POLICY IMPLEMENTATION:

WHAT USAID HAS LEARNED

January 2001

Center for Democracy and Governance

Bureau for Global Programs, Field Support, and Research
U.S. Agency for International Development
Washington, DC 20523-3100
 THIS BOOKLET PRESENTS LESSONS AND EXAMPLES GAINED PRIMARILY THROUGH
USAID’S IMPLEMENTING POLICY CHANGE (IPC) PROJECT, WHICH BEGAN IN 1990
AND ENDS 2001. THE IPC CONTRACT TEAM, MANAGED BY USAID’S CENTER FOR
DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNANCE, CONSISTS OF MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS INTERNA-
TIONAL, INC. (PRIME CONTRACTOR); ABT ASSOCIATES, INC.; DEVELOPMENT
ALTERNATIVES, INC.; DELOITTE, TOUCHE, TOHMATSU; INSTITUTE FOR DEVELOP-
MENT RESEARCH; INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION; INTERNATIONAL
RESOURCES GROUP; RESEARCH TRIANGLE INSTITUTE; SEARCH FOR COMMON
GROUND; STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT ALBANY; AND UNIVERSITY OF
PITTSBURGH.
DERICK W. BRINKERHOFF, IPC RESEARCH DIRECTOR, WAS THE PRINCIPAL AUTHOR
OF THIS BOOKLET. JULIE KOENEN-GRANT, IPC PROJECT DIRECTOR, AND MARK
RENZI, MSI STAFF MEMBER, CONTRIBUTED TO A PREVIOUS VERSION OF THIS
BOOKLET.

IPC IS MANAGED AT USAID BY PAT A. FN’PIERE. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON

THE PROJECT OR THIS BRIEFING BOOKLET, PLEASE CONTACT HER AT
PAFNPIERE@USAID.GOV.

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G/DG Publications
The Center for Democracy and Governance reserves the right to review and edit all publications for
content and format and all are subject to a broad USAID review process. They are intended in part to
indicate best practices, lessons learned, and guidelines for practitioner consideration. They also include
publications that are intended to stimulate debate and discussion. This publication reports on USAID
involvement in policy implementation through the Implementing Policy Change project.
 POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION:
WHAT USAID HAS LEARNED
CONTENTS

Introduction................................................................. 1

Policy Implementation Task Framework ...................... 4

The Strategic Management Dimension of Policy

Implementation ........................................................... 8

Policy Implementation Toolkit .................................... 11

Organizational Venues ............................................. 15

State/Civil Society Partnerships for Policy

Reform ..................................................................... 19

Applying the Lessons Learned ................................. 22

Emerging Challenges for Policy

Implementation ......................................................... 24

Additional Information ............................................... 26

In his book, Aiding Democracy Abroad: The Learning Curve, 1
Tom Carothers has ably described critical challenges
democracy promoters are facing. Among the challenges to

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democracy promoters is how to achieve changes in political
and institutional processes—a critical issue for effective policy
implementation:

The challenge [in promoting democracy beyond formalistic attempts

at “institutional modeling”] is to coax along processes of institutional
change that take account of the underlying interests and power
relations in which institutions are embedded. More broadly,
democratic change must be understood not as the reproduction of
institutional endpoints but as the achievement of a set of political
processes including the active representation of interests, the
balancing of major political forces, the acceptance of democratic
rules of the game, and the expansion of political participation.

USAID recognizes these same challenges and has

developed promising approaches to respond to them. This
document, which is based largely on lessons gained from
USAID’s Implementing Policy Change project (IPC)
summarizes what USAID has learned in assisting policy
implementation.
Democracy promotion and improved governance
require attention to significant process questions. How do
citizens exercise influence upon and oversight of the state?
How do public leaders and agencies operate responsibly and
responsively to carry out their mandates? How are social
relations managed among different classes of society to
assure inclusion, fairness, and equity? The answers that a
particular country’s governance system provides will go a long
way in configuring the context for policy implementation.
Conversely, how policy implementation is managed can
contribute to shaping how a country operationalizes
democratic governance.
USAID’s approach to policy reform draws much from
the Agency’s earlier experience improving project and program
management. For instance, results-based planning,
management by objective, beneficiary participation, and action-
training (linking learning with doing) are as relevant to policy
change as they are to project and program management.
 2 There are, however, some important features that distinguish
policy change activities from projects and programs. These
features combine to make policy implementation complex and
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difficult, challenging even the most experienced host-country

public managers. What are these distinguishing features?

• Policy implementation is not a linear, coherent process.

With policy implementation, change is often multi-
directional, fragmented, frequently interrupted, and
unpredictable. How to sequence actions, what to pay
attention to, and who to include can be hard to determine
and can vary over the life of the policy change process.

• No single agency can manage the policy implementation

effort. In almost every case, policies require the concerted
actions of multiple agencies and groups. Even if one of
them is nominally the lead agency, in reality no individual
entity is “in charge” of policy implementation. Authority and
responsibility are dispersed among the actors involved,
which means that traditional command-and-control
management is not applicable.

