The study of policy implementation

Four stages are usually considered part of the cycle of public policy development; implementation is the third, preceded by agenda-setting and formulation, and followed by evaluation. Policy implementation consists of the execution of decisions that emerge from formulation processes; it involves the activities that governments carry out to deliver public goods and services decided during the formulation stage. Implementation is synonymous with government action: without it, policy is restricted to oral or written discourses of limited tangible impact on society. At the same time, implementation tends to be more complex than the other stages, just for the increase in the number of actors and resources involved in it. When implementation begins, certain groups of actors that had played little or no role during previous stages can acquire the role of protagonists. Civil servants, namely non-elected public sector employees, especially those in the middle and lower ranks, become key players in policy development: it is through their work that state interventions to address public problems are carried out. Because civil servants become policy implementers, the number of actors responsible for policy development grows exponentially (Hill & Ham, Reference Hill and Ham1998; Pardo et al., Reference Pardo, Dussauge-Laguna and Cejudo2018; Howlett et al., Reference Howlett, Ramesh and Perl2020; Hill & Hupe, Reference Hill and Hupe2022).Footnote ¹

The study of policy implementation has its origins and is closely related to the academic subdiscipline of public administration,Footnote ² with a similar focus on the role that public bureaucracies perform in the delivery of public services and benefits, and on the analysis of the material, financial, normative and informational resources required to undertake those tasks. Recent attempts to modernise and improve the traditional model of Public Administration, most prominent being, the new public management approach, with the incorporation of private sector mechanisms and the flexibilisation of administrative structures, and the Public Governance approach with the incorporation of civil society in activities of policy development, have provided concepts that redefined the theory and practice of public administration over the last decades (Roth Deubel, Reference Roth Deubel2018; Howlett et al., Reference Howlett, Ramesh and Perl2020). However, policy implementation emerged as an autonomous field of study in the 1970s, with a preoccupation on the recurrent shortcomings of governments to achieve policy objectives and the need to delve into the intricacies of the causes of those failures, reflected in the seminal work of Pressman and Wildavsky (Reference Pressman and Wildavsky1973) on the implementation of federal programmes in the United States.

The concept of implementation gap was proposed from the beginning of implementation research to explain the shortcomings of government policies. An implementation gap is defined as the difference between the objectives of a policy set during its formulation and its actual achieved outcomes. That gap is assumed to be produced by deviations from the established course of action during implementation. The distance between policy objectives and outcomes is thought to be difficult to overcome: a wide range of unpredictable political, economic and social factors may arise and divert government action from its intended course. A gap may appear just because the context in which implementation occurs will inevitably vary from the context that existed when the policy was designed. Policy formulation and implementation take place at different moments in time, hence under different political, economic, social, and/or cultural contexts; such differences may be major or minimal, but they will inexorably exist and influence policy development. Moreover, formulators may be ignorant, or choose to be ignorant, of the future conditions of implementation. The financial, technical, material, or administrative resources and tools may also not be available for implementation even if they were originally budgeted or programmed. The indispensable reliance of implementation on its implementors’ discretionary decisions and actions will also generate the gap: the agency that those individuals exert when conducting their activities shapes implementation’s outputs and outcomes in ways that may differ from the original formal policy objectives. Situations like these generate implementation gaps; hence, the need for actors responsible for both policy formulation and implementation to identify and address them and to guarantee that the breach between a policy’s intentions and outcomes is reduced to a minimum. In this sense, policy success is the product of a narrow or minimal implementation gap (Hill & Varone, Reference Hill and Varone2017; Howlett et al., Reference Howlett, Ramesh and Perl2020; Hill & Hupe, Reference Hill and Hupe2022).

At the same time, a deficient implementation could also be the product of limited formulation processes, in which clear policy objectives and goals were not established or the required resources for implementation were not fully or adequately estimated (Howlett et al., Reference Howlett, Ramesh and Perl2020). Policy scholarship notes that the ambiguity of policy formulation is more common than usually assumed and, in some cases, may even be intentional and recommendable to solve conflicts over the approval and legitimation of new policy measures. Such situations highlight the importance of the activities that are carried out during the implementation stage, because in the absence of a solid formulation process, those activities have an even stronger impact in the definition of policy outcomes (Matland, Reference Matland1995).

Research on policy feedback also offers valuable insights for the study of policy implementation. Implicit in the arguments on the causes of implementation gaps and failures lie the effects of self-undermining mechanisms on policy outcomes. These mechanisms are conceived as endogenous factors that undermine the support that a policy receives from its beneficiaries and stakeholders. The self-undermining effects of a policy course are unintended and unforeseen by its formulators; they develop during the implementation stage and often remain invisible to the actors responsible for policy development, especially high- and middle-ranking officials. In most cases, only dialogue and knowledge exchanges with low-ranking officials, referred to as street-level bureaucrats, and with policy recipients enable the identification of self-undermining feedback (Béland, Reference Béland2010; Millar et al., Reference Millar, Bourgeois, Bernstein and Hoffmann2021).

