1.
WHY DO DEVELOPMENT POLICIES FAIL?
UNDERSTANDINGTHE PROBLEMS OF
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION IN RURAL
SETTINGS
DANIELTEMESGEN GELAN ( PHD)
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONAL LEADERSTRAINING
CCRDA, ADDIS ABABA

2.
PERSPECTIVES ON POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
• The decision on a specific course of action and the adoption of a program does not
guarantee that the action on the ground will strictly follow policy makers’ aims and objectives.
• The stage of execution or enforcement of a policy by the responsible institutions and
organizations that are often, but not always, part of the public sector, is referred to as
implementation.
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3.
POLICY SUCCESSTO POLICY FAILURE
• Policy implementation is generally held to be the step that follows policy formulation and is viewed as ‘the
process of carrying out a basic policy decision’.
• policy implementation is a process ‘to actualize, apply and utilize it [policy] in the world of practice’ .
• sees implementation as a process of ‘transforming policy into practice’.
• There is a debate among scholars, so far unresolved, about whether policy making and policy implementation
should be considered as distinct steps,
• with the latter following the former, or both being part of the policy making process.
• The view of policy emphasizes distinct phases of policy development, proposing that policy is first formulated
by experts and elected public officials, and then executed by administrative officials This view is often more
prevalent in government bureaucracy as it promotes the view that policy making is usually done painstakingly
by legislators and than fails at implementation because of the issues related to bureaucracy.
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4.
POLICY SUCCESSTO POLICY FAILURE
• Failure to implement properly is the reason most cited for policy failure, and this is
generally attributed to the inability of policy makers to formulate clear policy outcomes,
inadequate governance mechanisms, and the failure of implementing agents because of
limited capacity and vested interests
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5.
CONVENTIONAL ACCOUNTS OF POLICY
FAILURES
• Unclear or Ambitious Policy Goals
• It has been observed that most policies and plans are inefficient in learning from
past experiences.
• As a result they often devise ambitious targets which ultimately fall short of their
desired outcomes
• One of the main reasons for such a situation is the absence of reliable data.
• It is very often the case that even official documents carry discrepancies.
• great variation exists among many official and semi-official sources, including such
basic
• statistics as the percentage of literacy.
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6.
POLITICAL COMMITMENT
• The problem related to politics and politicians sits at the root of the problems of implementation.
• Literature on implementation highlights the importance of political commitment by leadership as critical
to policy success
• reform experience suggests that successful implementation crucially depends on the consistent support
of top political and bureaucratic leadership.
• Citing the example of civil service reform noticed that the lack of ‘political commitment’ of government
was the principal reason for failure of reform programmes.
• In many instances where governments have failed to provide the political support needed for
implementing and sustaining policy initiatives.
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7.
GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE
• The issues of ineffective governance and corruption, particularly among politicians and civil
servants, have also been described as a major obstacle to proper policy implementation in
Pakistan
• One of the major reasons for the ineffectiveness of governance is lack of coordination and
trust among political representatives and government officials, and also the lack of
cooperation among different government departments
• The lack of cooperation among different organs of government and their mutual disrespect’
that hamper the overall organization and implementation of policy .
• Eventually due to distrust among different agencies and due to the tendency of civil services
to resist change,
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• ineffectiveness of community participation
• Lack of proper accountability mechanisms, excessive transfers, and corruption are also mentioned as
serious governance issues which affect the proper implementation of development programs
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9.
CENTRALIZATION
• One of the recurring criticisms is an orientation towards centralization policymaking
• Usually the policies and plans are developed in the capital with little or controlled consultation with
concerned stakeholders,
• Due to this centralization, policy often fails to capture the subtleties of initiatives at the grassroots
level, and therefore appears alien to the technical managers who have to implement the policy
• The distance of policymakers from practice not only causes problems for managers, but also creates
a lack of harmony among different elements of the same policy, and among the different units of the
machinery,
• Implementation studies indicated that improvement suggests that involving those who are most
affected by the policy during the planning phase is strongly related to successful implementation
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10.