• Policy implementation creates winners and losers. As

opposed to projects and programs, which distribute
benefits to some, but not to all, groups, policies usually
involve the imposition of costs on some societal groups as
well as advantaging others. This means that policy reforms
often become highly politicized. Most often, the losers are
those who benefit from the current state of affairs in the
country and who are in a powerful position to defend the
status quo and resist change.

• The resources required to implement policies may not be

readily available. Projects and programs have dedicated
budgets, but policies—particularly at the start of the
reform—often lack the resources needed for
implementation. Making progress means lobbying for new
funding, identifying existing sources of implementation
support, and negotiating for resource reallocation. All of
these efforts are subject to the vagaries of national
budgeting processes and shifting political winds.
 The following paper discusses USAID’s efforts to 3
promote the use of an approach which incorporates
treatment of democratic governance concerns as integral

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to the way to improve policy implementation. The paper
identifies a series of tasks, which include achieving
legitimation of the policy being implemented (Is the policy
change accepted as worthwhile and is there a “policy
champion?”); constituency-building (What steps are
needed to identify and mobilize those that support a given
policy and deflect the criticism of those that oppose it?);
and resource accumulation (What are the financial and
human resources required to help implement the desired
policy change?). From there, other tasks include working
through organizational designs and structures of
implementing agents, mobilizing actions, and establishing
and using monitoring systems. The paper goes on to
discuss different strategic management approaches, which
can be applied to accomplish each of the tasks described
above, and provides a sample of policy implementation
tools and their application. Governance issues—including
the questions of how, where, and by whom policy is
made—are discussed with special emphasis on the
emergence of public-private partnerships working on policy
reform. The paper concludes by outlining the potential for
adopting this approach to front-burner issues now faced by
the developing world: implementing policy reforms in post-
conflict environments, assisting countries as they adapt to
rapid changes due to increased globalization, and
deepening our understanding of the link between
governance issues and successful policy reform efforts.
 4

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION TASK FRAMEWORK

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The distinctive characteristics of policy implementation made it

clear that would-be implementors needed a new way of
thinking about how to manage the reform process. Through
IPC, USAID developed a framework to help policy managers
understand and navigate the complexities associated with
policy implementation. The framework divides policy
implementation into six roughly sequential tasks, which all need
to be revisited over the life of a given reform. These
components are presented with examples of how they appear
in practice:

Legitimation (Task 1)
Legitimation, or getting the policy accepted as important,
desirable, and worth achieving, is especially critical for policies
that are part of a donor assistance package, which risks being
seen as externally imposed. Legitimation means getting buy-in
from the appropriate people in the country to push the reform
process forward. An important outcome of this task is the
emergence of a well-regarded “policy champion” (an individual
or group who believes in the policy) to take on leadership for
the subsequent implementation tasks. In Ukraine, for example,
USAID assistance helped extend widespread concerns about
the negative effects of corruption on private investment into the
eventual adoption of a clear set of transparent rules and
regulations for business. Meetings at the local and national
levels forged a consensus on the desirability of the business
community working with public officials to curb abuses. This
laid the groundwork for a locally focused strategy to implement
the new regulations. Similarly, in Uganda, a USAID-supported
team helped to get government policy toward the private sector
accepted as a legitimate issue by organizing a series of
government-business consultations, the first of which was
chaired by President Yoweri Museveni. The consultations were
formalized as the Uganda National Forum. Today, many
observers credit the forum as a catalyst leading to the pro-
private sector policy environment and increased private
investment that the country currently enjoys.
Constituency-building (Task 2) 5
Constituency-building, or gaining active support from groups
that see the proposed reform as desirable or beneficial, needs

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to translate into commitment to act toward achieving the policy
objectives. This is different from legitimation in that people may
see the reform as desirable, but not necessarily be willing to
commit effort or resources to making it happen. In tandem with
seeking out supporters, constituency-building aims to reduce
or deflect the opposition of groups who consider the proposed
reform measure to be harmful or threatening. This task must
often be pursued throughout reform implementation to assure
ongoing support and to avoid derailment. Participation is a key
element in most constituency-building, as evidenced in the
broad-based consultative process that USAID created to
advance the implementation of regionally integrated
transportation and communication policy in the Southern
African Development Community (SADC). Public and private
sector actors were invited into the process through a series of
large, national workshops, where the issues relevant to each
sector were discussed and prioritized. Regional workshops
then assembled the national input, resolved points of
disagreement, and drafted policy protocols. Regional treaties
incorporated these protocols, which were eventually adopted
by each of the 11 SADC member countries. The result was
improved standards and regulations for railway, road, ports and
shipping, air transport, telecommunications, postal service,
and meteorology implemented uniformly throughout the region.

Resource Accumulation (Task 3)

Resource accumulation means ensuring that present and
future budgets and human resource allocations are sufficient to
support policy implementation requirements. Accomplishing
this task can involve a variety of activities (e.g., lobbying
constituencies to contribute resources, negotiating with
ministries for budget line-item funding, or designing new
resource allocation systems). In Egypt, for example, the
National Program for Integrated Rural Development introduced
policy reforms to strengthen local government. USAID-
supported technical assistance helped subnational authorities
to design and manage a decentralized decision-making and
 6 resource allocation system. This system promoted demand-
driven local-level planning and project implementation in
support of the government’s decentralization policy, resulting in
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

a better fit between local needs and use of resources.

