PEDU 6209

Policy Studies in Education

Topic 10
Policy Process Studies: Policy Implementation

(A)

The Top-down or Bottom–up Debate

A. Theories of Policy Implementation: An Overview

1. The rational-technical and top-down approach: It indicates theoretical
orientations taking implementation as a separate stage of the policy
cycle, which is characterized as an enforcement and execution of the
state’s policy decision.
2. The interpretive and bottom-up approach: It summarizes theoretical
orientations conceiving implementation as process of interpretations,
figuring out what to do and delivering concrete services to
program/policy recipients on diverse localities and situations by “street-
level bureaucrats within different organizational setting.
3. The top-down and bottom-up synthesis and the third generation of
implementation theory: It characterizes theoretical orientations
perceiving implementation as process of constituting coalition,
structuration, networking, institutionalization, and learning within which
various parties in a specific policy domain/area strive to realize a policy,
program or project.

B. The Rational-technical and Top-down Approach:

1. Policy implementation technical control of the execution of decisions
from top down
a. Sabatier and Mazmanian define that “implementation is the carrying
out of a basic policy decision. …The implementation process
normally runs through a number of stages
i. beginning with passage of the basic status,
ii. followed by the policy output (decisions) of the implementing
agencies,
iii. the compliance of the target groups with those decisions, the
actual impact – both intended and unintended – of those
outputs,
iv. the perceived impacts of agency decisions, and
v. finally, important revisions (or attempted revision) in the basic
status.” (1995, p. 153; numbering mine)
b. Accordingly, implementation is perceived as technical problems of
control over the internality and externality of the policy, which has
been specified by Sabarier and Mazmanian as follows
i. Tractability of the problem
- vailability of valid technical theory and technology
- Diversity of target-group behavior
- Target group as percentage of the population
- Extent of behavior change required

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 ii. Ability of status to structure implementation
- Clear and consistent objectives
- Incorporation of adequate causal theory
- Financial resources
- Hierarchical integration with and among implementing agency
- Recruitment of implementing official
- Formal access by outsiders
iii. Non-statutory variables affecting implementation
- Socioeconomic conditions and technology
- Media attention to the problem
- Public support
- Attitudes and resource of constituency groups
- Support from sovereign
- Commitment and leadership skill of implementing officials
c. Six sufficient and generally necessary conditions for effective
implementation
i. Clear and consistent objectives
ii. Adequate causal theory

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 iii. Implementation process legally structured to enhance
compliance by implementing officials and target groups
iv. Committed and skillful implementing officials
v. Support of interest groups and sovereigns
vi. Changes in socioeconomic conditions which do not substantially
undermine political support or causal theory.
2. Hierarchy and market: the mechanism of policy implementation
Weimer & Vining (2005) underline that there are two basic mechanisms
in coordinating collective action into attaining societal objectives. One
is through market mechanism and the other is state intervention
through the bureaucratic hierarchy.
a. Market mechanism: “Collective action enables society to produce,
distribute, and consume a great variety and abundance of goods
(and services). Most collective action arises from voluntary
agreements among people - within families, private organizations
and exchange relations.” (Weimer & Vining, 2005, p.30)
i. Individual rational choice: According to the above-cited premise
of liberal economic perspective, the basic decision units in
collective actions are individual choices. It is further assumed
that these basic units will act in accordance with the principles of
maximization of utility and profit.
ii. Prefect competitive market: At macroscopic level, these
individual rational choices will meet and exchange in a prefect
competitive market with the following operational
principles/assumptions (Stiglitz & Walsh, 2002, p. 228; and
Stiger, 1986; p. 267))
- All participants (Firms and individuals) take market price as
given; i.e. numbers of participants are sufficiently large
- Actions by individual participants do not directly affect other
participants except through price, i.e. they act independently
and freely and not collectively;
- All participants must possess tolerable or even prefect
knowledge of the market opportunities;
- Goods are things that only the buyer can enjoy, i.e. they are
private goods. They are of the nature
+ Rivalry in consumption
+ Excludability in use
b. State intervention: State’s interventions into collective actions of
production, distribution and consumption in society involve
legitimately uses of coercive power in the name of market failure
and/or compensating the losers in market. The means employed by
the state are commonly called in public policy study the policy
instrument.
i. Conception of policy instrument: “Public policy instruments are
the set of techniques by which governmental authorities wield
their power in attempting to ensure support and effect or prevent
social change.” (Veding, 1998, p.21)
ii. Typology of policy instruments
- Regulation (Sticks): they are “means undertaken by
governmental unit to influence people by means of formulated
rules and directives which mandate receivers to action in
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 accordance with what is ordered in these rules and directive.”
(p. 31)
- Economic policy instruments (Carrots): They “involve either the
handing out or the taking away of material resources, be they
in cash or in kind. Economic instruments make it cheaper or
more expensive in terms of money, time, effort, and other
valuables to pursue certain actions (either compliance or
defiance to policy measures).” (p. 32)
- Information (Sermons): They refer “to as ‘moral suasion,’ or
exhortation, covers attempts at influencing people through the
transfer of knowledge, the communication of reasoned
argument, and persuasion.” (p.33)
c. Professional power as the third logic: Eliot Freidson contends that
besides market and state, there is the third logic at work in public
policy implementation process in modern society, namely
professional power.
i. The third logic in public policy:
“For decades now, the popular watchwords driving policy
formation (and implementation) have been ‘competition’ and
‘efficiency’, the first referring to competition in a free market, and
the second to the benefit of the skilled management of firms
(governmental agencies). …I will show in some detail how
properties of professionalism fit together to form a whole that
differs systematically from the free market on the one hand, and
the …bureaucracy, in the other.” (Freidson, 2001, p.2-3)
Therefore, Freidson contends that “like Max Weber’s model of
rational-legal bureaucracy which represents managerialism and
Adam Smith’s model of the free market which represents
consumerism” (p. 180), “professionalism is conceived of as one
of the three logically distinct methods of organizing and
controlling.” (p.180)
ii. Constituents of Professionalism:
“Professionalism is based on specialized bodies of knowledge
and skill that have no coercive power of their own but only what
may be delegated to them by the state or capital. They gain their
protected (and legitimate) status by project of successful
persuasion, not by buying it or capturing it at the point of a gun.
But because of the special nature of the knowledge and skill
imputed to professionals as well as the fact that their practice is
protected, friendly commentators have long invoked the need to
trust their intention.” (p.214) Accordingly the constituents of
professionalism may comprise
- Academically respectable knowledge
- Practically credible Skill
- Socially trustful codes of ethnics and practices
- Effective authority and autonomy over the above constituents

