Bureaucratic overload and organizational policy triage
A comparative study of implementation agencies in five European countries
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7997733 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dionys Zink (0000-0002-2711-1371, corresponding author), Christoph Knill (0000-0002-8562-2102), Yves Steinebach (0000-0001-7453-7204) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 637-655 |
| Publication date | 2024-02-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Regulation & Governance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1748-5983 • E-ISSN: 1748-5991 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/rego.12581 |
| OpenAlex | W4391612712 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
| References cited | 54 |
Research on policy implementation traditionally has focused on understanding the success or failure of individual policies within specific contexts. Little attention has been given to the challenges that emerge from the cumulative growth of policy portfolios over time. This paper is addressing this research gap by examining the phenomenon of organizational policy triage, which occurs when implementation organizations face overload and are forced to make trade‐off decisions between the implementation of the different policies in their portfolios. We investigate empirical patterns of policy triage across 16 social and environmental implementation agencies in five European countries (Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and UK). We show that variation in policy triage can be explained by the combination of three central factors: blame‐shifting opportunities, the mobilization of external resources, and the commitment to compensate for overload by implementation authorities
Bureaucracy · Business · Medical emergency · Political science · Politics · Triage · Disaster Management and Resilience · Evaluation and Performance Assessment · Law · Medicine · Public Administration · Public Policy and Administration Research
Organizational Policy Complexity in Hybrid Organizations
What Makes Member States opt for Hybrid Implementation Structures When the Federal Policy Asks for It
Mapping bureaucratic overload
Policy Growth and Its Impacts on Policy Implementation
Analyzing Climate Policy Portfolios
Tackling blind spots in Europeanisation research
Towards ‘better deregulation’
Come together
Unraveling how intermediary‐beneficiary interaction shapes policy implementation
Policy Implementation, Street-level Bureaucracy, and the Importance of Discretion
Implementation Structures
Dismantling Public Policy
The Policy State
Policy Accumulation and the Democratic Responsiveness Trap
Case Selection for Case‐Study Analysis
Organizational Culture
Blame Games and Climate Change
Structures for Policy Implementation
Bureaucratic overburdening in advanced democracies
A short measure of general policy alienation
Street‐level bureaucrats and policy entrepreneurship
Rule growth and government effectiveness
Policy complexity and legislative duration in the European Union
The opinion‐policy nexus in Europe and the role of political institutions
Manufacturing Esprit de Corps
American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies, and Political Theory
Instrument choice, implementation structures, and the effectiveness of environmental policies
Repairing the State
Lobbying from Inside the System
Systemic Dynamics of Policy Change
Rethinking Punctuated Equilibrium Theory
The Policyscape and the Challenges of Contemporary Politics to Policy Maintenance
Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches to Implementation Research
Why Style Matters
Policy Alienation and Street-level Bureaucrats’ Psychological Wellbeing
How policy growth affects policy implementation
European policies and domestic reform
How Politics Shapes the Growth of Rules
On democratic intelligence and failure
Condemned to complexity? Growing state activity and complex policy systems
Three Decades of Policy Layering and Politically Sustainable Reform in theEuropeanUnion's Agricultural Policy
Extra‐Network Organizational Reputation and Blame Avoidance in Networks
Implementation structures as institutions
The Coproduction of Primary and Secondary Legislation
Public policy accumulation in Ireland
Rethinking epistemic communities twenty years later
Bureaucratic Quality and the Gap between Implementation Burden and Administrative Capacities
Do Policy Makers Listen to Experts? Evidence from a National Survey of Local and State Policy Makers
| Unique citing works | 9 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |