ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an overview of the policy implementation challenges public managers face and how they can be overcome. It first explores the basics of policy implementation, including analytical approaches often used to manage its complexity. It then reviews typical implementation problems which managers face, before extracting lessons learned from the extensive literature on implementation for making implementation processes more adaptive and effective. In both diagnosing challenges and crafting strategies to overcome them, the chapter underlines two cross-cutting points. One is the need to build a concern for implementation into all phases of the policy process so as to avoid some of the most common negative pitfalls and consequences of policy fragmentation. The second is the importance of systematically considering the administrative and political contexts in which policy-making takes place in order to overcome many of the most common obstacles to effective implementation.