RESOURCES
• Both financial and technical resources along with quality human resources are key factors
that contribute to the proper implementation of any policy, particularly if a policy
requires the creation of new structures and the hiring of new personnel
• there is a gap between allocated and actual expenditures ,
• when the budget is allocated on an estimated rate of economic growth, and a shortfall
in that estimation results in a reduction in actual expenditure
• the effective management of resources
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11.
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Foreign Aid
• A unique problem of policy in developing countries is their dependence on foreign aid and loans to bridge
the budget deficit and finance their development plans.
• As a result, the country is snared in the debt trap, with a high degree of dependence on lenders. Financial
dependence increases the political pressures that the lending agency or banks can exert and there have been
instances when the development loans were clearly linked with some reform package

12.
• Foreign Aid influences hamper the government’s efforts to develop its policies and
plans free of external interference, and push for short term measures to fulfil the
immediate requirements of lenders rather than concerted policies and plans to maximize
the effects of meagre resources in line with domestic development priorities .
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13.
COGNITIVE ACCOUNT OF POLICY
IMPLEMENTATION
• mainstream implementation literature largely ignores the cognitive elements that play
significant roles in policy implementation.
• Policy always faces the difficulty of ‘local implementation’ because it requires certain
alterations in existing practices
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14.
REQUIREMENTS FOR SUCCESSFUL
IMPLEMENTATION
• local implementing agents do not simply act on policy provisions like docile bodies; rather,
they interpret the policy and try to work out the practical demands that the policy puts
on them before actually acting on it.
• Interpretation and understanding of policy provisions is a cognitive process, in which
cognition precedes action and therefore the
• implementing agents must first understand what it is that the directive is asking them to
do’ before acting upon it
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An ideal process of policy implementation would include the following core elements:
• Specification of program details (i.e., how and by which agencies/organizations should the
program be executed? How should the law/program be interpreted?);
• Allocation of resources (i.e., how are budgets distributed?Which personnel will execute
the program?Which units of an organization will be in charge for the execution?)
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• Earlier, implementation of policies was not recognized as a separate stage within or
element of the policy-making process.
• What happens after a bill becomes a law was not perceived as a central problem—not
for the decision makers and, therefore, also not for policy analysis.
• The underlying assumption was that governments pass laws, and this is where the core
business of policy-making ends.
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• One way to do this has been to assess the effectiveness of different types of policy instruments
based on particular theories about cause and effect relations.
• Policy instruments have been classified into regulatory, financial, informational, and organizational
policy tools
• Different policy instruments are vulnerable to specific types of implementation problems. the
reliance on wrong Policy instruments
• the reliance on wrong theories about cause and effect relations frequently leads to negative side
effects or even reverse effects of state interventions.
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18.
COMPARATIVE DISCUSSION OFTOP
DOWN AND BOTTEM UPTHEORIES
• There are several characteristics of top-down and bottom-up theories in policy
implementation theory.
• Top-down analyses thus do not focus on the whole policy process, but merely on “what
happens after a bill becomes a law.
• In contrast, bottom-up approaches argue that policy implementation cannot be separated
from policy formulation
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• According to this “fusionist” model, policy making continues throughout the whole policy process.
• Hence, bottom-up scholars do not just pay attention to one particular stage of the policy
cycle. Instead, they are interested in the whole process of how policies are defined, shaped,
implemented and probably redefined.
• Top-downers understand implementation as “the carrying out of a basic policy decision.
• In this view, implementation is an apolitical, administrative process.
• Power ultimately rests with central decision-makers, who define clear policy objectives and
are capable of hierarchically guiding the process of putting these objectives into practice.
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• the two approaches are based on fundamentally different models of democracy.
• Top down approaches are rooted in traditional, elitist conceptions of representative democracy. In this
view, elected representatives are the only actors within a society who are legitimized to take collectively
binding decisions on behalf of the whole citizenry.
• It is thus a matter of proper democratic governance to ensure that these decisions are carried out as
accurately as possible. any deviation from the centrally defined policy objectives is seen as a violation of
democratic standards
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Thank you