the impact of the policy or program.

• Outcome evaluation of a community policing policy would examine

whether there was an impact on crime in the neighborhood, such as
reduction in burglaries, hooliganism, etc.

• Both forms of evaluation are necessary for a complete assessment of

the policy
Measuring Impact, Not Output

• "Policy impact" is not the same as "policy output.“

• In assessing policy impact, we cannot be content simply to measure

government activity.

• Many government agencies produce reams of statistics measuring outputs-

such as welfare benefits paid, criminal arrests and prosecutions, and school
enrollments.
• This tells us little about poverty, crime, health, or educational
achievement.

• In describing public policy, or even in explaining its determinants,

measures of policy output are important.

• In assessing policy impact, we must identify changes in society that

are associated with measures of government activity.
Target Groups
• The target group is that part of the population for whom the program is
intended-such as the poor, unemployed, children, etc.

Non-target Groups
• All programs and policies have differential effects on various segments of the
population.
• Identifying important non-target groups for a policy is a difficult process

Short-Term and Long-Term Effects

• When will the benefits or the costs be felt? Is the program designed for short
term emergencies? Or is it a long-term, developmental effort?
THE SYMBOLIC IMPACT OF POLICY

• The impact of a policy may also include its symbolic effects.

• Its symbolic impact deals with the perceptions that individuals have of
government action and their attitudes toward it.

• Even if government policies do not succeed in eliminating poverty, preventing

crime, and so on, the failure of government to try to do these things would be
even worse.
• Individuals, groups, and whole societies frequently judge public policy
in terms of its good intentions rather than tangible accomplishments.
Sometimes very popular programs have little positive tangible impact.

• Systematic policy analysis concentrates on what governments do, why

they do it, and what difference it makes. It devotes less attention to
what governments say.
PROGRAM EVALUATION: WHAT GOVERNMENTS USUALLY DO
• Most government agencies make some effort to review the effectiveness of their
own programs. These reviews usually take one of the following forms:

Hearings and Reports

• Government administrators are asked by chief executives or legislators to give
testimony (formally or informally) on the accomplishments of their own programs.

• Frequently, written annual reports are provided by program administrators.

• But testimonials and reports of administrators are not very objective means of
program evaluation.

• They frequently magnify the benefits and minimize the costs of the program.
Site Visits
• Occasionally teams of high-ranking administrators, expert consultants,
legislators, or some combination of these people will decide to visit agencies or
conduct inspections in the field.

These teams can pick up impressionistic data about:

• how programs are being run,
• whether they are following specific guidelines,
• whether they have competent staffs,
• and sometimes whether or not the clients (target groups) are pleased with the
services.
Program Measures
The data developed by government agencies themselves generally cover policy
output measures:
• the number of recipients in various welfare programs,
• the number of persons in workforce training programs,
• the tons of garbage collected, or the number of pupils enrolled.

But these program measures rarely indicate what impact these numbers have on
society:
• the conditions of life confronting the poor,
• the success of workforce trainees in finding and holding skilled jobs,
• the health of the nation's poor,
• the cleanliness of cities,
• the ability of graduates to function in society.
Comparison with Professional Standards

• In some areas of government activity, professional associations have

developed standards of excellence.

• These standards are usually expressed as a desirable level of output: for

example, the number of pupils per teacher, the number of hospital beds per
one thousand people. Actual government outputs can then be compared
with ideal outputs.
• Although such an exercise can be helpful, it still focuses on
government outputs and not on the impact of government activities
on the conditions of target or non-target groups.

• Moreover, the standards themselves are usually developed by

professionals who are really guessing at what ideal levels of benefits
and services should be.

• There is rarely any hard evidence that ideal levels of government

output have any significant impact on society.
Evaluation of Citizens' Complaints

• Another common approach to program evaluation is the analysis of citizens'

complaints.

• Not all citizens voluntarily submit complaints or remarks about governmental

programs.

• Critics of government programs are self-selected, and they are rarely

representative of the general public or even of the target groups of
government programs.
• There is no way to judge whether the complaints of a vocal few are
shared by the many more who have not spoken up.

• Occasionally, administrators develop questionnaires for participants in

their program to learn what their complaints may be and whether
they are satisfied or not.

• But these questionnaires really test public opinion toward the

program and not its real impact on the lives of participants.
Surveys of Public Opinion

• Occasionally governments undertake to survey citizens about their

satisfaction or dissatisfaction with various programs and services.

• This is more common at the local level of government.

Policy Evaluation: What governments can do?