State capacities, the civil service, and non-state actors

Policy implementation requires adequate state or policy capacities, broadly defined as the abilities of governments to gather and mobilise the necessary resources to achieve policy objectives. The emphasis on the development of these capacities has been placed on the quality of the bureaucracies. Individual and organisational skills and competences of public servants and government agencies form an essential set of capacities for successful policy implementation (Filgueiras et al., Reference Filgueiras, Koga and Viana2020; Howlett et al., Reference Howlett, Ramesh and Perl2020; Cavalcante & Pereira, Reference Cavalcante and Pereira2022). Of all the resources required for the execution of government decisions, the human element is arguably the most important. A meritocratic, stable, autonomous, and professional civil service is critical for the development of state capacities (Tommasi, Reference Tommasi2011; Cavalcante & Pereira, Reference Cavalcante and Pereira2022).

The civil service is the instrument for the organisation and management of such capable public employees. It is defined as a management system of human resources for non-elected government employees based on formal and stable rules that establish their recruitment, hiring, permanence, promotion, and retirement. From its beginning, the academic field of public administration has had as one of its core arguments the need for depoliticised and permanent civil services, based on legal-rational principles, with public officials capable of managing public resources and implementing public programmes shielded from political ideologies and interests. Abundant empirical evidence demonstrates the positive effects of stable civil services. The values that must guide the operation of a successful civil service are merit in the entrance and promotion of public employees, equality in the opportunity of any capable citizen to join the public service, job security independent of political circumstances, and political neutrality in the performance of work assignments. These values are necessary to combat incompetence, improvisation, patronage, and corruption in the organisations responsible for the implementation of public affairs (Dussauge-Laguna & Méndez, Reference Dussauge-Laguna, Méndez and Méndez2011; Hill & Varone, Reference Hill and Varone2017).

Whilst civil servants are considered the main protagonists in the implementation stage, non-state actors may also intervene and perform a relevant role. New Public Management recommended the incorporation of market for profit actors to address problems in the supply of public goods and services. Later, the Public Governance approach pointed to the incorporation of organised and non-organised civil society actors. The incorporation of non-state actors in policy development should have as one of its main objectives the improvement of the capacities of the state to carry out its responsibilities and achieve its goals. The concept of co-production has been coined to refer to the implementation of public policies with the participation of non-state actors. It has been especially applied to prescribe the delivery of public services with the involvement of volunteering citizens, community organisations or the same recipients of the benefits of public programmes. Co-production may generate certain benefits like permitting reductions in social spending, improving the quality of services by incorporating programme recipients who may be more empathic and knowledgeable than civil servants, enhancing social cohesion or enabling the expansion of public interventions through the additional participation of civil society. However, at the same time, it may also present certain risks like, paradoxically, reducing or blurring government responsibility and accountability, reducing the quality of service provision due to limited training and experience of volunteers, and the transfer of the costs of service delivery to the co-producers (Brandsen & Pestoff, Reference Brandsen and Pestoff2006; Pestoff et al., Reference Pestoff, Brandsen and Verschuere2012; Howlett et al., Reference Howlett, Kekez and Poocharoen2017).

Clientelism and patronage represent two key risks that may develop during the implementation of public policies. The mainstream policy literature pays little attention to the effects of these phenomena on policy development and outcomes. Clientelism is the discretionary and unequal distribution of public goods conditional on political support. The recipients of the goods, named clients, are citizens who depend on the political support they can offer to politicians or political organisations, labelled patrons, to access public goods and services. Patrons have the political power to reward or punish citizens depending on the political support they provide, discretionarily delivering, or withdrawing public benefits and services. Patronage refers to a specific type of clientelistic relation in which public jobs are discretionally assigned based on political loyalty. Clientelism and patronage may affect activities and outcomes of all policy stages, but their effects may be more visible and harmful during implementation. The formulation of a policy might have been adequate, but when it is implemented, its course might deviate from its original intentions due to clientelistic practices and objectives (Schuster, Reference Schuster2016; Deckard & Auyero, Reference Deckard and Auyero2022).

