The Implementation Game
by Eugene Bardach · MIT Press
Bardach's 1977 study of what happens to a law once it reaches the agencies meant to execute it, cataloguing bureaucratic delaying games and showing why programs get diluted, using cases from US state and federal policy.
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More resources on Policy Implementation
World Bank Implementation Resources
Governance briefs and country case studies on turning approved policies into working programs: implementation capacity, institutional bottlenecks, and monitoring arrangements in developing-country administrations, with links to the underlying reports and data.
OECD Policy Implementation Toolkit
Guidance and comparative material from the OECD's public governance work on carrying policy from decision to delivery, including implementation planning, coordination across agencies, regulatory tools, and evaluation practice across member countries.
Implementation Science
The innovation to implementation gap is 17 years. Podcasts were invented 17 years ago. Coincidence? We don’t think so. That Implementation Science Podcast discusses everything related to Implementation Science, and many things not. Co-hosts Mike Pullmann and Kevin King interview guests, review new research, and implement solutions to things that aren’t even problems yet.
Implementing Public Policy
A graduate-level survey of implementation research, tracing the top-down and bottom-up debates and setting them against later governance theory, so readers can analyse why policies change shape as agencies and front-line staff carry them out.