C. The Interpretive and Bottom-up Model

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 1. Michael Lipsky’s street-level bureaucracy model
a. Lipsky’s book entitled Street-level Level (1980) has been viewed as
the leading challenge to the top-down model of policy
implementation models and the starting point of bottom-up model.
b. Lipsky “argue(s) that public policy is not best understood as made
in legislatures or top-floor suites of high ranking administrators,
because in important ways it is actually made in the crowded offices
and daily encounters in street-level workers.” And “the street-level
bureaucrats, the routines they establish, and the devices they
invent to cope with uncertainties and work pressures, effectively
become the public policies they carry out.” (Lipsky, 1993, p. 382)
Accordingly, study of education policy implementation should look
into teachers’ instructional routines delivered in crowded
classrooms and school officials’ policy measures imposed upon
teachers and students.
c. Lipsky underlines that in implementing policy at street level, front-
line worker are confronted with conflict and ambiguities. These may
include
i. Inadequate resource and unsatisfactory working condition, e.g.
large classes for teachers, huge caseloads for social workers,
dangerous and hostile neighborhood for police officers.
ii. Unpredictable, uncooperative, skeptical clients
iii. Unclear and ambiguous job specification and guidelines.
d. Confronted with these inadequacies and uncertainties, street-level
bureaucrats derive coping strategies or even survival strategies to
deal with the unaccommodating working situations. Lipsky point out
that in daily “client-processing” routines, street-level bureaucrats in
fact have considerable amount of powers and discretions at their
disposal, which may lead to substantial deviations from, if not
complete alterations of, official and top-down policy specifications.
These discretions or even deviations may take the from of
i. Modification of client demand: This may include various devices
to delay, deter or practically dissolve clients’ demands in
overcrowded and overloaded working situations.
ii. Modification of job conception: This may include strategies of
lowering the service standards or even alteration of the natures
and features of the services supposed to be delivered in order to
ease the excessive demands.
iii. Modification of client conception: This may include devices of
differentiating clients into non-mandatory categories and to
provide different service, e.g. “creaming off” the deserving or
educable and “marginalizing” the undeserving and trouble-
makers
2. Martin Rein’s down-ward puzzlement model
a. Michael Rein (1983) puts forth a theoretical perspective of
implementation by questioning the controllability of the
implementation policy and injecting the concept of puzzlement and
conflict into the study of policy implementation
b. Rein does not conceptualize the policy implementation process and
a clearly defined enforcement process, instead he contends that
“Implementation is understood as a declaration of government
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 preferences, mediated by a number of actors, who create a circular
process characterized by reciprocal power relations and
negotiations, then the actors must take into account three
potentially conflicting imperatives: (a) the legal imperative to do
what is legally required, (b) the rational-bureaucratic imperative to
do what is rationally defensible, and the consensual imperative to
do what can help to establish agreement among contending
influential parties who have a stake in the outcome.” (p.118)
c. Apart from the three components of the implementation process
and the three conflicting imperatives, Rein has further specifies
three types of primary actors in the implementation process. They
are
i. guideline developers,
ii. interest groups, and
iii. program administrators
d. In view of such a complicate arena of implementation, Rein
underlines that “policy implementation is a matter not only of power
but of puzzlement, of ‘men collectively wondering what to do.’”
(p.117) Such puzzlement is mainly derived from the following
scenarios (p. 117)
i. The program administrators and front-line works “do not know
what is required of them (by the legislation or executive policy)
(since they are asked either to pursue uncertain or evolving
goals or reconcile incompatible requirements)
ii. “The resources at hand are insufficient for the task.”
iii. The workers “lack the knowledge and skill (and technology) to
take action.”
e. The downward spiral of puzzlement
Rein further specifies that “When the purposes of policy are unclear
and incompatible, each successive stage in the process of
implementation provides a new context for seeking further
clarification. One of the consequences of passing ambiguity an
inconsistent legislation is that the arena of decision making shifts to
a lower level. The everyday practitioners become the ones who
resolve the lack of consensus through their concrete actions.”
(p.117)
3. Richard Elmore’s organizational model
a. Elmore asserts that one of the vital features of policy
implementation is “the process by which policies are translated into
administrative actions. …(And) the translation of an idea into action
involves certain crucial simplification.” (Elmore, 1993, p. 313)
b. Elmore further points out that “virtually all public policies are
implemented by large public organization. …(And) organizations
are simplifiers; they work on problems by breaking them into
discrete, manageable tasks and allocating responsibility for those
tasks to specialized units.” (1993, p. 313) In other words,
organizations assigned with the task to carry out policies and
programs may modify, simplify or even re-orientate the policies
measures to suit the internal structures and conventional
procedures of the organization.
c. Therefore, knowledge about the organizational model, which the
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 policy-implementing agencies subscribe to, is vital to understand
the policy implementation process. Elmore has then summarized
four organizational models commonly found in public-policy
delivering agencies. They are
i. Systems management model
ii. Bureaucratic process model
iii. Organizational development model
iv. Conflict and bargaining models
d. Different organizational models will translate a given policy in
different way. They will simplify or “localize” in accordance with their
i. central principle,
ii. power structure,
iii. decision making procedure, and
iv. implementation process

Policy Implementation as process of

translation and simplification through
large public organization

System Bureaucratic Organizational Conflict &

Management Process Development Bargaining
Model Model Model Model
Central Principle
Power Structure
Decision Making
Procedure
Implementation
Process

Discrete manageable tasks& responsibilities

assigned to specialized units

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 (B)
Beyond Top and Bottom Dichotomy:
The Third Generation of Implementation Theory