Top-down and bottom-up models of policy implementation

Policy implementation scholarship distinguishes between two models of policy implementation: top-down and bottom-up. The top-down model is based on hierarchical decision-making procedures and establishes that implementation should derive from the decisions taken by the higher authority structures within the government. The sole responsibility for policy formulation rests on elected politicians and high-ranking officials, from whom policy decisions, objectives and instructions should descend towards the officials employed in the lower structures responsible for carrying them out. Mazmanian and Sabatier (Reference Mazmanian and Sabatier1989) proposed a commonly cited framework of basic conditions for the effective top-down implementation of policy objectives: the establishment of clear and consistent objectives during formulation; an adequate causal theory about the relation between policy interventions and the sought outcomes; the existence of the required legal instruments to regulate, guide, and sanction the activities of policy implementors; the availability of committed and skilful implementing officials, especially the leaders of implementing agencies who should have a strong commitment to the achievement of policy objectives; and political support from key government and non-government actors, like politicians and high-ranking officials whose power is relevant to provide the resources needed throughout implementation, or interest groups that can influence policy development.

The top-down model came under criticism for reasons like the neglect of the complexities, history, and plurality of implementation settings; the perception of implementation as purely administrative activities; ambiguity and lack of clarity in the definition of objectives, sometimes even intentional to adapt policy development to changing conditions; an assumption that political actors that occupy the top echelons of state structures always have the capacity and information to set clear, legitimate, and valid policy objectives; and the disregard of the discretionary powers that policy implementors have to shape policy development and outcomes (Sabatier, Reference Sabatier1986; Mazmanian & Sabatier, Reference Mazmanian and Sabatier1989; Matland, Reference Matland1995; Revuelta Vaquero, Reference Revuelta Vaquero2007).

Rather than locating policy formulation activities exclusively on the upper levels of state structures, the bottom-up model centres the attention on the perspectives of public benefits providers and beneficiaries. This model begins with the identification of the actors and networks responsible for policy implementation to explore the practical issues and problems they face to deliver the public goods considered in the policy course, the resources they require to address those issues and problems, and the relations implementors build with policy recipients. The bottom-up model highlights the contextual factors of the implementation of each policy and the discretionary powers of policy implementors. It also implies a certain dilution of the frontiers between policy formulation and implementation, by incorporating in the former stage the opinions, demands and perspectives of government employees in charge of policy delivery into policy design activities. It is these groups of public sector workers, conceptualised as “street-level bureaucrats,” who tend to accumulate a more complete and precise knowledge of the public problems that affect the communities where they work and the intricacies of the development of public policies that aim to address them (Sabatier, Reference Sabatier1986; Matland, Reference Matland1995; Howlett et al., Reference Howlett, Ramesh and Perl2020). The theory of street-level bureaucracy, originally proposed by Michael Lipsky (Reference Lipsky2010), provides an understanding of these public employees’ decisions, behaviour, and actions and the results of their activities.

The street-level bureaucracy literature transformed how policy implementation is understood. It presented implementation not as determined during policy design or by formal hierarchical structures, but by the everyday actions of street-level bureaucrats and addresses how implementation occurs and how it constructs policy through informal practices (Brodkin, Reference Brodkin2011a). This bottom-up perspective emphasises that policies are not simply executed as written. Instead, they are constantly subjected to the reinterpretation, adaptation, and reshaping by street-level bureaucrats. Street-level bureaucrats are public sector workers who interact directly and frequently with citizens during their work and make decisions that alter policy implementation. Lipsky (Reference Lipsky2010) first argued that they effectively “make policy” through discretionary decisions and coping mechanisms, becoming the face of the government by shaping the way citizens experience policy. They can be bureaucrats responsible for administrative tasks, public servants that deliver resources or information to citizens, officers that monitor recipients’ compliance, and professionals with expert knowledge on the services they provide (e.g. doctors, teachers, and social workers).

Street-level bureaucrats’ performance can be affected by a large number of issues like uncertain and informal working conditions, dysfunctional rules (Peeters et al. Reference Peeters, Lotta and Nieto-Morales2024), low trust in government, the politicisation of bureaucracies, resource scarcity), dangerous social contexts, social inequalities, and their effects on the interaction with vulnerable citizens (Peeters et al. Reference Peeters, Lotta and Nieto-Morales2024; Cerna et al., Reference Cerna, García, Puémape, Sosa, Rentería and Rozas2017; Stanica et al., Reference Stanica, Balica, Henderson and Ţiclău2022). Such factors influence implementation at the street level, and in these contexts, frontline officers are confronted with daily challenging social, institutional, and political structures. The outcomes of this confrontation might lead to a variety of responses from frontline officers that open implementation gaps which do not always result in better policy outcomes and social wellbeing (Lotta et al., Reference Lotta, Pires, Hill and Ostergaard Møller2021).

