Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland: Or, Why It's Amazing That Federal Programs Work at All, Th

by jeffrey-l-pressman-aaron-b-wildavsky

Three substantial new chapters and a new preface in this third edition explore and elaborate the relationship between the evaluation of programs and the study of their implementation. The authors suggest that tendencies to assimilate the two should be resisted. Evaluation should retain its enlightenment function while the study of implementation should strengthen its focus on learning.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Cities, Political Science, Government, The United States Of America

Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 3 out of 5]

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued, the two great failures of the Great Society were to overpromise and to underdeliver. This book provides evidence for both of those problems. It is basically a response to a book by the head of the Oakland Economic Development Administration, Amory Bradford, "Oakland's Not for Burning," which claimed that the EDA's $23 million saved this otherwise powderkeg city from destruction during the "long, hot summers" of the late 1960s. As authors Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky put it, in fact, in 1969, four years after the inauguration of the project, only $3 million had actually been spent, most to build an overpass the city was already going to build anyway, and the rest to architect's fees. "We indulged briefly in mild fantasies depicting local architects about to overthrow the Oakland City Council in a suave coup d'etat, only to be bought off at the last minute by EDA funds." In reality, only a handful of jobs were created after almost a decade of delay and effort by the EDA. The question the authors seek to answer is, why did a project that everyone supported, building jobs in a depressed area, end up so delayed and ineffective? More broadly, they ask that single great, Great Society question, why did good intentions and good policy plans achieve so little in their actual implementation?

Too much of this book is taken up with Army Corp of Engineers discussions of landfill debris, of the EDA minority employment board meetings on project plan achievements, of EDA West office evaluations of Oakland task force plans, and so on. But the very point of this book is that such minutiae matter. The authors calculate that the simple act of building a marine terminal and airplane hangar with a single, large employer, the Port of Oakland, required about 70 separate decision points, by about a dozen different local and federal agencies and actors, every one of which could delay or end the project. If each decision point had a 90% chance of success, it would be just a 1 in 2000 chance that the project would actually get done. They argue that even the simplest project demands such brodignanian hurdles, although these are made worse by the tendency to ask modern government agencies to "coordinate" with each other (which in practice means issuing their own demands on top of others). The book, though in far too much detail and with far too much political science theorizing, examines the previously understudied issue of policy implementation, and shows that it might be the most important policy issue there is.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

If only every policy maker and every voter would read this book! Pressman and Wildavsky dig in and show how the best of intentions, and even seemingly great plans, fall apart when it's time to implement them on the ground. They show the difficulties in coordinating the many stakeholders that governments have to bring together, in synchronizing steps carried out by an array of public and private organizations, and of keeping everybody on board over the course of the time it takes to execute plans. They show that even if each step in the implementation of a policy seems like a no-brainer, a long series of steps that are, individually, almost certain to succeed can be almost certain to fail! The human mind sees a series of steps that have a 95% chance of success and thinks that the process is likely to work... we rarely appreciate that if there's a 95% chance of each of 15 things working, there's a less than 50% chance that they all work. And when you need to coordinate them to all work on a tight timeline, forget about it! Pressman and Wildavsky's Implementation shows, in both human and theoretical terms, how these miscalculations caused government policy in Oakland to fall apart. A reader will have no difficulty finding parallels in current news (no matter when "current" is for their reading).

[Julia]

Not rating because I read for class and would have never picked this up otherwise. I can see how this would be considered groundbreaking when it was published but it hasn't held up in the 50 years since.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recommend reading the 3rd edition, the added articles at the end have greater focus on the holistic concept of implementation and evaluation. While I don't think the case study given is unique in many ways, the analysis at the end makes the book worth reading for itself.
I really enjoyed many of the sentences written with a way too clever smile.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the clunky name this is a very good book about the differences between policy creation and implementation. I would love to use this in our program evaluation or policy courses but there may be too many details and not enough time to go over the important details. This book better lends itself to in-person discussion.

[Delaney Barghols · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pressman and WIldavsky provide an accessible and honest look at the American government and the relatively unsuccessful ways that taxpayer money is spent on new policies. Although at times I felt the book to be contradictory of itself, it provides a great overview of the subject matter for anyone interested in policy creation and implementation.

[Derek Ouyang · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ontologically schizophrenic

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting overview of some late-60s urban development projects and why they failed to live up to expectations. I would have like to have seen more of a discussion on line-workers, rather than agency upper management, but this is worthwhile. The overall lesson--that policymaking without an eye on implementation is naive--strikes me as essential.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Implementation, considered a classic in the field, is the story about what happens to laws that are passed in the process of trying to make the actual world abide by them. It tends to be a part of the policy process that is less dramatic, and thus receives less attention, but is obviously important.

The chief virtue of Implementation is that it is eminently readable, flowing in much the same way as a novel. Its insight, for what it is worth, is pretty commonplace: it is not always easy to make changes to established systems; the more complex the system, the more difficult it is to make changes. This is certainly true, and policymakers should be aware of many of the points that Pressman and Wildalsky make, but since the book amounts to an extended case study of one Economic Development Administration program in Oakland, its overarching importance is somewhat limited. Still, after weeks of engaging with dense and indecipherable texts, Implementation was a welcome relief.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Implementation is that stage of the policy process when laws are translated into action. Implementation, in short, is making laws reality. The fact of having passed a law normally does little. Actions must be taken to make the laws operate. This is reputed to be a pioneering work on the study of implementation. Pressman and Wildavsky explore the subject by developing a case study of Oakland California, in which they examine how a government agency tried to address unemployment. The work concludes that it is not easy to implement laws, that there are many obstacles to successful implementation.

It would appear that their arguments might be a bit simplistic, but--given the time when this was originally written--it makes a real contribution to our understanding of implementation.

[Philip · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, I don't, as a rule, put school books up here but I read this one very much like a novel and not exactly when it was assigned. It starts strong with a case study of the EDA in Oakland but then sadly lapses into a bunch of small ideas oh so common in these types of books. I've said it once and I'll say it again - a taxonomy of concepts does not constitute an original idea. There are, to be sure, six types of everything.

[Brittaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Implementation was a nice account of a federal effort to relieve a city riddled with hyper-unemployment. The authors offer their suggestions as to why the program failed and what could be done for future programs of this nature. I suggest this book for any public policy, intergovernmental relations, or public administration student. It will surely provide insight!

[Sus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this. A thorough case study of why public works projects failed in Oakland, showing how good intentions, good funding, and consensus can still fall apart when it comes to actually putting a project into action. A lot of the obstacles seem like common sense but the, as this book shows, that common sense can still be overlooked in the heat of wanting to Get Things Done.

[Jen]

Every public administration student reads this book at least once. I've read it or parts of it a number of times. But, now that I'm completely embroiled in implementing a new program in a large city agency, it's even more telling.