A. Barrett and Fudge's Action-Centered Approach (1981):

1. Distinction between policy-centered and action-centered approaches:
In reviewing the studies of policy implementation before the 1980s,
Barrett and Fudge classify them into two approaches
a. Policy-centered approach: This approach takes the policy mandate
as the foundation and crux of the implementation process.
i. It defines the process of implementation is the logic and
administrative lock-steps of "putting the policy into effect".
ii. The approach accepts the perspectives of the policy makers as
the primary concerns and implementation is but the act of
carrying out the policy-makers' prescription to the full.
iii. Accordingly, implementation is construed as a purely
administrative task of imposing of control and soliciting
compliance
b. Action-centered approach:
i. It defines policy implementation as series of actions, i.e. a
project or an agency, through which "getting something done" or
"making something happen" is the primary goal rather than
simply securing the compliance of the "street-level bureaucrats"
ii. The approach conceived policy implementation as performance
rather than conformance. The performance or action is
environment-dependent and context-dependent, hence
constraints imposed by the environment as well as perspectives
held by interaction partners must be taken into consideration as
the implementation process unfolds in the field
iii. According, implementation is conceived as both a negotiating
process as well as responsive process
2. Policy implementation as process of structuration
a. Susan Barrett specifically underlines the influence of Giddens'
Theory of Structuration on her formulation the Policy-Action Model.
(2004, p. 256-257)
b. Three conceptual constituents in the Theory of Structuration
(Giddens, 1984)
i. The agency and the agent:
- Agency is conceived as a flow of intentional action, i.e. a
project:
- Agent is defined as knowledgeable human actor, who
possesses the capacity of carrying out intentional action
ii. The Structure: Structure refers to those rules and resources,
which "make possible for discernibly similar social practices to
exist across varying spans of time and space.' (Giddens, 1984,
p.17) In other words, it refers to "rules and resources recursively
implicated in the reproduction of social systems." (Giddens,
1984, p. 377)
iii. Structuration: "Analysing the structuration of social systems
grounded in the knowledgeable activities of situated actors who
draw upon rules and resources in the diversity of action
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 contexts, are produced and reproduced in interaction. …The
constitution of agents and structures are not two independently
given sets of phenomena, a dualism, but represent a duality.
According to the notion duality of structure, the structural
properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of
the practices they recursively organized. Structure is not
'external' to individuals: as memory traces, and as instantiated in
social practices, it is in a sense more 'internal' than exterior to
their activities…. Structure is not to be equated with constraint
but is always both constraining and enabling." (P.25) For
example, the structure of a language system both constraints
and enable agents, who are knowledgeable to that language,
expressing herself and communicating with other agents in daily
interactions.
3. Policy implementation as action-and-response process
By applying the duality of structure and theory of structuration to the
study of policy implementation, policy and its implementation can be
reformulated as follows:
a. Policy can be conceived as a structure, i.e. rules and resources
implicating the recurrence of particular sets of social practices. To
take EMI policy as an example, it implicates that teachers and
students will recursively adopt English as medium of instruction in
their lessons.
b. The duality of the structure can be illustrated by the fact that EMI
policy as a structure is both the medium and the outcome of
implementation process.
c. Accordingly, policy implementation can no longer be conceptualized
as a single linear progression of policy —→ action, but as a
recursive and ongoing process of actions and responses.

B. Paul A. Sabatier’s advocacy coalition framework

1. Sabatier (1986/1993) puts forth the “advocacy coalition framework” as
a means to synthesize the top-down and bottom-up models in policy
implementation.
2. By advocacy coalition, Sabatier refers to “actors from various public
and private organizations who share a set of beliefs and who seek to
realize their common goals over time” in a specific policy system
(domain). (Sabatier, 1993, p. 284; and Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith,
1999, p. 120) From this definition, four essential features of advocacy
coalition can be deduced.
a. The composition of an advocacy coalition is made up of a variety of
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 groupings: (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1999, p. 118-119)
i. administrative agencies,
ii. legislative committee,
iii. interest groups,
iv. journalists, researchers, and policy analysts, and
v. actors at all levels of government active in policy formulation and
implementation.
b. The unit of analysis of policy implementation is neither the top-down
officials and their policy directives nor the street-level bureaucrats
and their accommodating strategies, but is the advocacy coalitions
in a specific policy problem or issue, i.e. policy subsystem, such as
higher education or air pollution control. (Sabatier, 1993, 284)
c. The delineative line or the integrative force of an advocacy coalition
is its belief system, which can be differentiated into three levels.
(Sabatier, 1993, p. 287; and Sabatier, 1999, p. 133)
i. The deep core: Fundamental normative and ontological axioms
ii. The policy core: Fundamental policy position concerning the
basic strategies for achieving core values within the subsystem
iii. Instrumental decisions and information searches for necessary
to implement policy core
d. A longer time frame, i.e. a decade or more should be adopted in
policy implementation so as to allow the policy process “to complete
at least one formulation/implementation/reformulation cycle, to
obtain a reasonably accurate portrait of success and failure, and to
appreciate the variety of strategies actors pursue over time.”
(Sabatier, 1993, p. 119)

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 RELATIVELY STABLE
PERAMETERS Degree of
1. Basic attributes of the POLICY SUBSYSTEM
consensus needed Coalition A Policy Coalition B
problem area (good) for major policy
2. Basic distribution of natural Brokers
change
resources
3. Fundamental socio-cultural
a. Policy beliefs a. Policy beliefs
values and social structure
b. Resources b. Resources
4. Basic Constitutional
structure (rules)
Strategy A1 Strategy B1
re guidance re guidance
instruments instruments

Constraints
and
Resources Decisions by Governmental
of Authorities
EXTERNAL (SYSTEM) EVENTS
1. Changes in socio-economic Subsystem
conditions Actors
2. Changes in public opinion Institutional Rules, Resource
3. Changes in systemic Allocations, and Appointments
governing coalition
4. Policy decisions and
impacts from other
subsystems Policy Outputs

Policy Impacts

(Sabatier, 1999, Figure 6.4)

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 3. Based on the conception of advocacy coalition, Sabatier constructs a
advocacy coalition framework for policy implementation into three
dimensions
a. The exogenous factors: In connection to the top-down approach of
policy implementation, Sabatier organizes the exogenous factors
into two sets
i. Relative stable parameters
ii. External (system) events
b. The intermediate factors: It includes another two sets of factors
i. Constraints and resources of subsystem actors (advocacy
coalitions)
ii. Degree of consensus needed for major policy change
c. The dynamics within the policy subsystem: Based on the bottom-up
approach, the framework put strong emphasis on the strategies and
conflicts played out by different advocacy coalitions found in the
policy subsystem under study. This part of the framework consists
of
i. Identifying the major advocacy coalitions (about 3 to 4) at work
in the policy subsystem
ii. Analyzing strategies adopted by advocacy coalitions to construct
the policy outcome in accordance with their own “belief
systems”.
iii. Analyzing the mediating process, through which the conflicts
among coalition can be mitigated, compromised or even
resolved by means of the work of the policy brokers.