Of the several factors influencing the way street-level bureaucrats approach their work and how it affects policy processes and outcomes, discretion is perhaps the most important, as it challenges the notion that civil servants follow rules acritically and apolitically. Lipsky (Reference Lipsky2010) defined discretion as the authority to decide how and when to offer resources and services and enforce rules. Discretion can vary in scope, types and the level at which it occurs and may have both positive and negative effects (Matland, Reference Matland1995; Evans & Harris, Reference Evans and Harris2004; Brodkin, Reference Brodkin2011a). Policies are often vague, underfunded, and overloaded; they operate in complex contexts with specific dynamics. These conditions make strict implementation difficult and give way to the need and space for officers to decide how to act in practice. Potential benefits of discretion include flexibility to adapt policies to individual needs, creative problem-solving, and increased trust and efficiency. Yet, discretion can also have harmful effects in contexts of high inequality, vulnerability, and hierarchical relationships. It may lead to inconsistent rule application based on personal values or prejudices, be used for personal gain, or serve to resist policy reform (Evans & Harris, Reference Evans and Harris2004). The study of discretion in differing institutional contexts (Maynard-Moody & Portillo, Reference Maynard-Moody, Portillo and Durant2010) and even in public organisations with increasing managerial control (Brodkin, Reference Brodkin2011b) has shown that it is practically inevitable, since during formulation it becomes impossible to foresee all real-world situations of implementation (Hupe et al., Reference Hupe, Hill and Buffat2016). The literature on street-level bureaucracy has evolved from static to dynamic views of discretion (Hupe, Reference Hupe2019). Early studies treated discretion as fixed, while recent work shows that contextual factors like management, politics, and technology strongly shape it. The focus has shifted from individual decision-making to a broader perspective, including institutional structures, policy regimes, and power relations.

The literature was initially developed under the assumptions of the stable and strong institutions of the global North. More recently, authors like Lotta et al. (Reference Lotta, Pires, Hill and Ostergaard Møller2021) and Peeters et al. (Reference Peeters, Lotta and Nieto-Morales2024) analyse policy implementation in contexts of weak institutions. Peeters and Campos (Reference Peeters and Campos2023) argue that street-level bureaucrats can simultaneously contribute to institutional weakness and compensate for it, and they identify three patterns of frontline agency that include an informal privatisation of the policy course by applying personal criteria to recipients, policy improvisation to mitigate and compensate for institutional weaknesses, and problematic commitments that involve gatekeeping or rationing state services and resources to protect their jobs. Frontline officers are compelled to compensate for the institutional deficiencies they face by using their negotiation abilities, resources, resilience, social ties, and other strategies. Similarly, Peake and Forsyth (Reference Peake and Forsyth2022) show how frontline officers rely on their social networks, affiliations, histories, and local resources to “create the state” for the citizens. They refer to this as the “relational state,” a concept that may better capture how street-level bureaucrats operate in contexts of weak institutionality, especially in those countries where familial and social ties are central, and where the roles, responsibilities, and cooperation capacities of the public, private, and civil society sectors are limited.

Criticisms of the bottom-up model include the lack of democratic accountability of non-elected low-ranking government employees, the importance it assigns to their autonomy in detriment of the responsibilities of their authorities, and the risk of co-optation and pursuit of individual goals contrary to policy objectives. Yet, as shown, the adoption of this model can also produce important benefits. The two implementation models should not be seen as exclusionary. In efforts to incorporate the benefits of both, a number of authors have attempted to combine them.Footnote ³ In practice, they must be perceived as complementary, recognising the need for solid top-down formulation processes with bottom-up approaches that enable learning from the knowledge that only policy implementors have about policy development, outputs, and outcomes (Matland, Reference Matland1995).

The implementation of social policy

When focusing on the implementation of social policies, namely, government courses of action that aim to improve the welfare of the population and maintain social cohesion, some of the issues discussed above become especially relevant and should be brought to the forefront of analysis. One example is the need for strong state capacities to deliver social policies. The implementation of social programmes, especially those that tend to seek a large geographical and population coverage, can be complicated by countries’ territorial complexities like the remoteness of some regions. Costly infrastructures are an extra burden on resources but building state capacities is not limited to the availability of economic resources; instead, the establishment of solid institutional frameworks with capable human resources available to implement social policies could well be more important. Additionally, the influence of clientelism on social policy outcomes must be acknowledged and dealt with in polities that adhere to the principles of the Rule of Law. Clientelism may pass unnoticed just for the fact that it may not be violating any formal rules. Still, it forms and maintains a set of informal institutions that are especially pervasive and harmful during the implementation of social programmes, directly affecting the welfare of citizens and the population in general. Social participation in policy co-production activities could be a useful instrument to combat clientelism but, equally, can be severely frustrated by it. Another challenge to consider are the self-undermining effects of social policy implementation, which severely impact the welfare of target populations like the conditionalities attached to various income transfers. The large scope of social programmes contributes to hiding undesirable unintended effects that must be identified and addressed to allow the achievement of policy objectives. Finally, there is the crucial role of street-level bureaucrats for social policy outcomes. The activities that these groups of public officials perform for the delivery of social benefits and services determines the results of government interventions that aim to address welfare problems, the relations they build with citizens and policy beneficiaries shape policy outcomes, and these, in turn, are highly vulnerable to unstable and/or unequal institutional, cultural, and political contexts.