Organizational Design/Structure (Task 4)

Organizational design/structure involves adjusting the
objectives, procedures, systems, and structures of the
agencies responsible for policy implementation. This task may
include establishing new organizations, formal or informal, that
link the various entities with a role in implementation. Mali’s
Forestry Department, with USAID analytic assistance,
examined the fit between its existing structures and
procedures, and the implementation requirements of a revised
forestry law that mandated resource management in
cooperation with local communities. The analysis led to
changes in the department’s operations; forestry agents
moved from policing toward assisting communities to achieve
a sustainable balance between tree cutting and conservation.
Instead of concentrating on issuing fines for illegal tree cutting,
agents worked with community resource management
committees to develop tree harvesting plans and local
enforcement procedures. In Zambia, USAID facilitated the
creation of a Policy Analysis and Coordination Unit in the Office
of the President; its purpose was to bridge the gap between
policy formulation and implementation. The unit put in place
new systems, procedures, and structures for making policy in
a more participatory, coordinated fashion and for tracking
implementation progress. In West Africa, USAID provided
assistance to implement regional livestock trade policy. For the
countries (Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, and Mali), an informal
committee structure that assembled government officials and
private sector actors for dialogue, action planning, and results
monitoring was established. This structure contributed to the
success achieved in reducing excessive fees charged to
livestock producers, eliminating needless regulations, and
increasing the volume of livestock trade.

Mobilizing Actions (Task 5)

Mobilizing actions builds upon the favorable constituencies
assembled for the policy (Task 2) and marshals their
commitment and resources to engage in concrete efforts to
7
make change happen. Its focus is on identifying, activating, and
pursuing action strategies. It brings together mobilized

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constituencies and resources and, within the organizational
structures created, develops and carries out the steps
necessary to translate intent into results. In Bulgaria, business
associations, with USAID support, organized to work
collaboratively with the government to develop a new small-
and medium-enterprise law. This collaboration followed a
constituency-building campaign with small and medium
enterprises to identify their interests and prepare a policy
dialogue agenda. In Mozambique, USAID helped to organize
national and provincial workshops to facilitate the
implementation of the country’s decentralization policy. These
workshops fostered debate and helped to build a consensus
among government and civil society stakeholders on
strategies, roles, responsibilities, and actions to make
decentralization operational.

Monitoring Impact (Task 6)

Monitoring impact, or setting up and using systems to monitor
implementation progress, is the final policy implementation
task. Monitoring systems not only alert decision-makers to
implementation snags, but also inform them of the intended
and unintended impacts of implementation efforts. Through
USAID-provided assistance, Honduras established a Policy
Analysis and Implementation Unit to assist the president’s
Economic Cabinet to improve policy decision-making with a
strong focus on tracking implementation and results achieved.
As a result, cabinet ministers managed their sectoral portfolios
more effectively and fine tuned investments to respond to
citizens’ needs. The need for policy-monitoring capacity figured
prominently in the recommendations of a USAID-sponsored
study for the Palestinian Authority of ways to improve
policymaking. In West Africa, the livestock action plan
committees monitored and noted problems in compliance with
the plan’s steps to reduce excessive regulation. Livestock
producers credited this oversight with keeping the reforms on
track and achieving the intended reductions in petty corruption
and commerce-inhibiting regulation.
 8

THE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT DIMENSION OF

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

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An important use of the policy implementation task framework

is to diagnose problems and roadblocks facing a policy reform
effort. For example, if policy implementors encounter difficulties
in securing the resources they need for implementation (Task
3), it might be that insufficient attention was paid to legitimizing
the policy and building supportive constituencies (Tasks 1 and
2). Beyond analysis, however, the task framework can help
implementors with the managerial dimension of policy
implementation. It can be used, for example, to map out
implementation strategies to achieve long-term objectives and/
or to guide day-to-day management of the reform by
pinpointing areas needing immediate attention.
Once policy implementors have located where they are
in the implementation task sequence and have determined
what needs to be done, strategic management can
systematically help them reach their objectives. Strategic
management is not a how-to guide, but rather a way of thinking
about or tackling a problem. Strategic management helps
policy implementors to manage by directing them to look
outward to the external environment, look inward at
organizations and structures, and look forward to melding
strategy, structure, and resources over time. Box 1
summarizes the three-way orientation of strategic
management. The outward- and forward-looking elements of
strategic management are particularly essential for coping with
the “nobody in charge” attribute of policy implementation.
USAID has found that improving the strategic
management skills and capacities of policy implementors can
facilitate the achievement of policy reform objectives and
impacts. Skill building can be accomplished either through
management training or process consulting or through
combining these two approaches. Training, for example, was
an integral part of setting up Zambia’s Policy Analysis and
Coordination Unit; every permanent secretary in government
participated in training workshops on strategic management.
 Strategic Management Capacities for 9
Implementing Policy Change

