Implementation Equilibria in the Adoption of Innovation in Local Bureaucracies

• In Event: Poster Session: Experiments in Political Behavior & Public Administration & Canadian Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: The Emerging Issues in the Modern Administrative State

Abstract

Over the past three decades, intricate and multi-component urban policies such as "quality of life policing," waste management, and enterprise zones have been adopted by numerous cities. In some cases, this adoption has been almost clone-like --cities have implemented others' policies down to the finest detail-- whereas in other cases, implementation has been much more partial. To explore this policy diffusion asymmetry, this paper models urban policy innovations as sets of interlocking routines and develops a methodology to capture levels of early implementation --from the symbolic adoption of a few policy components loosely coupled, to the full implementation of key components and their interdependencies. Applying the model to the policing case mentioned above, I argue that urban innovations designed as sets of highly-interlocked routines only reaches an organizational equilibrium when components are highly coupled (1) to one another, or (2) to pre-existing routines. By opening the black box of implementation in urban policy diffusion processes, I aim to shed light on the conditions under which a newly-implemented urban program institutionalizes to become part of the organization's technical core, and to contribute to the literature on the organizational behavior of local bureaucracies.

Author

• Laura Schenker, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies