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PublicAdministrationIssues:PressmanandWildavsky:POLICYIMPLEMENTATION

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PressmanandWildavsky:POLICYIMPLEMENTATION
Presented by J. B. Nangpuhan II (MPA student) for the class of Dr. J. K. Seo,
Professor of Public Administration at Chonnam National University, South
Koreaunder public policy, presented fall semester-2011.
INTRODUCTION
In the 1970s, some scholars of public policy like Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron
B. Wildavsky emerged. Their pioneering study on IMPLEMENTATION of
policies became one of the major footprints in studying public policy.
Pressman and Wildavsky based most of their theories on their study about
Economic Development Agency (EDA) projects in Oakland-California funded
by the U.S. federal government in 1965.
Pressman and Wildavsky defined implementation as to carry out,
accomplish, fulfill, produce, complete. This definition embodies the role of
public servants in the government bureaucracy to give efficient and equitable
service to the people.
In this report, the theories of Pressman and Wildavsky on policy
implementation are very important. Since they are considered the pioneers to
the emerging field of implementation, their concepts should be given utmost
consideration. The suggestions of Pressman and Wildavsky will help develop
efficient decision makers and policy makers. The most vital thing in this report
is to remember that implementation must NOT be excluded during the process
of making policies.
FAILED EDA PROJECT FOR OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, USA (1965)
The main objective of the EDA project was to help stimulate the economy of
devastated Oakland by creating public work projects that would create jobs
for the unemployed African-American people. The EDA had four major
projects in Oakland: an airport hanger ($10,650,000), a marine terminal
($10,125,000), a port industrial park ($2,100,000), and an access road to the
coliseum ($414,000).[1] However, other projects were added later during the
planning and implementation process. Eugene C. Foley, assistant secretary of
commerce, spearheaded the EDA-Oakland project. In Foleys perspective,
similar projects had been successful in rural areas and he wanted the same
success for the Oakland project.
Pressman and Wildavsky found out that everything looked positive during the
early years of the project. The policy was formulated, all participants were
agreed on the overall goals, the specific public projects undertaken, and the
employment plan was set in place. Financial allocations for these projects were
also arranged. Implementation of the project was only a matter of technical
details.
However, the project started to fail when EDA began to experience delays
during the implementation process. Deals that had been made with outside
companies were being compromised by new cost estimates. EDA was
beginning to find out the difference between working in a rural area versus an
urban one. As the delays began to pile up, there were also management
changes. Eugene Foley (the head of the project) resigned in 1966. Along with
the changed of management was a deteriorating enthusiasm to continue the
project. Most of the funding was exhausted to partner agencies. But the goal
of providing jobs to African-Americans was compromised because only few
jobs were actually offered. Eventually, the project was declared a complete
failure in the 1970s.

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THE KEY FINDINGS OF PRESSMAN AND WILDAVSKY BASED ON THE EDA

PROJECT
1.Multiple Goals and Decision Paths
Implementation of the EDA policy would be difficult from the beginning.
Pressman and Wildavsky noted that while there was one goal, to reduce
unemployment, the solution actually involved the implementation of two
separate decision paths: a) financing the construction of the public works
project, and b) developing a hiring plan to ensure firms would actually involve

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PublicAdministrationIssues:PressmanandWildavsky:POLICYIMPLEMENTATION
the targeted workers.
Achieving the overall policy goal, then, required the completion of both
decision paths. Unfortunately, increasing the number of decision paths
increases the number of decision makers. Decision makers in one path may
not necessarily care about the outcome of the other path.
For example, officials involved in developing the employment and training
plans for the EDA projects did not place high priority on the timely completion
of the public works; they were only concerned that employment plans comply
with the appropriate regulations.
2.Correlating the Number of Decisions to Program Success
In the analysis of Pressman and Wildavsky for the EDA project, they assumed
that each decision point[2] had a high probability of being approved. However,
adding more decisions would lead to failure. That is, as the number of
decisions seeking approval for a program to be implemented increases, the
chance for overall program success dramatically decreases.
3.Intensity of Participant
Pressman and Wildavsky also found out that disagreements to come up with a
decision consumed much time and resources for renegotiation by participants
of each agency. The result of such bargaining leads to delay in implementing
the policy.
The table below illustrates the assumption of Pressman and Wildavsky that
the use of resources is a direct function of intensity of preference.
Table 1. Intensity of participants to a certain decision
Direction
of
Intensity of Participant
Preference
HIGH
LOW
POSITIVE

