Introduction

To understand the policy process as a whole it is necessary to give attention to policy implementation. Thinking about implementation has evolved from a starting point in which the translation of policy into action was seen as being, under normal circumstances, an unproblematical process so long as bureaucracies were clearly subservient to their political masters. This early perspective was dominated by a view of bureaucracy as, by and large, conforming to the Weberian model, with politics as a goal-setting process, along the lines of Simon’s notion of rational decision-making, and by a view of the feasibility of separating administration from politics as set out in a classic essay by Woodrow Wilson (Wilson 1887), a political scientist who became President of the United States. This view did not fail to identify that administration was a creative process, elaborating policy to conform to circumstances and needs. What it did tend to disregard was the extent to which this activity would tend to transform policy, often fundamentally. Recognition of this has given implementation studies a crucial importance in the study of the policy process. Yet it is important not to see them as somehow separate from studies of the policy-making process. Rather, implementation must be seen as part of policy-making.