The Implementation Game: What Happens After a Bill Becomes a Law

by Eugene Bardach

Combining scholarly analysis with practical recommendation, The Implementation Game shows how a program can be blocked after it has passed from bill to law. Bardach, who worked as a policy analyst for the U.S. Department of the Interior and who is Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, reveals the strategies employed by bureaucracies to impede enactment of new laws. He explains how the policy implementation process works and how planners and concerned citizens can identify such bureaucratic maneuvers as "Not Our Problem" and "Territory" - with examples of twenty such plays from real-life situations. The Implementation Game is a useful handbook for policy planners and a basic reference for students of American political institutions who want to anticipate implementation problems at the early stages and who can use Bardach's "implementation scenarios" to design against these problems for more game-proof legislation.

Hardcover

First published March 15, 1977

Reviews

[Steven Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty good analysis of implementation, that stage of the policy process when laws are made real, when the words of a law become action. Bardach's work provides some useful insights into the process, such as the role of "fixers," political activists who try to make sure that policies are actually implemented as desired.

One of the earlier works, making a contributiuon in its time. . . .