C. The Conception of Governance and Policy Network: New Form of Policy

Implementation
1. The concept of governance
a. To understand the concept of governance, it is better to contrast it
with the concept of government. “Governance…is accomplished
through in ‘informal authority’ of diverse and flexible networks”,
while “government…is carried out through hierarchies or specifically
within administrations and by bureaucratic methods.” (Ball, 2012,
P.3) In other words, the landscapes of public policy and public
administration in the US and UK since 1980s, have witnessed a
shift from “the government of a unitary state to governance in and
by networks” (Bevir and Rhodes, 2003; Quoted in Ball, 2012, P. 2)
b. In the field of policy making and implementation, the traditional
bureaucratic model, which is characterized by clear and definite
rules and regulations, consistent and routine procedures, and well-
defined lines of authority and chains of commands, has been
replaced to a substantial extent by the model commonly called
“policy network.”
2. The concept of policy network:
To have a comprehensive understanding of the concept of policy
network, we can begin with the idea of network logics and its effects on
human society.
a. The constitution of the network logics
i. “The Atom is the past. The symbol of science for the next
century is the dynamical Net … Whereas the Atom represents
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 clean simplicity, the Net channels the messy power of
complexity. …The only organization capable of nonprejudiced
growth, or unguided learning is a network. All other typologies
limited what can happen. A network swarm is all edges and
therefore open ended any way you come at it. Indeed, the
network is the least structured organization that can be said to
have any structure at all. …In fact a plurality of truly divergent
components can only remain coherent in a network. No other
arrangement – chain, pyramid, tree, circle, hub – can contain
ture diversity work as a whole.” (Kelly, 1995, p.25-27 quoted in
Castells, 1996, note71, p. 61-62)
ii. “Network can now be materially implemented, in all kinds of
processes, and organizations, by newly available information
technologies. Without them, the networking logic would be too
cumbersome to implement. Yet this networking logic is needed
to structure the unstructured while preserving flexibaility, since
the unstructured is the driving force of innovation in human
activity” (Castells, 1996, p. 62)
b. The definitive features of network: The fluid structure of the network
and its IT infrastructure have constituted numbers of features which
is novel if not totally foreign to the bureaucratic structure of modern
society.
i. Flexibility: By flexibility, it refers to the state of affairs in which
“not only processes are reversible, but organizations and
institutions can be modified, and even fundamentally altered, by
rearrangeing their components. What is distinctive to the
configuration of the new technological paradigm is its ability to
reconfigure, a decisive feature in a society characterized by
constant change and organizational fluidity. ….Flexibility could
be a liberating force, but also a repressive tendency if the
rewriters of rules are always the powers that be. As Mulgan
wrote: ‘Networks are created not just to communicate, but also
to gain position, to outcommunicate.’” (Castells, 1996, p. 62)
ii. Convergence: Built on the above-mentioned features of IT
network, the network also equips with high degree of
compatibility and convergeability, with other systems.
iii. Mobility and autonomy: As informational technology and mass
communication turn from “wired” to “wireless”, they have
become much more mobile. IT and communication apparatuses
are no longer confined or pinned down to a definite location. As
a result, they have allowed their users to liberate from particular
physical localities and even social institutions, such as families,
workplaces, offices, and schools, etc. (Castell, 2008, Pp448-
449)
c. According to Castells analysis, two of the essential consequences
that the advent of the IT paradigm and network logic brings to bear
on human relationship are
i. Space of flow: Manuel Castells (1996) underlines that one of the
profound features brought about by the global-informational
infrastructure is the separation of simultaneous social practices
from physical contiguity, that is time-sharing social practices are
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 no long embedded in locality of close proximity and/or within
finite boundary. As a result, the traditional notion of space of
places has been transformed into space of flows. In
informational network, such as the internet, "no place exists by
itself, since the positions are defined by flows." There is
practically no boundary, no concepts of center or periphery, no
beginning or end. It is all but flows.
ii. Timeless time: Castells also underlines that the global-
Informational infrastructure has also transform the conception of
time in human society. Time is no longer comprehended in terms
of localities around the globe according to the international time-
zones. Human activities around the global can be coordinated
"simultaneously" in disregard of conception of local time, such as
morning, evening, late at night, etc. Furthermore, with the aid of
IT, the conventional linear, sequential, diachronic concepts of
time has been disturbed. "Timing becoming synchronic inflate
horizon, with no beginning, no end, no sequence." (Castells,
1996, p. 74)
d. The concept of network society: As a result, the modern society that
we are so familiar with and used to, i.e. a configuration of social
institutions, such as economy, polity, culture, and even social
identity, built on definite physical locality and duration in time, has
dissolved if not evaporated. In its replacement is a set of social
institutions that are organized around the logic of network, namely
operated in the flow of space and timeless time.
e. The concept of policy network:
i. By policy network, it refers to non-governmental and/or quasi-
governmental organizations, which are independent and
autonomous from one another but are connected in terms of
resource-exchanges, contracting-in or out, partnership, strategic
alliances, etc. They would jointly and collaboratively deliver
services and achieve objectives prescribed in public policies.
(Ball, 2012, P. 1-12)
ii. It has been conceived that policy network as a form of
governance that can be located between the continuum of
Hierarchy and Market. As a form of governance, it “is
characterized by the plurality of autonomous actors, as they are
found within markets, and the capacity to pursue collective goals
through deliberately coordinated actions, which is one of the
major elements of hierarchy.” (Raab and Kennis, 2007, 191)
3. The network governance and its effects
a. The hybrid structure of the network governance: Stephen J. Ball
summarizes his study of Networks, New Governance and
Education in UK that “what is emerging here is a new hybrid form
or mix of networks + bureaucracy + markets that is nonetheless
fashioned in the shadow of hierarchy.” (Ball, 2012, P. 133)
b. The operative principle of the network governance: Ball underlines
that working underlying the emerging form of network governance
is “the interplay or dialectic of performance management and
deconcentration” (Ball, 2012, P. 133) It refers to mechanism of
steering (in contrast to rolling) at a distance, such as policy
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 mechanism of output accountability, value for money, quality
assurance inspection, performance auditing, etc. “This is the
means of ‘governing through governance’―the state becomes a
contractor, performance monitor, benchmarker and target setter,
engaging in managing.” Ball, 2012, P. 133) As a result, the role of
the in policy delivery has undergone “a shift from ‘directing
bureaucracy’ to ‘managing networks’.” (Ball, 2012, P. 134)
c. The foundational epistemology of the network governance: Ball
points out that emergence from “the mix of market, hierarchies and
network” in network governance is a new type of player in policy
and service delivery, what he called the “new philanthropy”. By new
philanthropy it refers to “the direct relation of ‘giving’ to ‘outcome’
and the direct involvement of givers in philanthropic action and
policy community. …This new sensibilities of giving are based upon
the increasing use of commercial and enterprise models of practice
as a new generic form of philanthropic organization, practice and
language.” (Ball, 2012, P. 49) As a result, in the domain of network
governance, “public sector education, philanthropy and business
are increasingly blurred and increasingly convergent in relation to a
‘foundational epistemology’―which is ‘pragmatic
entrepreneurialsim’.” (Ball, 2012, P. 135)
d. Etho-politics of responsible self-government: Ball further asserts
that “new governance is a moral field in a dual sense. (i) There is a
bottom-up morality expressed in form of charitable giving and
hands-on philanthropy and CSR (corporate social responsibility)―a
taking on of responsibility for social problems. ….(ii) There is also a
top-down morality expressed and enacted―incitements to
responsibility for yourself and others―in forms like volunteering
participation in local voluntary association and mutualism.” (Ball,
2012, P. 135)
“Together, these commitments and incitements constitute a very
particular version of what Rose …calls ‘etho-politics’…. Self-
government or mutual government replaces state government:
‘etho-politics concerns itself with self-techniques necessary for
responsible self-government. Government, or ether governance,
acts upon ‘the ethical formation and the ethical self management of
individuals’ (Rose, 199, P. 475) as individual take on social
responsibilities that were formerly the domain of the state.” (Ball,
2012, P. 136)
e. In conclusion, Ball paraphrases Trainafillou that “‘we could broadly
characterize network governance as the diverse governmental
rationalities, technologies and norms that seek to govern by
promoting the self-steering capacities of individuals and
organizations.’” (Traintafillou, 2004, Quoted in Ball, 2012, P. 140)
Furthermore, Ball reiterates that “the change we are describing
here are situated in relation to a boarder set of practical techniques
of government rthat have in part the aim and effect of producing
new kinds of ‘active’ and responsible, entrepreneurial citizens and
workers.” (Ball, 2012, P. 140)

