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University of California Press

Implementation

How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Or, Why It's Amazing that Federal Programs Work at All, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation
by Jeffrey L. Pressman (Author), Aaron Wildavsky (Author)
Paperback
Price: $29.95 / £25.00
Publication Date: Jun 1984
Edition: 3rd Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780520053311
Trim Size: 5.5 x 8.25
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About the Book

Three substantial new chapters and a new preface in this third edition explore and elaborate the relationship between the evaluation of programs and the study of their implementation. The authors suggest that tendencies to assimilate the two should be resisted. Evaluation should retain its enlightenment function while the study of implementation should strengthen its focus on learning.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Participants
Preface to the Third Edition: Implementation and Evaluation as Learning
Preface to the First Edition
1. Appearances
2. Formulating Policy
3. Trials of Implementation
4. Two Smaller Programs: Business Loans and the Health Center
5. The Complexity of Joint Action
6. Learning from Experience
7. Economic Theory and Program Implementation
8. Implementation as Evolution
9. What Should Evaluation Mean to Implementation?
10. Implementation as Mutual Adaptation
11. Implementation as Exploration
Appendix: EDA Chronology
Bibliography
Subject Index
Index of Authors Cited

Reviews

"Of universal application . . . this is an analysis of why the urban crisis has proved so intractable. . . . Nobody who reads this book will ever again be surprised by the gulf between promise and performance in a program to help revive or save or rebuild the country's cities."
— New York Times
"There are innumerable ways to profit from this fully documented yet highly readable tale of earnest but relatively unsuccessful ways of spending the taxpayers' money."
— National Review
"They make an unimpeachable case. for close attention to the modes of implementing policy, and . . . constitute the first solid survey of the administrative thickets through which future urban policies will have to make their way."
— New Republic
"The potential good that can come out of this study cannot be exaggerated."
— Virginia Quarterly Review