Crosby B.C., Bryson J.M. - Leadership for the Common Good (2005)(en)

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ping facilitates development of successful implementation strategies and actions. Implementation may be direct or staged. Direct implementation works better when the time is right, the need is clear to a strong coalition of implementers, agreed-upon problems and adopted solutions are clearly and logically connected, and a clear vision guides the changes. (These are the conditions that also favor a big-win strategy.) Staged implementation is advisable when policy entrepreneurs face technical and political difficulties. In this case, entrepreneurs organize a series of small wins by using pilot and/or demonstration projects followed by transfer of proven change to the entire implementation system.

Change is not complete upon adoption of a new policy by an official decision-making body. Without effectively implemented solutions, important public problems will simply fester. Implementation must be viewed as continuation of the policy change process toward its ultimate destination of successful collective action in pursuit of the common good. Effective policy entrepreneurship should be understood as a single sweeping gesture pointing from an important public problem to desirable solutions, to adopted change, to implementation of the change, and finally to outcomes that indicate the problem has been overcome.

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ing and coverage of pollution-related costs has contributed to urban sprawl, air pollution, and declining central city business districts. Fourth, the political environment may shift. As a policy becomes institutionalized, advocates may be less attentive and vocal. Supportive elected officials may be replaced by officials who are uninterested in or even hostile to the policy, and they may pass laws or appoint administrators who undermine it. For example, President George W. Bush’s administration has severely and systematically weakened preexisting regulations controlling the emission of pollutants from factories and power plants.

Purpose and Desired Outcomes

The purpose of this phase of the policy change cycle is to review implemented policies, plans, or programs and to decide on one of three main courses of action: continuation of good policy, modification of less successful policy through appropriate reform, and elimination of undesirable policy. Desired outcomes include:

•Institutions that remain responsive to real needs and problems

•Resolution of residual problems that occur during sustained implementation

•Development of the energy, will, and ideas for needed reform of existing policies or for tackling the next big public problem requiring attention

Maintaining Responsive Institutions

An institution is often a permanent pattern of response to “old” problem definitions. When the problems change, the institutions often do not, and therefore they become a problem themselves (Schön, 1971; Wilson, 1989). For example, in the United States drug companies, medical researchers, and federal regulators succeeded by the 1990s in making effective drugs that can keep people with AIDS relatively healthy for a long time. Although the drugs are expensive, most people in the United States are able to afford them or obtain insurance or public assistance to pay. Once AIDS began to spread rapidly in poorer parts of the world, the need for these high-priced drugs grew and instigated the demand

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are presented, followed by specific suggestions for policy continuation, modification, and termination (for additional details, see Hogwood and Peters, 1983).

General Guidelines

To ensure that implemented policies and institutions continue to serve public needs, policy entrepreneurs retain a focus on important goals, indicators of success and failure, contributors to inertia, and opportunities for rethinking.

Stay Focused on What Is Important

Pay attention to the needs and problems that prompted the policy change, and view policies and institutions as a means of responding to them. If the policies and institutions are no longer serving public needs, they should be altered. For example, the Vital Aging Network is critiquing public policies that attempt to respond to older adults’ health care needs but mainly fund institutional care. The VAN people argue that if the policy goal is to give older adults the most appropriate care, along with minimizing costs, more of this funding should be available for in-home health care.

Focus on Indicators of Success and Failure

Pay attention to changes in the indicators that were used to argue for or against policy change in the first place; to new indicators that are important to key stakeholders and that shed light on implementation effectiveness; and to results of summative evaluation. To the extent that these indicators offer a valid sign of policy progress or failure, they can support deciding to continue, modify, or terminate a policy regime. For example, the research conducted in the African American Men Project highlighted the achievement gap between students of color and others, unemployment rates, and the level of homelessness. These indicators constituted clear evidence that existing policies, programs, and projects were not achieving their espoused goals.

