When politicians do not care for the policy: Street-level compliance in cross-agency contexts
Published date | 01 July 2023 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0952076721996516 |
Author | Céline Mavrot,Susanne Hadorn |
Date | 01 July 2023 |
Article
When politicians do not
care for the policy:
Street-level compliance
in cross-agency contexts
C
eline Mavrot
KPM Center for Public Management, University of Bern,
Switzerland; David Geffen School of Medicine, University of
California Los Angeles (UCLA), USA
Susanne Hadorn
KPM Center for Public Management, University of Bern,
Switzerland
Abstract
The non-implementation of political decisions is a major challenge of contemporary
political life. Policy analysis has devoted careful attention to implementation gaps result-
ing from administrative non-compliance with political orders. However, the fact that
political authorities actually want to enforce all policies should not be taken for granted.
This article proposes a conceptual model that systematically accounts for cross-agency
divergence and convergence processes both at the political and at the street levels. We
find that in inter-sectoral policies, dissent between different heads of agencies (political
level) or between groups of implementing bureaucrats (street level) rather than dissent
between the political and the street-level can be a major cause of non-compliance.
Based on a comparative dataset on the implementation of the smoking ban in 12 Swiss
states, the article analyzes cross-agency fragmentation processes. It advocates a stron-
ger dialogue between street-level bureaucracy and policy coordination literatures, and
nuances the conceptualization of (non-)compliance in a cross-agency context.
Corresponding author:
C
eline Mavrot, KPM Center for Public Management, University of Bern, Schanzeneckstrasse 1 – P.O. Box,
CH-3001 Bern, Switzerland.
Email: celine.mavrot@kpm.unibe.ch
Public Policy and Administration
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0952076721996516
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2023, Vol. 38(3) 267–286
268 Public Policy and Administration 38(3)
Keywords
Cross-agency competition, cross-agency coordination, policy compliance, street-level
bureaucrats, street-level divergence
Introduction
Policy compliance and the conditions under which the designing and implementa-
tion structure of a public intervention could enhance compliance has received
much attention in the policy analysis field. Research is often “motivated by the
question of how to better align policymakers’ intentions with street-level imple-
mentation actions” (Gofen, 2014: 477) and has thus devoted much attention to the
conflicting goals between policymakers and implementers, identifying various
ways by which the political will can be transposed, distorted or even ignored by
the street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) (May and Wood, 2003; Meyers and Vorsanger,
2003). The discretion of bureaucrats in implementing policies has received vast
attention (Tummers and Bekkers, 2014), whereby the discussion about how and
to which extent politics has to control bureaucrats’ discretion has historically held
prominent place in public administration scholarly debate (Rosser and Mavrot,
2017). However, the assumption that policymakers’ intentions represent a unified
and coherent will is far from being an empirical reality (Neveu, 2015). The ques-
tions of interagency coordination (Peters, 2006), rivalry (Hassenteufel, 2003: 5) and
fragmentation (Gortmaker et al., 2011) as well as conflicting priorities (Palley,
2006) or the lack of political agreement on a given issue (Torenvlied, 1996) have
also been identified as core challenges.
The potential causes for non-compliance thus not only lie at the street-level
itself, but may sometimes be rooted in interagency dissents at the political level.
Based on these insights, the core question this paper examines through an empir-
ical investigation is how different cross-agency configurations influence street-level
compliance. We argue that the literature on policy compliance can benefit from the
literature on policy coordination. Taking into account the complex interplays
between different administrative agencies involved in the implementation of a
policy, and the possible political dissents at the head of agencies, allows for a
non-linear understanding of policy compliance.
This issue is topical because most crucial contemporary societal challenges
require inter-sectoral interventions and are strongly affected by cross-agency diver-
gence issues. In our example, the focus is on the necessary and often lacking
cooperation between health, security, economic, and building and transport agen-
cies in the enforcement of smoking bans. The article focuses on two overlooked
aspects of policy (non-)compliance. First, it investigates cross-agency divergences
at the political level, at the light of conflicting policy clientele and conflicting policy
objectives. Second, we focus on the street-level by analyzing the relationships
between SLBs from different agencies whose cooperation is required to enforce
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