ANALYSING POLICY DELIVERY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: THE CASE OF STREET CRIME AND ANTI‐SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
| Author | HELEN MATHERS,DAVID RICHARDS,MARTIN J. SMITH,ANDREW GEDDES |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2010.01892.x |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2010.01892.x
ANALYSING POLICY DELIVERY IN THE UNITED
KINGDOM: THE CASE OF STREET CRIME
AND ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
MARTIN J. SMITH, DAVID RICHARDS, ANDREW GEDDES AND HELEN MATHERS
For all governments, the principle of how and whether policies are implemented as intended is
fundamental. The aim of this paper is to examine the difficulties for governments in delivering
policy goals when they do not directly control the processes of implementation.This paper examines
two case studies – anti-social behaviour and street crime – and demonstrates the difficulties faced
by policy-makers in translating policy into practice when the policy problems are complex and
implementation involves many actors.
INTRODUCTION
For all governments, the principle of how and whether policies are implemented as
intended at the stage they are formulated is fundamental. The aim of this paper is
to examine the issues faced by government in delivering policy goals when it does
not directly control the processes of implementation. The issue of delivery became an
increasingly central theme of the last Labour administration (1997–2010). As former Prime
Minister, Tony Blair, stated:
The principal challenge is to shift focus from policy advice to delivery. Delivery
means outcomes. It means project management. It means adapting to new situations
and altering rules and practice accordingly. It means working not in traditional
departmental silos. It means working naturally with partners outside of Government.
It’s not that many individual civil servants aren’t capable of this. It is that doing it
requires a change of operation and of culture that goes to the core of the Civil Service.
(Tony Blair 24 February 2004)
Indeed, by creating the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, the Labour government estab-
lished elaborate machinery specifically aimed at improving the delivery of government
policy (see, for example, Richards and Smith 2006a; Richards 2008). To understand the
processes of delivery from policy decision making to implementation, this paper focuses
on ‘delivery’ of core government priorities in the areas of street crime and anti-social
behaviour. It traces the distribution of policy from those who decide policy to how those
on the ground determine the outcome. The paper reveals that the degree of autonomy
experienced by actors when translating policies into action results in considerable differ-
ences between policy intentions and policy outcomes, even in policy areas where there is
considerable intervention by the core executive. Hence it suggests that policy processes
are better defined as ‘fields’ rather than ‘chains’. The paper begins by examining the
issues surrounding implementation, before looking at the Labour government’s focus o n
improving delivery. The paper then uses the case studies of street crime and anti-social
behaviour to map the processes that occur from policy design to outcomes.
Martin Smith, David Richards, Andrew Geddes and Helen Mathers are in the Department of Politics, University of
Sheffield.
Public Administration Vol. 89, No. 3, 2011 (975–1000)
©2011 The Authors. Public Administration ©2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,
UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
976 MARTIN J. SMITH ET AL.
THE PROBLEMS OF IMPLEMENTATION
There is a considerable literature analysing the ways in which hierarchical, bureaucratic
forms of government often fail to deliver intended policy outcomes (see, for example,
Pressman and Wildavsky 1973; Lipsky 1980; O’Toole 1986; Marsh and Rhodes 1992;
Hill and Hupe 2002; Hill 2003). Consequently, much of the ‘governance literature’ has
examined the way in which hierarchy has been replaced as a mechanism of delivery.
As Considine and Lewis (1999, p. 467) argue: ‘In its place has emerged a variety of
bureaucracies, temporary and fixed, public and private’. These postulate that, rather than
government directly controlling the delivery of public goods, more effective mechanisms,
including ‘hands-off’ approaches, operated either through market incentives or by diver-
sifying the delivery process so that agencies on the ground work together and have
some autonomy to decide how best to deliver public goods. The paradox for government
reformers is that as more complex forms of policy delivery have been developed to
improve effectiveness an d efficiency, the m ore difficult it has become for governments
to control the processes of delivery involving multiple agencies. In Whitehall circles,
this is often referred to as the ‘rubber-lever syndrome’. It may be that reform has made
implementation more difficult. Governments usually make policy, but they normally
rely on other organizations and individuals to deliver their goals, even in unitary and
centralized systems such as the United Kingdom (see, for example, Rhodes 1988). Of
course, with the move from hierarchical, bureaucratic governance structures to systems
based on privatization, partnership and markets, the difficulties of implementation have
been exacerbated.
In the last quarter-century, the aim of new public management has been to allow
managers greater discretion and to increase competition in the provision of public
services. In so doing, delivery mechanisms have become more complex and, perhaps,
more difficult for politicians to control (see, for example, Rhodes 1997). As Flinders (2007,
p. 1) suggests, the state has changed and: ‘...at the heart of the transformation rests a
preference for a smaller policy-orientated central department that acts as a ‘‘hub’’ and
seeks to steer complex networks of quasi-autonomous organisations’. The paradox of
political systems based on the Westminster model is that while ultimate authority lies
with the minister – they are held as the author of a policy (see, for example, Judge 1993;
Smith 1999) – public management reforms have increased the contribution, authority
and responsibility of different levels of public sector managers (see, for example, Gains
2003; Rhodes et al. 2008, p. 123; Richards 2008). A key response to improve control over
the delivery of services has been the application of the Principal-Agent model. The basis
of this model is to introduce incentive structures, such as increased resources or greater
autonomy, to ensure that actors responsible for service delivery (the agents – that is,
street-level bureaucrats) provide what the superordinate organization (the principal –
that is, the core executive) wants without the need to resort to direct command or
control. One of the issues raised by the literature on governance is that this approach has
often made the process of policy delivery more complex, exacerbating the potential for
unforeseen and unintended consequences (see, for example, Le Grand 2003; Barber 2007;
Richards 2008; Smith 2009).
The Labour government after 1997, but in particular in its second term (2001–5),
put considerable effort into improving the delivery of policy (and, at least rhetorically,
proposing that policy should be evidence based: see Sanderson 2009) and ensuring that
agents are more responsive to the demands of the principal. But the argument here is
Public Administration Vol. 89, No. 3, 2011 (975–1000)
©2011 The Authors. Public Administration ©2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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