Review Interpretive Schemes and Myths

Review the interpretive schemes and myths used to formulate the problem and adopted solutions. Are they still accurate and useful representations of reality? Do they embody or imply useful solutions

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to a public problem? Or has something changed about the reality (political, social, economic, or technological) to make these interpretations and myths a distortion of reality? If so, try to discover more appropriate myths and interpretive schemes that are more likely to promote desirable outcomes. For example, if the national vital aging movement is successful in building a new regime of educational and employment opportunities for older workers, it is possible that the public might focus so strongly on a “fountain of youth” interpretive scheme that they would thoroughly downplay a competing but valid scheme of responsibility for caring for frail elderly people.

Attend to Forums, Arenas, and Courts

Be attentive to the existing (and the new) forums, arenas, and courts in which policy is continued, modified, or terminated. These are often the same shared-power settings that were crucial during previous phases of the policy change cycle; especially if major reform or termination of the implemented policy is needed, however, you may need to create or use other forums, arenas, and courts to achieve desired outcomes in this phase. For the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, U.N. meetings—especially Earth Summits—remain important as they try to sustain support for further implementation of the global regime to control greenhouse gases. As anti-AIDS campaigners shift their attention away from the United States and Western Europe, where treatment and prevention programs are now institutionalized, in order to focus on parts of the world still struggling to cope with the pandemic, they have initiated or expanded a worldwide array of national, regional, and international forums, arenas, and courts.

Acknowledge the Staying Power of Organizations and Networks

Remember that organizations and networks often have greater staying power than any policy (Hogwood and Peters, 1983). Thus praising the intentions and goodwill of organizations and networks, while emphasizing the need to review and possibly reform their policies, is more likely to produce change than attacking the motives and goodwill of the organizations and networks themselves. You also should try to figure out how existing networks and organizations might benefit from needed reform. As noted, vital aging

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advocates are often harshly critical of existing government programs that have promoted nursing home care for older adults while underfunding in-home care. They would be wise to acknowledge that program administrators often share their concern for the wellbeing of older adults, while marshaling stories and facts about the payoff of in-home care. They should show specifically how the payoff meets administrators’ and policy makers’ goals of being good stewards of public funds and helping maintain the health of older adults.

You also should acknowledge that in some cases an existing organization or network is simply too resistant to change, and new organizations and networks will have to be involved in reviewing and reforming policy. Thus President Bush agreed to set up the independent September 11 investigative commission after stakeholders— prominently, the families of those who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks—forced him to concede that the existing intelligence and security agencies were unable to make needed assessments and reforms on their own.

Challenge Rules and Routines That Favor Inertia

Institutional routines and other rules embedded in established forums, arenas, and courts often give the present arrangement a taken-for-granted quality and foster equilibrium, or inertia, in a policy system (Baumgartner and Jones, 1993). Those rules and routines must be confronted and set aside in order to thoroughly review and change an implemented policy (Mangham, 1986; Feldman, 2000).

Use Existing Review Opportunities, or Create New Ones

Periodic policy reauthorization sessions and annual or biennial budget review periods create the opportunity for regular policy review. Election campaigns and changes in top elected or appointed policy makers or executives are also predictable occasions for policy review.

You can also create a policy review opportunity almost anytime, through designing and using existing or new forums. Consider arranging a conference, hearing, study commission, media event, investigative reporting, or discussion group to review and critique the policies that concern you (Bromiley and Marcus, 1987).

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Convene a Review Group

The composition of this group may vary considerably with the nature of the review. Legislation and policies requiring scheduled reviews may assign them to a particular group (for example, a legislative committee, a board of directors, or an independent review board). Often, however, you can influence the composition of the group. Try to include at least some participants who do not have a vested interest in the status quo, so they can take a fresh look at the policy regime.

Stay Energized

Generate energy and enthusiasm for tackling the next big public problem. The experience, credibility, and networks that you have built in the process of working on one public problem are part of your foundation for working on a new one. Jan Hively has been able, in her vital aging work, to draw on the reputation and contacts she made as an entrepreneur in youth policy.