D. Policy Implementation as Learning

W.K. Tsang 15
Policy Studies in Education
 1. "Since the 1990s, implementation researchers have increasingly come
to see the problem of educational policy implementation as one of
teacher learning." (Coburn & Stein, 2006, p. 25). Within the third
generation of education-policy implementation, researches on policy
learning and cognition have grown into one of the prominence school
within the field.
2. At individual level, researches on teacher learning and cognition have
revealed that as primary implementers of policy, teachers do not
mechanically comply with policy directives but they would interpret and
make sense of the objectives, measures, outcomes and consequences
of the policy to be implemented. What researches on policy
implementation and cognition revealed "is not simply that implementing
agents choose to respond to policy but also what they understand
themselves to be responding to. …The fundamental nature of cognition
is that new information is always interpreted in light of what is already
understood. An individual's prior knowledge and experience, including
tacitly held expectations and beliefs about how the world work, serve
as lens influencing what the individual notices in the environment and
how the stimuli that are noticed are processed, encode, organized, and
subsequently interpreted." (Spillane et al., 2006, p. 49)
3. At community level, recent researches on educational policy
implementation also revealed that "sense-making is not a solo affair; an
individual's situation or social context fundamentally shapes how
human cognition affects policy implementation." Education-policy
learning by definition as well as by nature takes place in institutional
sitting, i.e. schools. In other words, ‘social agents' thinking and action is
situated in institutional sectors that provide norms, rules, and definition
of the environment that both constrain and enable action." (Spillane et
al, 2006, p. 56) As a result, researches on professional community
practice and learning community formation have become a prominent
area of study in the field of education-policy implementation. (Odden,
1991; Honig, 2006) One of the important approaches to teacher
learning as a professional community is Etienne Wenger’s theory of
social learning theory (Wenger, 1998) To Wenger learning is not just a
cognitive activity of information acquisition and processing undertaking
by a single individual. By social learning, it emphasizes the social and
interactive dimension of learning. As a result, learning is more than a
process of information acquisition, it is a complex process consisting of
a. lived experiences of sense making and meaning constructing;
b. mutual engagement of practices of knowledge and skills and
constituting standards of excellence of competence in a craft, a
trade and a profession;
c. built on the shared meanings and practice, a common culture, a
community and lifeworld will emerge among fellow workers;
d. members of the craft and profession will nurture a sense of belong
and commitment to the trade and the community of practice, i.e. an
identity.
This social learning process can be represented as follows.