Implementation challenges

Latin America usually refers to all Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas plus Brazil, which share a number of historical and cultural traits but also exhibit significant variations among the region’s countries in terms of their political, economic, and social configurations, including social policy arrangements. One commonality among most countries in the region is the unprecedented expansion of social policy that has taken place since the late 1990s. A combination of factors derived from political and economic liberalisation has driven this expansion, based on the layering of social assistance non-contributory programmes along with existing social insurance programmes of restricted coverage to formal sector workers and their families. Latin America’s recent trajectory in social policy implementation has been marked by such reforms (Garay, Reference Garay2016; Antía, Reference Antía2018). There has been a shift towards targeted interventions, primarily focusing on children, older and vulnerable populations, and an emphasis on decentralisation and local implementation (Niedzwiecki, Reference Niedzwiecki2016; Cruz-Martinez, Reference Cruz-Martinez2019). The bottom-targeted inclusionary expansion of the 2000s now faces the challenges of what Holland and Schneider (Reference Holland and Schneider2017) call “hard redistribution.” These redistributive policies are fiscally and institutionally costly and require greater administrative and political capacity to implement. They seek to extend coverage to population that may be difficult to reach and to deliver previously non-existent benefits and services.

Implementation challenges posed by social policy expansion join historical lags of the region’s public administrations. The literature highlights interrelated implementation challenges, such as intergovernmental coordination and the integration of multiple stakeholders in the social policy arena (Tulchin & Garland, Reference Tulchin and Garland2000; Niedzwiecki, Reference Niedzwiecki2016; Giraudy & Pribble, Reference Giraudy and Pribble2020); the discretionarily role of street-level bureaucracy (Ramírez, Reference Ramírez2020; Alonso Ferreira, Reference Alonso Ferreira2024); pernicious effects of domestic unequal power structures and clientelism (Olavarría Gambi, Reference Olavarría Gambi2017; Hernández Agrelo et al., Reference Hernández Agrelo, Hernández Corrochano, Cruz-Martínez and Velázquez Leyer2024); low state capacities with limited institutional, information, financial, and material resources (Soares & Britto, Reference Soares and Britto2007); and civil services plagued by patronage and clientelism (Dussauge-Laguna & Méndez, Reference Dussauge-Laguna, Méndez and Méndez2011).

The region faces coordination and state capacity issues within and across policy sectors. At the institutional level, social policy implementation must adapt to volatile economic conditions, demographic shifts, climate change, and technological innovations (Székely, Reference Székely2015; Martínez, Reference Martínez2018). Limited clinical coordination in healthcare policy between primary and secondary care levels (Vázquez et al., Reference Vázquez, Vargas and Unger2015) and weak integration of social policy programmes (Ruggia-Frick, Reference Ruggia-Frick2016) demonstrate the breadth of these challenges. Weak support from local executive levels and inadequate coordination with civil society hinder effective inter-sectoral coordination in anti-poverty social policy implementation (Monnerat & Souza, Reference Monnerat and Souza2010). The political misalignments between national and subnational governments affects policy implementation (Niedzwiecki, Reference Niedzwiecki2016). In decentralised and federal welfare states, identifying responsible government levels becomes particularly challenging, complicating accountability. Experiences in Chile and Argentina demonstrate how different political systems affect implementation outcomes (Wiggel, Reference Wiggel2017). On state capacity constraints, implementing cash transfer programs has been particularly challenging in lower-income Latin American countries due to limited delivery capacity, resource constraints, and inadequate service infrastructure (Barrientos & Santibáñez, Reference Barrientos and Santibáñez2009). Civil services were of late introduction, as in Mexico, where the first federal law was passed at the beginning of this century, and even if they have been formally introduced, in practice, they are affected by historical clientelistic practices (M. Dussauge-Laguna, Reference Dussauge-Laguna2011). These challenges are further complicated by political economy issues in programme implementation and tensions accentuated by financial and institutional capacity constraints (Soares & Britto, Reference Soares and Britto2007).

Political dynamics significantly impact implementation effectiveness. Political culture considerations are vital, as demonstrated by the Lota commune case in Chile, where neglecting social participation led to disconnects between programme objectives and local realities (Astete Cereceda & Vaccari Fernández, Reference Astete Cereceda and Vaccari Fernández2017). Clientelism continues to be a problem despite democratic reforms and affects policy implementation, particularly anti-poverty policy (Deckard & Auyero, Reference Deckard and Auyero2022; Hernández Agrelo et al., Reference Hernández Agrelo, Hernández Corrochano, Cruz-Martínez and Velázquez Leyer2024). Additionally, private sector leverage significantly affects implementation outcomes, particularly in healthcare reforms. The 2004 Chilean health reform’s failure to reduce gender and age inequalities in healthcare access stemmed not from traditional political factors but from implementation failures due to private provider interests (Ewig & Palmucci, Reference Ewig and Palmucci2012).

