Street-Level Bureaucrats and the Implementation of the Smoking Ban in Cross-Agency Contexts

• In Event: 4147 - Health Policy: Fascinating Research

Abstract

The non-implementation of political decisions is a major challenge of contemporary political life. Policy analysis has devoted careful attention to implementation gaps resulting from administrative non-compliance with political orders. However, the fact that political authorities actually want to enforce all policies should not be taken as granted. This article proposes a conceptual model that systematically accounts for cross-agency divergence and convergence processes both at the political level and at the street-level. We find that in inter-sectoral policies, dissent between different heads of agencies (political level) or between different groups of implementing bureaucrats (street level) rather than dissent between the political and the street-level are the main causes 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 at the light of an inter-sectoral policy. It advocates a stronger dialogue between street-level bureaucracy and policy coordination literatures, and nuances the conceptualization of (non-)compliance in a cross-agency context.

Authors

• Céline Mavrot, University of Bern

• Susanne Hadorn, University of Bern