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 4. At school-organization level, policy implementation represents a
process of dissemination of policy imperatives, task specifications and
working routines within the ranks and files of the implementing
organization. As a result, organizations, school-organizations in
particular have be studied as the learning organization. Among the
proliferating approaches to learning organization, three of the more
representative are outline as follows
a. Ikujiro Nonaka’s Knowledge-Creation Organization
i. Two dimensions of knowledge creation
- Epistemological
- Ontological
ii. Two types of knowledge
- Tacit knowledge
- Explicit knowledge
iii.Four models of knowledge conversion
- Socialization: Sharing and creating tacit knowledge through
direct experience; individual to individual
- Externalization: Articulating tacit knowledge through dialogue
and reflection; individual to group
- Combination: Systemizing and applying explicit knowledge and
information: group to organization
- Internalization: Learning and acquiring new tacit knowledge in
practice; organization to individual
iv.Knowledge spiral
- Field building
- Dialogue
- Linking explicit knowledge/networking
- Learning by doing
v. Spiral of organizational knowledge creation

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 b. Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline of the learning organization
i. The five learning disciplines
- Personal mastery
- Mental models
- Shared vision
- Team learning
- System thinking
ii. System thinking - The fifth discipline
iii.The Framework of learning organization
- Implicate (generative order)
- The Essence of the LO
- The architecture of LO
- The wheel of learning
- Results
c. Kenneth Leithwood’s theory of learning school
i. Learning organization is defined as “a group of people pursuing
common purpose (individual purposes as well) with a collective
commitment to regularly weighing the value of those purpose,
modifying them when makes sense, and continuously
developing more effective and efficient ways of accomplishing
those purpose.” (Leitrhwood & Aitken, 1995, p.63)
ii. Five constituents of the framework of the learning organization
- Stimulus for learning
- Organizational-learning process
- Out-of-conditions
- School conditions
- School leadership
- Outcome

E. New Directions in Education Policy Implementation Studies:

Confronting Contingencies and Complexity
1. Having reviewed researches on implementation of education
policy in the US since the 1960s, Meredith I. Honig suggests that
a distinct approach to policy implementation research has
constituted since the 1990s. These education policy
implementation researchers shared a number of epistemological
stances.
a. These researchers “are less likely than those in past decades to
seek universal truths about implementation. Rather, they aim to
uncover how particular policies, people, and places interact to
produce results and they seek to accumulate knowledge about
these contingencies. …This orientation to uncovering
contingencies―what I refer to …as confronting complexity―stems
not from a lack of rigor or scientific―basis for educational
research but rather from the basic the basic operational realities of
complex systems in educational and many other arenas.” (Honig,
2006, P. 20)
b. These “researchers increasingly reflects the orientation that
variation in implementation is not a problem to be avoided but part
and parcel of the basic operation of complex system; variation
should be better understood and harnessed to enhance the
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 ‘capacity of program participants to produce desired results’ This
view stems in part from contemporary research on student and
teacher learning that suggests one size does not fit all when it
comes to educational improvement.” (Honig, 2006, P. 21)
c. “This orientation also reflects relatively recent education policy
implementation findings about sense making, interpretation, and
learning as unavoidable dimensions of implementation process.”
(Honig, 2006, P. 21)
d. This research orientation “is more deeply theoretical” in a sense
that it “aims not to develop a universal theory about
implementation as an overall enterprise but to use theory to
illuminate how particular dimensions of policies, people, and
places come together to shape how implementation unfold.” (Honi,
2006, P. 21)
e. Within this research orientation, “qualitative research design and
method have become important sources of knowledge. …IN
particular, strategic qualitative cases for implementation―cases
that provide special opportunities to build knowledge about little
understood and often complex phenomena―have long informed
implementation in other field and seem to becoming more
standard fare within education.” (Honig, 2006, P. 22)
2. In light of these recent developments in the field, Honig proposes a
three-dimension model for education policy implementation researches.

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E. From Policy Implementation to Policy Enactment: How Schools Do
Policy
Stephen J. Ball and his colleagues published their most recent
research on education policy implementation in 2011 in a book
entitled How Schools Do Policy: Policy Enactments in Secondary
Schools. The work attempt to go beyond the traditional research
orientation of policy implementation, instead they call the process
“policy enactment”. More importantly, Ball and his colleagues
attempt to substantiate Foucalt’s of discourse, power, and subject
within the policy process of enactment (and implementation) in the
school contexts of UK.
1. Concept of policy enactment: Ball et al. begin their book with a
distinction between policy implementation studies and their policy
enactment studies.
a. Policy implementation: Ball et al. indicate traditional policy
implementation studies that “explore how policies are put into
practice talk of ‘implementation’ which is generally seen either as
‘top down’ or ‘bottom up’ process of making policy work, and these
studies ‘stress the demarcation between policy and
implementation.’ (Grantham, 2001: 854)” (Ball, 2012, P. 6)
Furthermore, they underline that these “policy implementation
studies conceive of the school itself as a somewhat homogenous
and de-contextualised organization that is an undifferentiated
‘whole’ into which various policies are slipped or filtered into
place.” (Ball et al. 2012, P. 5)
b. Policy enactment: Ball et al. assert, “In contrast, we see policy
enactment as a dynamic and non-linear aspect of the whole
complex that make up the policy process, of which policy in school
is just one part.” (Ball et al., 2012, P. 6) Ball et al. has highlighted
that this complex, dynamic and non-linear process is made up of
i. re-contextualization process,
ii. interpretation process,
iii. translation process, and
iv. transforming policy into policy work in policy actors
2. Policy re-contextualization:
a. The first conceptual unit in Ball et al.’s theory of policy enactment
is the policy context. Ball et al. underline that the major of
education policy studies have been conducted in “de-
contextualized” orientation. These studies more or least aim at
constituting universal and generic policy measures, which can be
implemented to most if not all schools. Ball et al. indicate that
“research texts in education policy rarely convey any sense of the
built environment from which the ‘data’ are elicited or the financial
or human resources available―policy is dematerialized (Ball et al.,
2012, P. 20) as well as de-contextualized.
b. In contrast to this research orientation, Ball et al. emphasize that
“context is mediating factor in the enactment work done in schools
―and it is unique to each school, however similar they may
initially seem to be. In the course of the fieldwork, we have
become alerted to the prominence of context in many case study
schools’ policy decision and activities.” (Ball et al. 2012, P. 40)
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Policy Studies in Education
 c. More specifically, Ball et al. assert that “Policy creates context, but
context also precedes policy.” (Ball, 2012, P. 19) Ball et al. further
specify the contextual differences found in their case study
schools as follows.
“Policies enter different resource environments; schools have
particular histories, buildings and infrastructures, staff profiles,
leadership experiences, budgetary situations and teaching and
learning challenges (e.g. proportions of children with special
educational need (SEN), English as an additional language (EAL),
behavioural difficulties, ‘disabilities’ and social and economic
‘deprivations’) and the demands of context interaction. School
differ in their student intake, school ethos and culture, they engage
with local authorities and experience pressures from league tables
and judgements made by national bodies such as Ofsted.” (Ball et
al. 2012, P. 19)
d. Accordingly, Ball et al. have synthesized the “contextual dimension
of policy enactment as follows

3. Policy interpretation: IT has been well documented in studies on

education reform in recent decades that teachers as sensible and
educated professionals, they will and have to “make sense” of the
policy texts and mandates before they enact them, i.e. incorporate
them into their role performances and even daily classroom routines.
a. Concept of policy interpretation: “Interpretation is an initial reading,
a making sense of policy―what does this text mean to us? What do
we have to do? De we have to do anything? It is a political and
substantive reading―a ‘decoding’ which is both retrospective and
prospective.” (Ball, 2012, P. 41)
b. Situated interpretation: Furthermore, this acts of reading, decoding
and interpreting are “done in relation to the culture and history of
the institution and the policy biographies of the key actors. It is a
process of meaning-making which is related the smaller to the
bigger picture; that is, institutional priorities and possibilities to
political necessities. These situated interpretations are set over and
against what else is in play, what consequences might ensure from
responding or not responding.” (Ball et al. 2012, P. 43-44)
c. Articulation and authorization of interpretation: Policy interpretations
are not individual acts within the bureaucratic contexts of schools.
“The authoritative and authorial interpretations” of particular policy

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Policy Studies in Education
 text have to be formally articulated in staff meetings, briefing
sessions, work group discussions, written guidelines and task
specifications. As a result, these “articulation and authorization” will
“make something into a priority, assign it a value, high or low.” (p.
44-45) Hence, interpretation is an institutional political process.” (P.
45)
d. Formation of Interpretive communities: These situated and
institutionalized interpretations of policy texts in schools are not
consensually and equally shared among teachers and other staffs
within a school. It is because these policy interpreters are
hierarchically positioned within the power context of a school. They
will decode and interpret policy text with their primary concerns,
vested interests, in short within their own “meaning contexts”. As a
result, interpreters sharing similar positions or situations may and
will share similar interpretations and form specific interpretive
communities.
4. Policy translation: The third conceptual unit of the policy enactment
theory is translation. As Ball et al. suggest “policy texts “cannot simply
be implemented! They have to be translated from text to action―put
into ‘practice―in relation to history and to contexts, with the resources
available. (Ball et al., 2012, P. 3)
a. Tactics of translation: Ball et al. reveal in their findings that
translation of policy text and its interpreted meanings into school
and classroom practice is “an iterative process” makes up of
sequence of complex “tactics.” They “include talk, meetings, plans,
events, learning walks, as well as producing artefacts and
borrowing ideas and practices from other schools, purchasing and
drawing on commercial materials and official websites, and being
supported by LA advisors.” (Ball et al., 2012, P. 45)
b. Translation in mandated routines: Policy translation can also take
the form of imperatives. In Ball et al.’s case study schools in UK, it
takes the forms of “open class observation”, “peer observation” or
“observation week”. Ball et al. underlines that “observation is a
tactic of policy translation, an opening up of practice to change, a
technique of power enacted by teachers one upon the other―’a
marvelous machine’ (Foucault, 1979,:202) ―and a source of
evidence of policy activity.” (Ball et al. 2012, P. 46)
c. The outcome of translation: From these tactics and imperatives of
policy translation, “the language of policy is translated into language
of practice, words into action, abstraction into inactive processes.
Moreover, “translation is simultaneously a process of invention and
compliance. As teachers engage with policy and bring their
creativity to bear on its enactment, they are also captured by it.
They change it, in some ways, and it changes tem.” (Ball et al.,
2012, P. 48)
5. Policy actors: Ball et al. point out that “our data indicates very clearly
that actors in schools are positioned differently and take up different
positions in relation to policy.” (Ball et al., 2012, P. 49) These
positioned policy actors have rendered different interpretation and
translation to a particular policy and as a result have brought about
different “policy work”. Ball et al. have categorized eight types of policy
W.K. Tsang 22
Policy Studies in Education
 actors and policy work from their data. They are as follows. (Ball et al.,
2012, Table 3.1, P. 49)