The role of street-level bureaucracies presents another crucial challenge. The widespread implementation of conditional cash transfers has allowed the examination of the role of frontline officers in monitoring and enforcing recipients’ compliance with a wide range of formal and informal activities. The enforcement of conditionalities places frontline officers and recipients in a hierarchical relationship where the first supervise and control and the second comply (Cookson, Reference Cookson2018). This relation, coupled with the heightened social, educational, and economic inequalities between these two actors, reinforces some of the negative aspects of discretion and policy improvisation (Campos & Peeters, Reference Campos and Peeters2022).

As observed in the case of Mexico, the rigid enforcement of conditionalities can be a fertile ground for the reproduction of power relations between street-level bureaucrats and recipients (Ramírez, Reference Ramírez2020), which elevate compliance costs and partly explain why recipients did not protest when the regional flagship programme of conditional cash transfers was cancelled (Ramírez & Velázquez Leyer, Reference Ramírez and Velázquez Leyer2023). The dismantling of the programme can also be explained by the precarious employment conditions of street-level bureaucrats, hired through fixed-term contracts without any job security (Ramírez & Velázquez Leyer, Reference Ramírez and Velázquez Leyer2024). In Chile, on the other hand, professional resistance to implementation at the street-level follows a micropolitics of resistance. However, as in Mexico, precarious employment often prevents collective action due to job security concerns (Muñoz Arce et al., Reference Muñoz Arce, Duboy Luengo, Villalobos Dintrans and Reininger2022).

Implementation opportunities

Current social, political, and economic conditions could open up important opportunities to reduce implementation gaps and adopt implementation innovations. Decentralisation efforts have created significant opportunities for strengthening policy implementation, particularly in countries with more substantial institutional capacity. Local governments with robust capacity demonstrate better implementation outcomes (Niedzwiecki, Reference Niedzwiecki2018), and intergovernmental coordination between territorial levels has proven crucial for implementation success, especially in program coordination and resource allocation (Niedzwiecki, Reference Niedzwiecki2016). The degree of professionalism in the civil services of some countries has been found to have a substantial impact on the quality of the implementation of public policies, decreasing the politicisation of the bureaucracy, enabling the formation of state capacities, and improving its performance through technical expertise (Scartascini et al., Reference Scartascini, Stein and Tommasi2008; Tommasi, Reference Tommasi2011).

The diffusion of democracy and the increased role of non-governmental actors have created opportunities for improved accountability among different groups in public service delivery – policymakers, frontline workers, and citizens (Fiszbein, Reference Fiszbein2005). Brazil’s experience demonstrates the potential of broad actor participation in social policy implementation (Valdés Cotera & Flores Crespo, Reference Valdés Cotera and Flores Crespo2015). Citizen participation in social policy implementation has grown significantly since the 1990s, though with variation across countries and policy areas. These initiatives foster social integration and address social demands (Cruz González & Mballa, Reference Cruz González and Mballa2017). Implementation at the micro- and meso-levels remains with persistent challenges in the state cooptation of civil society groups (Gideon, Reference Gideon2005), however, as Pastor (Reference Pastor2013) argues, social policy efficacy could improve through intensified citizen participation and greater influence of social organisations, particularly in contexts of social exclusion. Brazil’s experience shows how national bureaucracies can mobilise civil society as watchdogs to ensure policy implementation in decentralised systems (Rich, Reference Rich2013). Additionally, in Mexico, the introduction of strong and stable institutions and policy rules of conditional cash transfers in the context of democratisation processes, helped to significantly reduce clientelism in federal anti-poverty policy (Díaz-Cayeros et al., Reference Díaz-Cayeros, Estévez and Magaloni2016).

The Covid-19 pandemic revealed how in contexts of crisis opportunities for the improvement of social policy implementation can also open up. Emergency cash transfer programmes forced governments to develop new capacities for managing external shocks and complex problems. The crisis promoted possibilities for digital service delivery and innovative crisis response mechanisms (Cejudo et al., Reference Cejudo, Michel and los Cobos2022). The expansion of social policy during the pandemic, particularly in social emergency programmes (Busso et al., Reference Busso, Camacho, Messina and Montenegro2021; Blofield et al., Reference Blofield, Pribble and Giambruno2023), suggests that expanding benefits and coverage is possible. The implementation of a programme which sought the improvement of neighbourhoods in Argentina provides valuable lessons in crisis adaptation; Di Virgilio (Reference Di Virgilio2006) shows how crisis contexts can serve as windows of opportunity for programme expansion, increased funding, and strengthened social components, and how institutional capacities can be developed by enhancing municipal technical teams and improving inter-governmental articulation.

