| This is a study of public policy implementation. The focus is on local-level, successful implementation endeavors. The theoretical framework used runs counter to typical analyses that stress non-local organizational and institutional arrangements, impediments to successful implementation, and impervious sources of slippage in policy intent. It is argued that successful, local-level implementation is a function of: (a) legal clarity surrounding organizational, institutional, and programmatic relationships; (b) efforts by implementing organizations to lead, absorb negative policy effects, and invoke flexible problem-solving routines; and (c) the technical competency, multiple-role make-up, and centrality of the implementing organizations within local policy arenas.;Both data sources provided support for the model's main arguments. Factor analyses of the survey data revealed dimensions corresponding to the model's themes, further supported by content analyses of the interviews. Nine predictor scales and one criterion scale were extracted from the factor rotations. Simultaneous, structural regression runs found that six predictor scales explained successful implementation outcomes (the criterion scale). The addition of "hard" predictors (i.e., measures on the respondents, their districts, and the ESAs to which the districts belong) to the final, retained regression model provided a large and significant increase in explained variance.;The accumulation of highly descriptive case studies by students of implementation has biased thought towards hierarchical, top-down conceptualizations and an unrelenting "determinants" approach towards understanding what are usually seen as unsuccessful, failed public initiatives. In a contrary, robust, and refreshing manner, this study treats implementation as the playing out of natural, local-level, bottom-up phenomena such that instances of policy amendment, blockage, diversion, and invention are directly attributable to proximate contextual, organizational, and programmatic realities.;Data were gathered on Educational Service Agencies (ESAs) in the state of Washington--regional, multiple service agencies providing assistance to local school districts and the state education agency. Eighty officials in the Washington educational and political establishment were interviewed. Survey responses from 372 school district administrators were gathered as well. |