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Strategic management capacities are important to enable policy
implementors to deal with the challenges of policy reform. Strategic
management can be thought of in terms of a conceptual “shorthand” as
capacity to look outward, look inward, and look forward.
Looking outward. The tendency of managers to concentrate on the
pursuit of day-to-day bureaucratic routines to the exclusion of being
proactive or attentive to performance is well recognized. Policy
implementors need to build capacity to extend their focus beyond the
boundaries of their individual organizations. This means becoming
more aware of who and what is “out there,” and figuring out how to
respond appropriately. In essence, this calls for capacity in strategic
planning and management. It includes the ability to identify key
stakeholders; create opportunities for participation; forge partnerships
among public, private, and voluntary sectors; set feasible objectives;
build constituencies for change; and resolve conflicts.
Looking inward. Efficient internal structures, systems, and
procedures are important for achieving results. Critical to this kind of
capacity are efficient and effective ways to design and implement
programs; to set up and manage organizations; to hire, train, and
motivate personnel; and to allocate, monitor, and account for financial
and other resources. Without achieving some minimal level of
operational efficiency, it is difficult to think or act strategically.
Looking forward. The third capacity relates to bringing together
strategy, structure, and resources to achieve policy goals. It includes
attention to sustainability, which implies the capacity to be anticipatory
and proactive, not just responsive and reactive. Dealing with what is
critical today is not enough. Policy implementors must be capable of
identifying and preparing for what will be critical tomorrow and the
next day as well. This includes operational capacity in evaluation and
monitoring; but extends beyond to those more intangible capabilities,
such as leadership, agenda-setting, and visioning.
 10 This training was geared toward improving the ability of these
officials to plan and carry out sectoral and public service
reform policies. In Madagascar, USAID selected key managers
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responsible for the implementation of priority environmental

policies to attend a training course in strategic management for
policy implementation. In South Africa, USAID provided training
to the new heads of the country’s post-apartheid provincial
governments. USAID also arranged for a strategic
management and negotiation skills workshop for professors at
the Ukraine Academy for Public Administration. Faculty
members who attended incorporated the material into their
existing courses and planned to develop a new course on
strategic management for their students.
Building skills through process consultation, which
actively involves people in problem-solving and in focusing on
how to work together effectively, is a more long-term endeavor
than one using training alone. Process consultation requires
learning-by-doing, usually facilitated by an external advisor. In
Bulgaria, for example, a USAID-financed advisor coached
business associations to become more effective advocates for
policy reform by leading them through issue identification,
constituency-building, and policy dialogue using strategic
management tools. In the Philippines, USAID-supported
process facilitators helped a joint team from the Department of
Finance and the Customs Bureau to guide the Inter-agency Tax
Credit and Duty Drawback Center from start-up to operations.
The center achieved remarkable success in streamlining tax
rebate procedures for Philippine export firms, which resulted in
cutting operating costs to exporters, thereby enhancing their
competitiveness, and in reducing corruption, which had
plagued the tax rebate system in the past. In Tanzania, a tax
policy reform effort combined training with process
consultation. Staff of the Tanzania Revenue Authority received
strategic management training that was followed up
periodically by in-country visits from a tax policy expert, who
helped the staff to move the reform forward by applying what
they had learned. Preliminary indications are that tax collection
and taxpayer compliance have increased, and fraud and
corrupt practices have decreased.
 11

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION TOOLKIT

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To help policy implementors address the different elements
(i.e., outward-, inward-, and forward-looking) of strategic
management, USAID has underwritten the development and/or
refinement of a policy implementation toolkit. This set of tools is
versatile and can be applied to policies across a broad range of
sectors and to the sequence of policy implementation tasks.
Furthermore, the tools can help implementors to make
democratic governance operational, for example, assuring that
information about new policies is disseminated, seeking citizen
input on reforms, and building feedback and accountability
processes. A sample of these tools, with some illustrative
applications, include the following:

Stakeholder Analysis
Stakeholder analysis helps managers identify individuals and
groups that have an interest, or a stake, in the outcome of a
policy decision. It provides a framework for assessing the
strength of stakeholders’ support or opposition, and for
evaluating the resources stakeholders have at their disposal to
act upon their position. The tool consists of a catalog of
stakeholders; a classification of those stakeholders into
supporters, opponents, or neutral parties; an evaluation of the
resources they command to support or oppose the policy, and
of their willingness to commit those resources; and a
prioritization of the stakeholders in terms of which groups are
the most important ones for managers to seek to influence.
USAID’s assistance to the Tanzania Revenue Authority
featured training in stakeholder analysis and application of the
tool to the elaboration of various revenue-generation
alternatives; this was critical, for example, to devising
strategies to increase taxpayer compliance. In El Salvador,
stakeholder analysis assisted a judicial sector working group to
develop a strategic management plan. In Lesotho, stakeholder
analysis workshops helped the Ministry of Agriculture gain a
better understanding of citizens’ interests and positions
 12 relevant to livestock grazing and agriculture policy. A
stakeholder analysis in India helped USAID avoid a costly
mistake. In the process of developing a women’s and
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children’s health project, the USAID Mission conducted a

stakeholder analysis to determine the degree of support for,
and consensus on, the project’s approach to health service
delivery and the allocation of implementing responsibility. The
analysis uncovered significant disagreements and government
unwillingness to delegate operational authority to NGOs and
local communities. USAID decided that the project would not
be able to achieve its objectives and cancelled it.