Implementation challenges

Southern Europe refers to Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain a cluster of countries that since the mid-1970s undergone similar processes of democratisation and socio-economic modernisation. By the mid-1980s they had all joined the European Economic Community and until the eruption of the sovereign debt crisis in early 2010 enjoyed politico-economic stability and increases in social welfare. Southern European welfare regimes share several similarities with those of Latin American countries, particularly in their legacies of fragmented social insurance systems, reliance on familial support, and clientelism. Historically, their welfare states were characterised by Bismarckian-style social insurance systems that provided limited coverage to privileged professional groups employed in the public and private sectors. Labour markets were traditionally characterised by dualisation, where social and labour market protection was offered protection primarily to men in full-time, stable employment in urban areas, disadvantaging women, young people, and non-standard workers, the self-employed and those working in agriculture. Consequently, structural inequalities in welfare access persisted for many years, economic informality and tax evasion were extensive, and reliance on families for caregiving and economic support was the norm.

The expectation that families manage caregiving responsibilities, coupled with limited state support, has, traditionally, reproduced a familistic welfare regime that relied upon patriarchal values, hindering women’s full labour market participation. Still, in the last decades of the twentieth century, the strengthening of democratic institutions and expansion of social policy played a crucial role in promoting socio-economic progress and improving social and labour rights and the position of women. During the 1990s, new targeted programmes introduced in the four countries marked improvements in redressing historical imbalances, filling coverage gaps, and redistributing income towards vulnerable social groups (Ferrera, Reference Ferrera1996; Matsaganis et al., Reference Matsaganis, Ferrera, Capucha and Moreno2003). Furthermore. substantial financial support from the European Economic Community and later the European Union helped bridge socio-economic disparities with other European countries during that decade. However, the 2009 sovereign debt crisis disrupted these efforts, leading to austerity measures and pro-market reforms imposed by the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank, and European Commission. These changes led to severe cuts in wages, pensions, welfare funding, and disruptions in social policy implementation (Papadopoulos & Roumpakis, Reference Papadopoulos, Roumpakis, Ellison and Haux2020).

Understanding contemporary social policy challenges in Southern Europe requires analysing how the policies introduced during the sovereign debt crisis intersect with longstanding institutional and administrative legacies. With respect to the later, Southern European states were traditionally categorised in comparative public administration studies as variants of the Continental European Napoleonic administrative model (Peters, 2021; Painter & Peters, Reference Painter, Peters, Painter and Peters2010; Kuhlmann et al., Reference Kuhlmann, Wollmann and Reiter2025). This model emphasises centralised government control where sub-national and local administrations were and remain subordinate. The difference in Southern European states concerned the modality of policy implementation, which was characterised by legacies of strong politicisation, clientelism, and party patronage in civil service recruitment.

Since the mid-2000s academic discussions on the desirability of implementation reforms focused, on the one hand, on the attractiveness and political feasibility of market-oriented operational and administrative practices advocated by New Public Management, and, on the other hand, on the impact of Europeanisation, which brought about organisational changes at national level that facilitated the coordination of administrative norms and procedures across the EU (Mastenbroek, Reference Mastenbroek, Thiel and Ongaro2018; Sotiropoulos, Reference Sotiropoulos2015; Saurugger & Radaelli, Reference Saurugger and Radaelli2008). Additionally, governance trends like agencification, where responsibilities were transferred from central ministries to specialised agencies to improve efficiency, began to be implemented with mixed results.

Nonetheless, Southern European public administrations continued to be affected by politicisation and clientelism at top and bottom ranks, with patronage patterns in the recruitment of personnel, an uneven distribution of public servants due to an erratic clientelistic allocation, excessive legalism and formalism, and an excessive production of legislation as government officials respond to clientelistic compromises (Sotiropoulos, Reference Sotiropoulos2004; Capano et al., Reference Capano, Cavalieri and Pritoni2024). Although New Public Management ideas per se did not appear to have had a strong influence on public administration reform, political and administrative decentralisation, welfare state retrenchment, privatisations of various public sector areas, and the processes of European integration seem to have had a stronger impact on the development of public bureaucracies (Sotiropoulos, Reference Sotiropoulos2004, Reference Sotiropoulos2015). Decentralisation also created new challenges, where the transferring of responsibilities to regional and local governments took place, in many cases, without adequate financial and technical support, producing gaps in service delivery. Local administrations frequently lacked the capacity to handle expanded roles, negatively impacting the implementation of social programmes.

