ABSTRACT
[…] In an article entitled ‘Why is implementation so difficult?’, Gunn (1978) drew upon Hood’s analysis (1976) and those of Pressman and Wildavsky (1973), Etzioni (1976), Kaufman (1971), Bardach (1977), Van Meter and Van Horn (1975), and King (1975 and 1976) to provide for civil servants a short guide to some of the reasons why, according to these pioneering writers, any state of ‘perfect implementation’ was likely to be virtually unattainable in practice. Like Hood again, Gunn emphasized that ‘perfection’ in this context was an analytical concept or ‘idea’ and not, in the colloquial sense of the term, an ‘ideal’ to be achieved. In other words, no prescriptive model was offered and, indeed, several of the logical preconditions of perfect implementation – such as ‘perfect obedience’ or ‘perfect control’ – were identified as being morally and politically quite unacceptable as well as unattainable in a pluralist democracy.
