Implementation Beyond Hierarchy: Swedish Energy Research Policy

ABSTRACT Implementation analyses have increasingly gone beyond the study of the working of well‐defined bureaucratic hierarchies. The key role played by informally coordinated clusters or complexes of different organizations, so‐called implementation structures, has instead been emphasized. This article on a major programme for energy research and development in Sweden agrees with the thrust of this latter approach. However, three substantial reformulations of the basic thesis about non‐hierarchical implementation arc advanced. First, it is argued that the role of implementation structures is by no means limited to the implementation process proper but may involve a crucial contribution to the definition and setting of a policy problem. Second, the article rejects the thesis that a purposive commitment to some common programme objective or rationale is a prerequisite for the successful implementation of a programme. Third, it underscores the importance of understanding linkages between public and private sectors in different bargaining arenas. But analysis cannot focus only on the uses of existing linkages and arenas. Programmes may well involve policies for affecting distant transactions. They will then have to cope with uncertainties about the future nature of such arenas as well as the conditions for shaping, or even creating, them.