Described originally as the “Mediterranean Syndrome,” the implementation gaps, policy failures and deficiencies observed in the region’s public administrations were attributed to low administrative capacities linked to cultural factors. Later, in the context of research on the implementation of European Union policies, they were described as the “Southern Problem,” with a more ample focus on political competencies and coordination, administrative styles, and limited socio-economic development. In the context of the implementation of those policies, the so-called “Southern Problem” was attributed to features shared among the four countries like a misfit between EU directives and domestic institutional and regulatory conditions; horizontal and vertical fragmentations of administrative structures with politicised public administrations; weak enforcement capacities, reactive policy styles; insufficient technical expertise, staff, and infrastructure; relative low levels of economic development; the existence of vested interests that have veto powers to delay or obstruct implementation efforts; and patronage practices in the recruitment of public sector personnel and pervasive clientelism and disrespect for public authority (Borzel, Reference Borzel2000; Hartlapp & Leiber, Reference Hartlapp and Leiber2010).

Finally, research on street-level bureaucracies has revealed multiple challenges (Jordan et al., Reference Jordan, Strath and Triandafyllidou2003a; Leonardi et al., Reference Leonardi, Paraciani and Raspanti2024). For example, Jordan et al. (Reference Jordan, Strath and Triandafyllidou2003b) found that the delivery of welfare and labour market services and benefits for immigrant populations in Italy was shaped by the application of high levels of discretion, reflecting a formal hierarchical and clientelistic organisational culture and producing poor efficiency outcomes, and in Greece, similar high levels of discretion combined with complicated administrative processes generated and legitimised discriminatory practices against immigrants from the same groups of public employees. Furthermore, research on the work of high-level civil servants has shown problems in their analytical capacities framed by institutional dynamics and practices in Italy, Greece, and Portugal, with the worst performance in the latter (Capano et al., Reference Capano, Cavalieri and Pritoni2024).

Implementation opportunities

Recently, the persistence of a “Southern Problem” in policy implementation has been contested by a number of authors. It appears that Southern European countries have begun to diverge in terms of the success of changes in public administrations. Reforms introduced in Portugal and Spain were combined with programmes of digital transformation of administrative activities with positive results (Secchi et al., Reference Secchi, Caeiro, Pinto and Arenilla Sáez2025). In addition, in Spain, recent research indicates that a stronger analytical stock of policy analytical capacities has been developed among central bureaucracies and high-level public officials (Capano et al., Reference Capano, Cavalieri and Pritoni2024).Footnote ⁴

In the context of the implementation of European Union directives, policy learning processes in Spain enabled by collaboration among stakeholders and robust administrative capacities have led to improvements in social policy outcomes and reductions in poverty and social exclusion (Vagionaki, Reference Vagionaki and Vagionaki2025). This confirms the earlier work of authors like Hartlapp and Leiber (Reference Hartlapp and Leiber2010) who had questioned the homogeneity of the four countries noting that important differences in the implementation capacity of EU directives and outputs existed among them. The authors had acknowledged that monitoring and enforcement weaknesses in all four but also that these were not exclusive to the region. They were also present in other European Union countries. Furthermore, they found only minor mismatches between the directives and existing national institutional architectures. Nevertheless, and a lack of administrative capacity and resources was found in Greece, where, along with Portugal, neglect and lack of attention and interest by administrative officials characterised implementation processes. In Spain and Italy, on the other hand, domestic politics and conflicts were the cause of implementation delays. In short, diverse national contexts and outcomes point to opportunities for addressing historical problems with public administrations and policy implementation outcomes.

A bottom-up analysis also reveals opportunities for the improvement of social policy implementation (Jordan et al., Reference Jordan, Strath and Triandafyllidou2003b; Leonardi et al., Reference Leonardi, Paraciani and Raspanti2024). For example, due to relatively weak institutional arrangements and less established administrative traditions, implementation strongly mediated through discretionary practices may be open to bottom-up pressures from civil society actors, possibly allowing quick adaptations to constantly changing contextual circumstances (Jordan et al., Reference Jordan, Strath and Triandafyllidou2003a). In Italy, significant differences have been identified between social services provision by social workers in rural areas facing resource inadequacy and precarious working conditions and urban areas, where they are able to rely on collaborative relations with other officials and third-sector actors to deliver services (Pagiotti, Reference Pagiotti2024). On public healthcare, it has been found that in Italy and Spain the institutional context affects the provision of primary services for mental health patients. In Italy, general practitioners contracted as self-employed are able to exercise greater autonomy and discretion, which facilitates the provision of services. On the other hand, in Spain, where practitioners are salaried employees of the healthcare system, provision tends to be more bureaucratised, restricting scheduling flexibility (Giosa, Reference Giosa2024). Different approaches to social work have also been identified in Spain, reflecting distinct attempts to treat and help beneficiaries beyond the simple administration of benefits (Sánchez-Castiñeira, Reference Sánchez-Castiñeira2024).