Implementing Public Policy

Michael Hill is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of Newcastle, UK.  Before entering academic life at the University of Reading he was a street-level bureaucrat in a local social assistance office. He later worked on research at the Universities of Oxford and Bristol on the implementation of social policy. Since retiring from Newcastle he has held part-time visiting professorships in London University at Goldsmiths College and Queen Mary College and also in the London School of Economics and the University of Brighton. His long-standing text The Public Policy Process reached its eighth edition in 2021 in a joint version with Frédéric Varone of the University of Geneva. In 2020 he published Exploring the World of Social Policy with Zoë Irving of the University of York. Peter Hupe is Visiting Professor at the Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Belgium. He is also Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham, UK. While teaching Public Administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, he had academic affiliations in Leiden, Leuven, London, Oxford and Potsdam. The major part of his research regards the theoretical-empirical study of policy processes, particularly implementation and street-level bureaucracy. He discovered the relevance of the latter during an earlier career as a policymaker in the Dutch national civil service. Publishing regularly in journals like Public Administration, Public Policy and Administration and Public Management Review, in 2019 he composed the Research Handbook of Street-Level Bureaucracy: The Ground Floor of Government in Context. With Tony Evans he edited Discretion and the Quest for Controlled Freedom (2020).

This text is essential reading for anyone interested in implementation. Hill and Hupe cover critical debates in their own distinctive voice, but also explore key avenues that make the study of implementation so essential in the context of the multiple crises of the state in the 21st century. This new edition deserves to be at the centre of any conversation about the future study and practice of implementation.

• PART I: Implementation as a Scholarly ThemeChapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: Implementation Studies PositionedChapter 3: The Top-Down/Bottom-Up Debate and Comprehensive ApproachesChapter 4: Implementation Theory: Constitutive ElementsPART II: Implementation as Government-In-ActionChapter 5: The Policy-Implementation Paradigm: Historical EvolutionChapter 6: Implementation and the Rise of PopulismChapter 7: Implementation and the Quest for Appropriate ActionPART III: Implementation as Object of ResearchChapter 8: Implementation Research as Governance AnalysisChapter 9: Street-Level Bureaucracy Research and Implementation TheoryChapter 10: Doing Implementation ResearchChapter 11: The Policy-Implementation Paradigm: Present and Future