Policy actors Policy work

Narrators Interpretation, selection and enforcement of meanings

Entrepreneurs Advocacy, creativity and integration

Outsiders Entrepreneurship, partnership, and monitoring

Transactors Accounting, reporting, monitoring/supporting, facilitating

Enthusiasts Investment, creativity, satisfaction and career

Translators Production of texts, artifacts and events

Critics Union representatives: monitoring of management,

maintaining counter-discourse

Receivers Coping, defending and dependency

F. Policy Subjects: How Policy “Do” Schools, Teachers and Students

Stephen J. Ball and his colleagues’ book, How Schools Do Policy, has not
only revealed how schools and their teachers interpret, translate and enact
education policies; it has also appled Michel Foucault’s conception of
discourse, power, subject and panopticism to reveal how policy “do”
(subjugate) schools, teachers and students.
1. Foucault’s concept of power and subject: In an essay entitled “The
Subject and Power” (1982) Foucault reflect on his work on power by
underlining that
a. “I would like to say, first of all, what has been the goal of my work
during the last twenty years. It has not been to analyze the
phenomena of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of such an
analysis. My objective, instead, has been to create a history of the
different mode by which, in our culture, human beings are made
subjects... Thus it is not power, but the subject, which is the
general them of my research.” (1982, 208-209)
b. “My work has dealt with three modes of objectification which
transform human being into subjects.” (1982, p. 208)
i. “The first of the modes of inquiry which try to give themselves
the status of sciences for example,
- the objectification of the speaking subject in grammaire
generale, philology and linguistics;....
- the objectification of the productive subject, the subject who
labors, in the analysis of wealth and economics;.....
- the objectification of the sheer fact of being alive in natural
history and biology.” (p. 208)
(The most representative work is The Order of Things: An
Archaeology of Human Sciences, 1966)
ii. “In the second part of my work, I have studied the objectivizing
W.K. Tsang 23
Policy Studies in Education
 of the subject in what I shall call ‘dividing practices’. ...Examples
are the mad and the sane, the sick and the healthy, the
criminals and the ‘good boys.” (p. 208)
(The representative works are Madness and civilization: A
History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, 1961; The Birth of the
Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perspective, 1963; Discipline
and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 1975)
iii. “Finally, I have sought to study...the way a human being turns
him or herself into a subject. ...I have chosen the domain of
sexuality - how men have learn to recognize themselves as
subjects of ‘sexuality’.” (p. 208)
(History of Sexuality, vol. 1-3, 1982-1-84 are of course the
representative works)
2. Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power and Panopticism
a. Disciplinary power: In his book entitled Discipline and Punish: The
Birth of Prison (1977/75), Foucault reveals how power with its
technique and technology has turn humans into manipulatable,
useful and docile bodies.
i. He asserts, “In every society, the body was in the grip of very
strict power, which imposed on it constraints, prohibition or
obligations.” “Docility …joins the analyzable body (intelligible
body) with the manipulatable body (useful body).” (1979/75, p.
136)
ii. Foucault further specifies the techniques of power which
discipline human body into submission and docility as
disciplinary power. It refers to the techniques “which made
possible the meticulous control of the operations of body, which
assured the constant subjection of its forces and imposed upon
then a relation of docility-utility.” (1979/75, p. 137) And one of
the exemplar of such technology of disciplinary power is
“panopticism”
b. Panopticism: Foucault’s concept of panopticism refers to a form of
technology of disciplinary power which creates a situation in which
its subjects are in constant and unverifiable surveillance that they
are forced to self-disciplined and complete compliance. Foucault
has specified this technology as follows.
i. “Bentham's Panopticon is the architectural figure ….. We know
the principle on which is was based: at the periphery, an
annular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower is pierced
with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring;
peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends
the whole width of the building; they have two windows, one on
the inside, corresponding to the windows of the tower; the other,
on the outside, allows the light to cross the cell from one end to
the other. All that is needed, then is to place a supervisor in the
central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a
condemned man a worker or a schoolboys. By the effect of
blacklighting, one can observe from the tower, standing out
precisely against the light, the small captive showers in the cells
of the periphery. …. Visibility is a trap." (Foucault, 1977, p. 200)
ii. “The major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a
W.K. Tsang 24
Policy Studies in Education
 state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the
automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the
surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is
discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should
tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that is
architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and
sustaining a power relation independent of the person who
exercises it; in short, that the inmate should be caught up in a
power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.” (, p.
201)
iii. The Panopticon has “laid down the principle that power should
be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly
have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from
which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never
know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but
must be sure that he may always be so.” (, p.201)
3. Policy subjects under the “standard policy” in UK schools:
a. In Chapter Six of the book, which is entitled Policy Subjects, Ball
et al. underline that they have used “ideas drawn from Foucault’s
Discipline and Punish to think about some of the ways in which
policies are rendered into practices through a complex of
techniques, procedures and artefacts ― or ‘force relations’. Here
teachers are both the enactors of techniques, which are intended
to make students visible and productive, and are themselves
enmeshed within a disciplinary programme of visibility and
production, a ‘dense network of vigilent and multi-directional gaze’
(Hoffman, 2010: 31). …Here the teacher is actor and object and
subject, caught up in a marvellous machinery of policy.” (Ball et al.,
2012, P. 72)
b. The “marvellous machinery of policy” Ball et al. refers to are series
of policy measures implemented in UK schools intended to raise
the standards of UK students in public examinations as well as in
international studies of student assessments on achievements.
Ball et al. asserts that these series policy texts have constituted a
“delivery chain” of the “standard policy” in UK school system.
c. Subjugating teachers, students and schools: Ball et al. have
revealed from their data that the machinery of policy or in
Foucaultian terms technique of disciplinary power has subjugated
teachers, students and schools in numbers of ways.
i. Focus on standard: Ball et al. underline that “in almost all of
the interviews at all the schools, ‘standards’ are identified as
the major priority. ….The word ‘focus’ is used repeatedly in
interviews to describe the orientation of schools and staff tot
eh question of standards at all levels.” (Ball et al., 2012, P. 76-
77) These repeated and consensual emphases on ‘focus’
signify that UK teachers are brought to the situation of
“bringing a lens to bear, a close-up view, a point of
concentration, bring things into visibility.” (Ball, 2012, P. 77).
ii. Actualization into actions and practices: These verbal and
textual emphases on standard are further required to be
substantiated into “precise, organized and efficient action. It is
W.K. Tsang 25
Policy Studies in Education
 also used in relation to different subjects and objects. That is,
teachers, students and schools, and pedagogies, procedures,
performances, data and initiatives, all of these objects and
subjects are to be ‘focused’ on.” (Ball et al., 2012, P. 77) As a
result, all personnel and their practices in schools are brought
to bear under the disciplinary power of the standard policy.
iii. Objectification the subjects: Based on their practices and
performances, teachers, students and schools are then
“objectified” into categories and strata. For example, “students
are objectified as talented, borderline, underachieving,
irredeemable, etc.” (Ball et al. 2012, P. 78) Teachers may also
be objectified as “value-adding” or non-value-adding teachers.
And schools will be labeled as “failing schools” and put against
the rankings in “school league table. Together they have been
objectified into subjects of the standard policy.
iv. The Obviousness and necessity of the standard policy: Ball et
al. have revealed that “most teachers in our study appeared to
be thoroughly ‘enfolded’ into and part of the calculated
technologies of performance. Its ‘obviousness’ needs no
explanation.” (Ball et al. 2012, P. 79) Ball et al. underline that
“the rhetoric of necessity legitimates, generates and
naturalizes a varied and complex set of practices and values,
which colonise a great deal of school activities and teacher-
student interaction.” (ball et al., Ball, et al., 2012, P. 79)

Additional Reference
Castells, Maneul (1996) The Rise of Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
Foucault, Michel (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
London: Penguin Books.
Foucault, Michel (1982) “The Subject and Power” Pp. 208-226. In H.L. Dreyfus
and P. Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and
Hermeneutics, 2nd Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

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