Political Mapping
Political mapping advances stakeholder analysis by creating a
graphic representation of the political landscape for a given
policy. The map permits a finer-grained assessment of the
support and opposition facing policy implementation and allows
implementors to track how various implementation strategies
might rearrange coalitions of supporters and opponents. In
Ecuador, USAID assisted a health sector reform team to
conduct a mapping exercise that contributed to strategically
managing the introduction of new methods of financing health
service delivery. The map helped the team to reduce the
opposition of health worker labor unions to the reform. In El
Salvador, the agency for environmental protection (Ministerio
del Ambiente y Recursos Naturales) received technical
assistance in political mapping to build scenarios of likely
support for and opposition to environmental policy reforms in
the forestry, water, and coastal resources sectors. As a result,
the agency carried out a series of citizen consultations to
increase understanding and support for the new environmental
policies.

Policy Workshops
Policy workshops are a process tool that enables stakeholders
to share information, discuss issues, build consensus, and/or
develop action plans. Policy workshops are a variant of the
team-planning meetings and project-launch workshops used
for program start-ups. The SADC constituency-building effort
for transportation and communications policy is one example
of the use of sequenced workshops to move policy issues 13
through a process of issue identification, discussion,
consensus-building, and protocol development. Another

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example comes from Ghana, where USAID supported a public-
private workshop that focused on diversifying exports. This
workshop brought together prominent members of the
business community, Ghana Export Promotion Council staff,
and representatives of the Ministries of Finance, Trade, and
Agriculture. It created a shared understanding of the policy
issues and implementation constraints to sustained growth in
non-traditional exports and built agreement on what actions
could be taken to improve export promotion policy.

Negotiation
Negotiation figures prominently in policy implementation and
consists of a set of analytic methods for breaking issues down
into negotiating points, determining acceptable outcomes, and
defining bargaining strategies. These methods are integrated
with interpersonal communications techniques for managing
discussion, dealing with conflicts, and reaching agreements.
The SADC protocol workshops, for example, employed
negotiation to get the national and regional constituents to
agree on the elements to be included in the protocols that the
member countries later voted on and ratified. In South Africa,
USAID provided support to local associations to improve their
negotiation, lobbying, and advocacy skills so that they could
engage in policy dialogue with government on promoting small
business in general and black small businesses in particular.
One of the associations, the National Federation of African
Chambers of Commerce, focused on barriers to entry. It
commissioned a study that the chambers of commerce
subsequently used to lobby successfully for streamlined
procedures to establish small businesses. In Bulgaria, a
USAID technical assistance team helped local officials to
develop negotiation skills in the context of decentralization
policy that sought to devolve increased responsibilities to local
municipalities. Implementing the policy called for ongoing
negotiation between central authorities and the municipalities
regarding resources, responsibilities, and procedures.
 14 Coordination
Coordination deals with how to link the multiple actors involved
in policy implementation so that the reform steps they
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undertake are complementary and contribute to achieving the

intended policy reform outcomes. Coordination includes
information-sharing, resource-sharing, and joint action. These
vary in administrative intensity from low to high; meaning that
information-sharing requires less management effort and
organizational adjustment than joint action. Focusing on
coordination can help policy implementation partners to specify
which kinds of coordination will be most helpful, articulate
some common ground rules for their partnership, make sure
the rules do not become overly formalized and constraining,
and look for win-win opportunities to work together. USAID
pioneered approaches to improving the policy coordinating
capacity of executive offices of African countries. It sponsored
two regional African Executive Office Conferences, which
provided fora for executive office staff (usually from the Office
of the President of their country) to learn about best practices
in other countries from the region and beyond. The success of
these conferences led to the development of a formal
information-sharing network of African Executive Office staff,
with members from 10 countries. As part of the establishment
of policy analysis and implementation units, USAID provided
technical assistance to improve policy coordination in
Honduras, Jamaica, and Zambia. In Zambia, for example,
developing rules for content and format of policy proposals
submitted for cabinet debate greatly improved coordinated
decision-making by giving ministers a common information
base that highlighted trade-offs and complementarities among
policy options. In Jamaica, the unit helped to identify and
eliminate redundant and conflicting functions in the Ministry of
Finance and the Central Bank, which resulted in more efficient
coordination of fiscal policy.
 15

ORGANIZATIONAL VENUES

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A fundamental challenge facing policy implementors is
organizing and pursuing action in light of the “nobody in charge”
attribute of reform settings. Since reforms call for complex
intervention by more than a single ministry, department, or
organization, the natural tendency to use the principle of
hierarchy to structure multi-organization relationships does not
work well. Establishing a hierarchical chain of command of
superiors and subordinates usually breaks down if tried across
organizational boundaries. This creates a dilemma for policy
implementors: What kinds of organizational venues are
available that can help different organizations and groups to
work together but that do not rely solely on hierarchy and
formal authority? USAID’s experience around the world with
analyzing and facilitating policy implementation reveals some
options:

Fora
These are events, meetings, or settings designed to exchange
information and opinion, promote dialogue, and identify issues
requiring action. They are often broadly participatory,
assembling government officials, politicians, and members of
civil society to air their views on the impact of current policies
or the desired shape of future policies. Fora can be town
meetings, parliamentary hearings, ad hoc workshops, or
seminars. They do not necessarily have to be face-to-face;
electronic networks, radio or television debates, and print
media exchanges also qualify. Examples of fora are the
national and regional workshops in Southern Africa that
progressively refined the SADC transportation and
communication protocols; the Uganda National Forum, which
legitimized dialogue on business policy between government
and the private sector; the town meetings held in Bulgaria to
develop a new small and medium enterprise policy; and, also
in Bulgaria, the television call-in show to debate a variety of
national policy reforms.
 16 Arenas
These are the places where policy decisions occur. They can
include discussion and debate, but they differ from fora in that
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binding decisions are made. Policy arenas can include

executive cabinet meetings, legislatures, parliamentary
committees, regional or local governing commissions, and
ministerial councils. Examples of arenas created as part of
policy reforms include the policy units in Zambia and Honduras
and the regional livestock trade policy committees in West
Africa. Meetings of these policy committees brought together
government and private sector representatives from the three
countries involved, and because decisions taken were publicly
affirmed by all the participants, there was very little backsliding
or failure to follow through; this helped the reform measures to
be implemented and to achieve their intended results.

Courts
Courts are venues where disputes, including not simply formal
legal cases, over the interpretation or implementation of
policies can be adjudicated. In this sense, “courts” contain both
the judicial structures familiar to most and other dispute
resolution mechanisms. For example, in Mali’s forestry policy
reform, community organizations that are allocated
responsibility for resource management use traditional village
councils to monitor compliance, resolve disputes, and punish
offenders. This local judicial mechanism is an important
element in implementing community-based forestry programs.

Agencies
These are the entities charged with taking policy
implementation actions. To function effectively, they need to
become more outward-focused, more open to external input,
more collaborative, and less control-oriented. When existing
formal organizations (likely to be hierarchies) are given
responsibility for policy reform actions, the challenge is often to
help them to become less hierarchical and inward-looking. For
example, USAID provided strategic management assistance to
The Gambia’s Ministry of Finance to help the ministry become
a more effective implementor of economic policy reform.
Ministry staff reviewed the new demands placed on them by
the reform, revised their operating mission, assessed their 17
strengths and weaknesses, and developed a plan for structural
and procedural change. Among these changes were less

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
recourse to organizational hierarchy to solve problems and
more reliance on staff taking action in cooperation with their
peers. In other cases, new organizations are established, with
the challenge to assure that they are designed to fulfill their
implementation roles effectively without excessive reliance on
hierarchy and control. Examples here include Madagascar’s
and Uganda’s national environmental offices created for
implementation of their national environmental action plans.
USAID provided analytic assistance to identify alternative
coordination strategies to enable these offices to orchestrate
multi-organizational action without getting bogged down in “turf
battles” and conflicts. Another type of agency is a temporary
one, set up with an explicitly limited lifespan. Such agencies are
frequently used as bridging mechanisms to combine the actions
of individual organizations and groups. The Economic Cabinet
in Honduras and the Macro-group in Bolivia are examples of ad
hoc, semi-formal agencies designed to take decisions and
actions to implement economic policy reforms.

These various organizational venues are related to the policy

implementation tasks in the following ways: Fora are the
primary venue for policy legitimation and constituency-building.
Arenas contribute to constituency-building, but are central to
mobilizing actions and sometimes can be used for resource
accumulation. Courts, broadly conceived, can play a role in
monitoring impact, organizational design and structuring, and,
potentially, resource accumulation. Agencies fit directly with
action mobilization, organizational design and structuring,
resource accumulation, and impact monitoring. To a lesser
extent, agencies can serve constituency-building and
legitimation functions, though they tend to do so indirectly
through fora and arenas rather than directly.
A country’s capacity to effectively pursue democratic
policy formulation and implementation is related to the presence
and vitality of each of these venues. For example, if few fora
exist, it can be difficult for citizens to find ways of getting
government to hear their views and incorporate their input into
 policies. Unless arenas function effectively, how are policy
18
mandates translated into operational decisions? Without
access to courts and other dispute resolution mechanisms,
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

the level of accountability for policy outcomes may be low.

Weak agencies, obviously, will not be in a position to take
effective policy actions. Also important are the linkages among
the various types of venues. Do citizens’ views raised in fora
find their way into decision arenas? Have the agencies
responsible for implementation been able to participate in fora?
Do courts effectively settle differences in interpretation of policy
decisions?
Countries that make effective use of these venues are
building a firm organizational base for democratic governance.
Transparency, accountability, and responsiveness become
concrete when policies are developed and implemented via an
integrated system of arenas, fora, courts, and agencies.
 19