Minimal
delay,
bargaining

NEGATIVE

Maximal
bargaining
essentials

no

Minor
delay,
bargaining

delay, Moderate
over bargaining
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Pressman and Wildavsky:
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

no
delay,
over

4.Bargaining
The implementation of the EDA project took several delays. One reason is due
to disagreements on the best decisions on which to implement. Each
participant wanted to implement the most appropriate program that is
favorable to their own agency. In turn, bargaining consumed time and
resources causing delays on implementation.
5.Going Outside the Bureaucracy
When implementing a new program, there is a tendency to conjure a new
organization which create new guidelines, hire different people, and establish
new rules to conduct work. Pressman and Wildavsky noted that the creation
of EDA Oakland Task Force as separate organization created another problem
in the policy implementation.

THEORETICAL ASSUMPTIONS OF PRESSMAN AND WILDAVSKY

Based on the analysis to the EDA project, Pressman and Wildavsky prescribed
the following important points:
1. Implementation should not be divorced from policy and must not be
conceived as a process that takes place after, and independent of, the design
of policy.
2.Designers of policy must consider direct means for achieving their ends.
The EDA experiment was plagued with implementation via intermediaries, and
the multiplicity of decision points and clearances resulted in a complexity of
joint actions that paralyzed the implementation process. Hence, a second
way of joining policy more closely with implementation would be to pay as
much attention to the creation of organizational machinery for executing a
program.
3. Consider carefully the theory that underlies your actions. Behind the
seemingly endless number of roadblocks in the path of the EDA employment
program in Oakland, the deficiencies in concept were observed. The economic
theory was faulty because it aimed at the wrong target subsidizing the
capital of business enterprises rather than their wage bill.
4. Continuity of leadership is important to successful implementation. The
abrupt disappearance of key actors (such as Eugene C. Foley, the man who
started the EDA Oakland project) wreaked havoc on the program.
5.Simplicity in policies is much to be desired. Simplicity can be ignored only
at the peril of breakdown. If policy analysts carry bumper sticker, they should
read, Be Simple! Be Direct! or PAYMENT ON PERFORMANCE.

CONCLUSION
Pressman and Wildavskys 40 years old discussion still applies to a wide array

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PublicAdministrationIssues:PressmanandWildavsky:POLICYIMPLEMENTATION
of current policies. Although they did not attempt to construct an explicit
theoretical model of the implementation process, their observations provided
clear indications of some of the key elements that should be consciously
applied by public administrators. They accepted the concept that the policy
process was basically unidirectional (in which policies were first designed or
formulated by leaders and then carried out through intermediary
implementers). But their analysis broke with the classical dichotomy
between politics and administration by stressing the close relationship
between policy design and implementation. In this respect, Pressman and
Wildavsky seemed they wanted to change the classical theory by calling for
integration, rather than the separation, of policy formations and policy
implementation.
In a separate reading to the article of Shannon (2005) who also reviewed the
work of Pressman and Wildavsky, he proposed that to increase the probability
of successful implementation, administrators should: a) restrict the number of
participants, b) reduce the number of decisions required to carry out the
policy, and c) be aware of the intensity whether or not a participant wants the
policy to move forward. All these considerations will affect the outcome of the
implementation process.

References:
Robert T. Nakamura, Frank Smallwood. 1980. The Politics of Policy
Implementation. 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, USA: St. Martins Press, Inc. 1314
Daniel A. Mazmanian, Paul A. Sabatier. 1981. Effective Policy Implementation.
United States of America: D.C. Heath and Company. 4
Charles Cole, III. Book Review: Pressman, J. & Wildavsky, A. (1984).
Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington are Dashed in
Oakland: or, Why Its 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.
University
of
California
Press.
Available
at
<http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~ccole/documents/Implementation%20paper.pdf>. Accessed on
November 1, 2011.
Jim Shannon. 2005. Book Review: Implementation. Available at
<http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~jjshanno/documents/knowledge/715bookreview_implementation.pdf>
. Accessed on November 1, 2011.
Heather Dash: Implementation of Policies to Reduce Discrimination in
Housing.
Available
at
<http://www.heatherdash.com/academic_writing/public_policy/discrimination_in_housing_2.pdf
>. Accessed on November 1, 2011.
[1] Pressman and Wildavsky. 1984. Implementation. 30.
[2] Decision point is also called clearance point. It means the point in space and

time where the commander or staff anticipates making a decision concerning

a specific course of action. It is usually associated with a specific target.
+1 Recommend this on Google

1comment:
Anonymous said...
What they wanted to explain when they said " The cards in this world are
stacked against things happening"
8/25/2013 4:35 AM
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