Implementing Public Policy: An Introduction to the Study of Operational Governance

The only book to focus on implementing public policy, this state-of-the-art text offers a comprehensive and lively account of the major insights found in implementation theory and research. Its exploration of the field provides a reflective overview of work in the study of policy implementation worldwide. In doing so, the book reconceptualizes the policy process to highlight the essential role those implementing policy have in moulding, shaping and directing policy during their work.

Realizing policy goals may be the key to ballot box victory, while policies perceived as failures may symbolise declining trust and confidence in government and politics. As such, implementing policy is as crucial to the actors in power as it is for democracy. Policymakers respond to challenging problems in highly dynamic and pressurised contexts. From the global pandemic to climate change, financial regulation to education, effective policy has never been more important to governments and society – and the role of street-level bureaucrats in implementing policy never so crucial.

This is the seminal work in the field, used by thousands worldwide. Now fully revised and updated, the 20^th anniversary edition includes substantial changes and additions. This edition features two entirely new chapters on the consequences of populism and the latest street-level bureaucracy research, as well as extensive examination of comparative cross-national work and a refined and more explicit conceptualization of implementation in terms of its role in governance throughout. The book concludes with an all-new chapter exploring emergent issues on implementation in practice and on the research agenda.

The text is essential reading for anyone interested in public policy, social policy, public administration, public management and governance.

Michael Hill is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of Newcastle, UK.  Before entering academic life at the University of Reading he was a street-level bureaucrat in a local social assistance office. He later worked on research at the Universities of Oxford and Bristol on the implementation of social policy. Since retiring from Newcastle he has held part-time visiting professorships in London University at Goldsmiths College and Queen Mary College and also in the London School of Economics and the University of Brighton. His long-standing text The Public Policy Process reached its eighth edition in 2021 in a joint version with Frédéric Varone of the University of Geneva. In 2020 he published Exploring the World of Social Policy with Zoë Irving of the University of York.

Peter Hupe is Visiting Professor at the Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Belgium. He is also Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, UK. While teaching Public Administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, he had academic affiliations in Leiden, Leuven, London, Oxford and Potsdam. The major part of his research regards the theoretical-empirical study of policy processes, particularly implementation and street-level bureaucracy. He discovered the relevance of the latter during an earlier career as a policymaker in the Dutch national civil service. Publishing regularly in journals like Public Administration, Public Policy and Administration and Public Management Review, in 2019 he composed the Research Handbook of Street-Level Bureaucracy: The Ground Floor of Government in Context. With Tony Evans he edited Discretion and the Quest for Controlled Freedom (2020).