STATE/CIVIL SOCIETY PARTNERSHIPS FOR

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
POLICY REFORM

In the multi-organizational landscape of democratic

governance and policy reform implementation, USAID has
observed the increasingly common pattern of public agencies
working in partnership with civil society groups. In these
partnerships, joint objectives are achieved through the
combined efforts of both sets of partners, while their interests,
roles, and responsibilities remain distinct. USAID and other
donors promote policy partnerships because implementation of
the current generation of policy reforms extends beyond
government capacities to achieve results without citizen
involvement. Examples include environment and natural
resources management, where government forestry agencies
and community groups work together for sustainable resource
use; privatized service delivery, where private providers work
with public agencies within a government funding and
regulatory framework to offer efficient and high quality services;
HIV/AIDS prevention, where partnerships among public health
agencies, NGOs, and community groups seek to educate
people and reduce levels of prevalence; anti-corruption, where,
for example, local chapters of Transparency International seek
to form partnerships with the business community and civil
society to press for government reforms; and agricultural
export promotion, which often pairs public agricultural research
institutes and producers associations to improve the quality
and quantity of exports.
Success in each of these policy areas depends upon
effective engagement of civil society and often the private
sector with the public sector. The quality of this engagement is
affected by how democratic the country’s governance system
is: the more democratic governance (e.g., access to
information, venues for debate and opinion-sharing, public
sector transparency and responsiveness, and accountability
mechanisms), the better the policy partnership. Two examples
 20 illustrate this, demonstrating the linkage between economic
growth and democratic governance:
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

West African Enterprise Network (WAEN)

Beginning in 1993, USAID supported the creation of a network
of independent business associations in West Africa. From an
original base of eight small, national associations, the WAEN,
now a formally registered regional NGO headquartered in
Ghana, comprises active national networks in 12 countries with
over 300 businesspeople as members. Its mission is to
improve the business climate in member countries and to
promote cross-border trade and investment. Initially, the WAEN
pursued cautious policy dialogue with governments that were at
first suspicious of organized citizen efforts to lobby them. Over
time, network members were able to demonstrate convincingly
their sincerity in fostering economic growth, and the
governments became more open and responsive. A partnership
gradually emerged, and the WAEN participated in the reform of
legal and regulatory regimes, including revised investment
codes, foreign exchange acts, and business tax policies in its
member countries. The WAEN has also created new financial
instruments and has fostered a number of joint ventures as a
result of its efforts. The regional federation of national
associations model proved so successful that the business
communities in both Eastern and Southern Africa requested
and received USAID and World Bank assistance to organize
enterprise networks in their own regions.

Bulgaria Small- and Medium-enterprise Policy Reform

USAID’s assistance program to Bulgaria focuses on nurturing
private sector development. It began with firm-level assistance,
helping a selected set of individual firms to build their capacity
and to gain access to the financial resources necessary for
expansion. USAID quickly found that legal and policy
constraints had to be confronted in order to create an enabling
environment for privately owned business and competitive
markets. USAID provided assistance to business associations
in building coalitions, lobbying, and policy dialogue. The
associations worked in collaboration with local, policy think
tanks. Eventually, assistance expanded beyond the private
sector to target public officials’ and parliamentarians’ capacity 21
to listen, provide information, and incorporate citizen input into
legislation and policy. Among the results achieved was a highly

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
participatory policy consultation and legislative drafting process
that led to the development and passage of a new small- and
medium-enterprise law. Bulgarian government officials and
civil society participants commented that it was the most
democratically formulated law in the country’s history, and this
was the first time they had worked in open and egalitarian
partnership with each other. Further, they noted that working in
partnership resulted in better quality legislation, because the
provisions included in the law better reflect what is needed to
support the small- and medium-enterprise sector. For
instance, the law reduces the number of inspections small and
medium enterprises are subject to. This change decreases
operating costs and limits corruption. Previously, government
inspectors conducted numerous arbitrary inspections, and
used the threat of assessing violations to solicit bribes.
 22

APPLYING THE LESSONS LEARNED

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

USAID’s investment in analysis, tool development, field-testing,

and technical assistance in policy implementation and strategic
management has yielded a valuable set of analytic and
management techniques, a toolkit to help reformers apply the
techniques, and an experience base that shows what works
and what does not. Today, some of these techniques and tools
are both well recognized and widely used (e.g., stakeholder
analysis). Others, however, are less commonly understood or
applied (e.g., the different modes of coordination). Looking to
the future, it is evident that there is room both to expand and
deepen their application. As countries proceed with democratic
and economic transition, greater need and opportunities are
emerging for assisting governments to implement policies with
effective participation from multiple stakeholders in ways that
assure transparency, accountability, and responsiveness.
Many policy implementors in the world’s developing and
transitional countries have not had the opportunity to learn
about or use policy implementation techniques and tools.
Broader policy impacts are possible if more implementors in
more countries and more development sectors are familiar
with the six policy implementation tasks and manage those
tasks strategically.
Deepening the application of the techniques, tools, and
lessons has two facets. First, it means that policy managers
with a basic understanding of the devices gain a more
nuanced, sophisticated, and versatile grasp of their uses. For
example, identifying and ranking who stakeholders are is one
thing, but knowing how to manage diverse stakeholder
involvement under shifting circumstances with highly limited
resources is quite another. Second, more members of a
particular reform implementation effort should acquire these
techniques and skills; this is part of the process of
institutionalization. Sustained progress toward reform targets,
the achievement of intended impacts, and improvements in
democratic governance are less likely if only a small circle of
partner country managers and leaders builds their capacity in
policy implementation and strategic management. Such 23
capacity is critical at all levels of government, for example,
where policy reforms are decentralized and require the

