73 6.2 – FACTORS INFLUENCING POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

FACTORS INFLUENCING POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

Beyond the relationships and characteristics of the actors implementing policy, several factors contribute to the implementation process. Brewer and deLeon (1983) list six such factors: (1) source of the policy, (2) clarity of the policy, (3) support for the policy, (4) complexity of administration, (5) incentives for implementers, and (6) resource allocation.

The policy source refers to the party or parties responsible for creating a policy. In American politics, this means one of the branches of government. The remainder of this section will frame each factor in relation to the federal government, but the subnational counterparts can easily be substituted, for example, by considering a state’s governor or a town’s mayor when the president or executive branch is named. Presidents establish policy primarily through executive orders, proclamations, and memos. President Trump issued Executive Order 13793 on April 27, 2017 which called for accountability and whistleblower protection at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The policy created the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection and a special assistant to serve as the director of the office. Congress establishes policy through legislation, such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010. Lastly, the courts can establish policy by ruling on issues that affect the public at large, that is, issues pertaining to civil rights, voting rights, and education.

The policy source influences implementation due to the nature of policy administration, which is controlled by both the president and Congress. The president, through the bureaucracy, exercises great leverage over which policy is implemented and which policy, or portion of a policy, is ignored. Nevertheless, Congress possesses several constitutional tools, most notably appropriations and oversight. Taken to- gether, the bureaucracy can serve as a pawnin a policy battle between the president and Congress, which can hinder implementation. This is further complicated by the remaining five factors.

The next factor, clarity of the policy, concerns the precision of the policy intent. For example, the executive order mentioned above grants the Secretary of Veterans Affairs great discretion in how the policy is carried out, which will depend on their support for the policy. On the other hand, some policy directives are explicit in  their intent, such as the desegregation of public schools, but their implementation is inconsistently carried out due to ambiguities on how they should be executed. The Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, which ruled that segregation was unlawful but did not explicitly state how to integrate schools, is one example of this phenomena. In fact, the parties were ordered to reappear before the court the following year to discuss how public schools were to be integrated. The court ruled it should happen with “all deliberate speed.” In this case, the intent was clear, but implementation was ambiguous. Ambiguity like this results in implementers gaining significant authority in how the policy is carried out.

Third, support for the policy will dictate its success. The policy relies on support from not only the people but also the authorities overseeing policy execution and implementation, a support that is absolutely necessary. The president can issue an executive order, such as EO 13793 mentioned above, but Congress must appropriate the funds necessary to establish the new office and appoint the executive director. This condition is explicitly stated in Section 2 of the order: “The VA shall provide funding and administrative support for the Office, consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations” (emphasis added).

The fourth factor is the complexity of the administrative requirements for implementation. The implementation of the policy can deviate from the policy maker’s intention if the administration of the policy requires horizontal and/ or vertical coordination. Horizontal coordination is relevant when agencies or organizations operate in tandem to ensure a policy is executed as designed. Vertical coordination is necessary when a policy passes through one agency or organization to another before it is fully implemented. Complex policies often rely on both horizontal and vertical coordination, which can result in policy implementation that does not match the original intent, particularly when agencies are expected to share revenue to execute the policy. Revenue sharing results in agency competition for resources which, in turn, affects individual behavior, either positively, for example, in agencies that secure the necessary funding, or negatively, such as with agencies that feel shortchanged in the sharing process. Funding, as noted above, provides an incentive for successful implementation by managers and doers.

The fifth factor that affects policy implementation involves incentives for administrators. Incentives can be broken down into three modes (Brewer and deLeon, 1983): replicating the economic marketplace to achieve efficiency, organizational restructuring, and bureaucratic competition. The economic marketplace appears in the hiring of private contractors to carry out public service, such as trash pickup at the local level or private contractors assisting with national defense as with Lockheed Martin which manufactures weapons. However, agency officials and managers may oppose private contracting if the money appropriated for the contracting comes directly from their budget—unless, of course, their budget is increased to reflect the additional cost. Organizational restructuring may also have a negative impact on public policy implementation. Policy makers may propose restructuring to improve the chances of implementation, but doing so  may affect service delivery for an established policy. Therefore, agency employees may be reluctant to deliver on the new policy if they favor established policies. Furthermore, behavior studies indicate people are change averse and prefer the status quo. Lastly, bureaucratic competition provides greater opportunity for success. Theobald and Nicholson-Crotty (2005) provide an example from the 1960s. The policy issue at the time concerned drugs and addiction, and two agencies competed for resources to solve the problem: the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). The NIMH argued that addiction should be treated as a disease, whereas the FBN proposed a law enforcement solution. No matter which agency won the battle, policy makers would ultimately achieve their goal of addressing drug use and addiction.

Lastly, resource allocation greatly influences the implementation of public policy. The example used earlier ordered the new office within Veterans Affairs to be established within forty-five days. However, as noted above, successful implementation hinged on adequate appropriations, which rely on Congress to act if the president’s executive order is to be dutifully executed. Another example would be a policy change that affected clients at the street-level, but agencies were not given the resources to train employees or hire specialized staff to oversee the execution. This issue could result in poor implementation due to tokenism and massive resistance by the doers responsible for carrying out the policy.Taken together, the factors listed above highlight additional complexities in the policy process during implementation. Furthermore, these factors provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between policy makers, the source, managers, and doers. However, as the next section outlines, policy makers have at their disposal a number of “action levers” by which to influence implementation (Starling, 1988).