Implementation and ambiguity

Studies of implementation have established two conspicuous things: First, policies can make a difference. Bureaucracies often respond to policy changes by changing administrative actions. Second, policy as implemented often seems different from policy as adopted. Organizational actions are not completely predictable from policy directives. Efforts to tighten the connection between policy and administration have, for the most part, emphasized ways of augmenting the competence and reliability of bureaucracies, of making them more faithful executors of policy directives. Alternatively, they look for ways of making policy makers more sophisticated about bureaucratic limitations. Such recommendations, however, assume that policies either are clear or can be made so arbitrarily. By describing discrepancies between adopted policies and implemented policies as problems of implementation, students of policy making obscure the extent to which ambiguity is important to policy making and encourage misunderstanding of the processes of policy formation and administration.