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
participation of public officials and citizens at regional and local
levels, as well as at the center.
These techniques and tools also have application to
international assistance agencies. Donors are revising the way
they provide development assistance, as more effective and
sustainable intervention strategies are identified. The
increasing use of partnership principles in defining the
relationship between donors and recipient countries, from
program design, through implementation, to monitoring and
evaluation, is one important example. Increased transparency
in donor decision-making is being emphasized in concert with
more transparency in recipient country government-citizen
interactions. Many donors emphasize the importance of
participation by civil society and the business community in
decisions regarding international assistance. USAID’s policy
implementation toolkit and related approaches developed by
others, for example, the World Bank’s comprehensive
development framework, are integral to new donor-country
assistance partnerships.
 24

EMERGING CHALLENGES FOR

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

As USAID continues to work with its development partners

around the world, it recognizes a number of emerging
challenges related to policy implementation. Some of these
derive from application of the implementation techniques and
tools to new development tasks. Others stem from changes in
the operating environment of host-country policy implementors
that suggest the need for additional refinement of the policy
analysis and management toolkit. They include the following:

Transitioning from complex emergencies

Countries seeking a way forward after natural disasters or
debilitating regional or civil wars confront pressing political,
humanitarian, and development challenges. USAID has played
an important role in disaster response and humanitarian
assistance, and has noted that managing transitions shares
some of the features, albeit in more dramatic and acute forms,
of implementing policy reforms: for example, planning with
incomplete information, working in unstable political
environments, getting diverse organizations to work together,
and dealing with winners and losers. Many of the tools
developed for the implementation of policy could be applied to
helping countries deal with the aftermath of complex
emergencies and speed the transition from relief to
development.

Anticipating and managing conflict

While some degree of conflict almost always accompanies the
implementation of policy change, implementation is greatly
hindered by excessive or disruptive conflict. It is vital to
understand up front where in the course of policy
implementation to expect conflict, how to recognize it, and
what actions can be taken to manage it. Just as project
management principles have contributed to policy
implementation, conflict management approaches that have
been developed for resolving policy disputes could be adapted
to other conflict-laden settings within communities and among
25
organizations.

POLICY IMPLEMENTATION
Dealing with globalization
Developing and transitional countries face a complex
transnational network of forces collectively referred to as
globalization. These include the dominance of international
capital, free markets, trade and export emphases, and the
telecommunications revolution. Country officials find
themselves subject not simply to the pressures and
expectations of their citizens, but beholden in various ways to
an expanded set of international stakeholders. Coping with
transnational conventions and entities, such as the World
Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade
Agreement, or the Climate Change Convention, closely
resembles the multi-organizational, multi-constituency setting
of policy implementation. This could be another potentially
fruitful area of application of the policy implementation lessons.

Institutionalizing democratic governance

USAID’s experience with democratization has led to a deeper
understanding of the transition process. Countries follow
different trajectories, backsliding and reverses can occur, and
the process is much longer term than originally anticipated. It is
clear that there is more to be learned about designing and
managing policy change within newly democratizing settings.
Areas for focus include (a) broadening the participation of
organizations in the policy process beyond the executive
branch, to include the legislative and judicial branches of
government; (b) more effectively including previously
marginalized groups in policy debates, formulation, and
implementation; and/or (c) addressing the ongoing problem of
corruption.
 26

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

IPC has an extensive publications list, much of which is

presented at its website: http://ipc.msi-inc.com/ipc.html

Specific written sources that may prove useful in further

exploring the field of policy implementation include the
following:

Brinkerhoff, Derick W. 1996. “Enhancing Capacity for Strategic Management

of Policy Implementation in Developing Countries.” Washington, DC: U. S.
Agency for International Development, Center for Democracy and
Governance. Implementing Policy Change Project, Monograph No. 1. This
paper elaborates on the application of strategic management techniques
and tools for policy implementation.

Brinkerhoff, Derick W. 1999. “Exploring State-Civil Society Collaboration:

Policy Partnerships in Developing Countries.” Nonprofit and Voluntary
Sector Quarterly. Vol. 28, No. 4, Supplement, pp. 59-87. This article
discusses features of successful partnerships, presents several
examples, and offers some suggestions for what governments can do to
promote partnerships.

Bryson, John M. and Barbara C. Crosby. 1992. Leadership for the Common
Good: Tackling Public Problems in a Shared-Power World. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass Publishers. This book provides an extended discussion of
managing in “nobody in charge” situations in the United States, and
elaborates on fora, arenas, and courts as venues for making progress on
reform implementation.

Crosby, Benjamin. 1996. “Organizational Dimensions to the

Implementation of Policy Change.” Washington, DC: U. S. Agency for
International Development, Center for Democracy and Governance.
Implementing Policy Change Project, Monograph No. 2. This paper offers
more details on the policy implementation tasks framework and the
organizational dimensions of managing policy reforms.
 PN-ACH-306

Center for Democracy and Governance

Bureau for Global Programs, Field Support, and Research
U.S. Agency for International Development
Washington, DC 20523-3100
Tel: (202) 712-1892
Fax: (202) 216-3232