Policy Continuation

Focus on fine-tuning forums, arenas, and courts, and attend to a fairly narrow range of stakeholders.

Minimize Change in Forums, Arenas, and Courts

To continue an existing policy, seek little change in the design and use of forums, arenas, and courts. Any significant change is likely to undermine the regime established in the previous phase. Even so, be sure to find occasions in forums to recall or reinvigorate the vision that originally inspired and mobilized people to seek the policy change.

Attend to Certain Stakeholders

To continue or make minor changes to an existing policy, rely on implementers, supportive advocates, and focused input from consumers. Use routine surveys and discussion, focus groups, and task forces to continue fine-tuning the policy. Throwing open the door to more expansive assessment involving an array of stakeholders is likely to prompt pressure for more fundamental policy

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changes (Hogwood and Peters, 1983; Baumgartner and Jones, 1993; Chrislip, 2002).

Policy Modification or Succession

Design forums to alter meaning, focus on midlevel arenas, consider policy splitting or consolidation, and create parallel systems.

Change Forums, Arenas, and Courts

To facilitate the move to a significantly altered policy, significantly alter the design and use of forums, arenas, and courts. Changes in the appropriate shared-power settings allow a new set of issues, decisions, conflicts, and policy preferences to emerge.

Use Forums to Challenge Existing Meanings

Create or redesign a forum to challenge existing meanings and create new ones. Consciously estrange people from problem definitions, solution choices, or supporting political arrangements that are no longer helpful (Mangham, 1986; Fiol, 2002; Stone, 2002). Offer new interpretive schemes, myths, or stories that can be the seed crystal around which a new coalition forms in support of another configuration of policies, plans, and programs. For example, a problem reassessment may imply that a new set of categories, value judgments, indicators, comparisons, focusing events, or crises are relevant. You may help others articulate a revised vision that inspires collective action. This work begins in forums and moves toward arenas and courts.

Even if you are successful in redefining a problem, do not expect new policies to be adopted without a change in the political environment. This might be a public opinion swing, election results, administrative changes, ideological or partisan redistribution in legislative bodies, and interest group pressure campaigns. Before new proposals can be adopted, key decision makers in arenas must be receptive, and changes in politics may be a necessary precursor of this receptivity.

Major reforms may also depend on a successful search for important ideas within the relevant policy community. Recall that a policy is usually a recombination of existing ideas, or a mutation,

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rather than something totally new (Kingdon, 1995). Still, you need to find the right combination, one that responds effectively to the redefined problem and that is politically salable. Forums again play a crucial role as the setting within which effective solutions to a public problem are crafted.

Focus on Midlevel Arenas

The high-level political elites are unlikely to be involved in policy modification because the legitimacy of the issue has already been settled. Instead, the focus is likely to be midlevel legislative and administrative arenas and the details of program redesign being hashed and rehashed (Lynn, 1987). The people likely to have the most impact on a reform effort are current policy implementers and consumers. Precisely because the effort is unlikely to attract the interest of political elites, new interest groups, or the public at large, major reform is difficult (Hogwood and Peters, 1983; Baumgartner and Jones, 1993).

Because both implementers and beneficiaries of an existing policy are more likely to be concerned with policy details than with innovation, it may be possible to make major changes by involving at least some key policy makers who act quickly while implementers and beneficiaries are focused on the operation of current programs (Hogwood and Peters, 1983). This is always a risky strategy, however, since eventually implementers have to carry out the change. To make a substantial change, you are likely to require the support of a coalition other than the one that originally adopted and implemented the policy, and a new constellation of ideas, interests, and agreements will have to be worked out (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993).

Consider a Move to “Split” or Consolidate Policies

Splitting or consolidating programs, projects, or administrative regimens can resolve conflict over budget allocation, implementation approach, and even leadership style. Of course, the cost of merging or breaking up a policy implementation structure should be carefully weighed against the potential gain. Pulling apart ideas that are central to the policy regime or meshing those ideas with others—a kind of reframing—can be harder than altering the implementation structure.