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Implementation Failures as Learning Pathologies

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Abstract

In many ways, the study of implementation is the study of policy failure. After all, scholarly preoccupation with the causes of policy pathologies motivated the first wave of implementation studies in the postwar decades (Derthick 1972; Pressman and Wildavsky 1973). Examination of policy learning has followed a similar trajectory. The first (and now classic) studies linking learning and policy change were central to the serious efforts to create a systematic approach to policy sciences (Deutsch 1966; Heclo 1974; Lindblom 1965). Recent developments reappraising policy learning, and in particular spotlighting its varieties and its limitations, enable a clearer connection with implementation fiascos (Howlett 2012; Dunlop and Radaelli 2013, 2018). New conceptualizations of policy learning point to the importance of scope conditions which render learning deep or shallow, functional or dysfunctional (Dunlop 2017). In this entry, the implementation failure-policy learning nexus is explored at three analytical levels: micro level of individual policy actors; meso level of groups and organizational bodies; and finally, the macro, systemic level.

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Acknowledgments

Some of the ideas explored in this entry have been aired in at various workshops, notably: the “Policy Failure” workshop hosted by Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP), National University of Singapore, 19–21 February 2014 and workshop on “Policy Success and Failure” hosted by the Bennett School of Public Policy, University of Cambridge, 14 November 2018. The author extends thanks to all the participants of these events for their constructive feedback. Most importantly, the author extends sincerest thanks to this volume’s editors – especially to Helen Dickinson who has been an extremely patient and caring colleague.

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  1. University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Claire A. Dunlop

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  1. Claire A. Dunlop
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Correspondence to Claire A. Dunlop .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Helen Sullivan

  2. Public Service Research Group, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Helen Dickinson

  3. Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Hayley Henderson

Section Editor information

  1. University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia

    Helen Dickinson

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Dunlop, C.A. (2021). Implementation Failures as Learning Pathologies. In: Sullivan, H., Dickinson, H., Henderson, H. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Public Servant. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29980-4_22

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