Policy Sciences 5 (1974), pp.

481-484
© Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam—Printed in Scotland

Book Review
Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation: How Great Expectations in
Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; or. Why It's Amazing That Federal Programs
Work At All, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as
Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation of
Ruined Hopes, (Berkeley: University of California Press) 1973.

The purpose of the authors is to discuss the problems of implementing policy by

examining the operation of the Economic Development Administration's (EDA)
Oakland Project. The goal of the Project was to develop jobs for unemployed minori-
ties as a means of alleviating the riot-prone situation in post-Watts Oakland. The
Oakland Project was supposed to create about 3000 jobs by providing over $23,000,000
in grants and loans to Oakland for the construction of public works facilities. The
project was formally announced on April 29, 1966, yet four years later few jobs had
been created and the major public works projects had not been built despite the high
initial urgency with which EDA approved the project. As the book's title indicates, the
authors ask why and attempt to "build morals" about policy implementation on a
"foundation of ruined hopes" of the Oakland Project.
The book can be divided into two major sections. The first four chapters describe
the initiation and operation of the Oakland Project by the EDA with a detailed dis-
cussion of many of the main stumbling blocks (obstructions, delays, red tape, etc.)
which seriously frustrated the achievement of the Project's goals. The Project was
initiated by Eugene Foley, the energetic Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Eco-
nomic Development. In the space of nine months after the Watts disturbances in
August 1965 Foley had committed the EDA, which was established to develop
primarily economically depressed rural areas, to spend a large part of its funds in a
"massive experiment in solving the principal urban problem, unemployment" (p. 2).
He made a formal announcement of the EDAs agreement to fund the $23,000,000
Oakland Project in April 1966. Although Foley resigned his position in October 1966,
he apparently believed that he and his stafF had supplied the critical "initial push" for
the Oakland Project and all that remained was the relatively easy job of "carrying out
the plans" (p. 34). Through a careful discussion of the operation of the Oakland
Project, the authors indicate that the "technical details" of implementation proved to
be "more difficult and more time-consuming than the federal donors, local recipients,
or enthusiastic observers had ever dreamed" (p. 6). In fact, it was the attempts to work
out these "technical details" which produced the major stumbling blocks which

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frustrated the Project's success. According to the authors three factors lay behind
these frustrations which thwarted implementation:
(1) The difficulty of translating broad agreement into specific decisions, given a wide
range of participants and perspectives; (2) The opportunities for blockage and
delay that result from a multiplicity of decision points; (3) The economic theories on
which the program was based, (p. 6)
In the final three chapters of the book, chapters 5, 6 and 7, Pressman and Wildavsky
expand their discussion of these three factors and attempt to develop a generalizable
analytic model for the failure of implementation. Their model which involves the first
two factors has three main components to it: Any project like the Oakland Project
requires complex, joint action by (1) numerous participants (or actors). These partici-
pants have (2) diverse perspectives which reflect (a) their own preferences, (b) a set of
available resources which they may or may not commit and (c) an "intensity" or degree
of commitment to the project. Finally for the project to proceed requires one or more
of the participants to reach agreement at each of the project's (3) many decision points.
The Oakland Project was characterized by 30 decision points, i.e., times at which one
or more participants had to reach agreement before the project could proceed. These
decision points required 70 separate "clearance points" or agreements by the various
participants. Using straightforward combinatorial probability techniques, the authors
show that even if the probability of agreement at each clearance point were 0.99, the
probability of success of the whole project would be less than 50%.* If the probability
of agreement was only 0.90 at each clearance point, then the probability of success
would drop to less than 1 in 1000!
However, in the context of the project clearance points are seldom characterized by
a definitive "yes" or "no." "Vetoes are not permanent but conditional" (p. 116). The
complexity of joint action leads to project delay which is a function of the number of
decision points, the number of participants at each point and the intensity of their
preferences. Because every complex project will require multiple decision points and
numerous participants, the authors argue that the "essential policy problem is how to
provide incentives to change low to high intensity or more accurately, how to maintain
high positive intensity through the lengthy delays" (p. 120). Their anticipation of this
conclusion led them to indicate in chapter 4 that the West Oakland Health Center
succeeded (in creating 160 jobs within 2^ years, after agreement to $1.4 million funding
by EDA) because one EDA Administrator, George Karras, offered "sustained and
effective help in the process of implementation" (p. 84) where as Foley had left his job
before the "technical details" had been worked out and was replaced by officials with
a far lower intensity of commitment to the Project. The conclusion is relatively simple:
"although those who design programs might not generally enjoy the less exciting work
of directing their implementation, a realization of the extent to which policy depends
on implementation could lead such people to alter their own time perspectives and
stay around for the technical details of executing a program" (p. 146). The results

* The authors assume that the agreement at each clearance point is independent of any other. They
believe that this is a reasonable assumption because of the "American context of fragmented cower"
(p. 109).

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would presumably be a sustained high intensity of commitment to a project and
therefore less delay time in implementing the project.
In chapter 6 the authors review and critique the Oakland Project. Their main
criticisms are that the Project was not experimental and therefore "closed ofif possibili-
ties of learning" (p. 125). Furthermore, the project was initiated under two widely
"espoused administrative remedies" for the problems which plague most projects:
(1) going around the bureaucracy and (2) coordination (p. 128). Although going
through the bureaucracy has its "costs," these may be the necessary prices to pay for
"predictability and agreement overtime among diverse participants" (p. 133). Going
around the bureaucracy may produce extra delays in implementation whose costs are
quite high in terms of project success. Furthermore, coordination as applied has
become a tautology. "Everyone wants coordination—on his own terms" (p. 134).
"Achieving coordination means getting your own way" (p. 135). These two "false
messiahs" are not the "real devil" which is "the divorce of implementation from
policy" (p. 134). Indeed the purpose of their analysis is to suggest how policy might
have been improved by making implementation a part of its essential conception"
(p. 160).
The final chapter of the book discusses the economic theory upon which the Oakland
Project was designed. Pressman and Wildavsky question the basic EDA assumption
that funding public work projects is an effective way to reduce unemployment. They
suggest that direct subsidy to the wage bill of firms would have been a far more
effective way to achieve the policy objective. Although this is probably true, Foley
probably could not choose to subsidize the wage bill. He was constrained by his
enabling legislation and probably could only choose to fund the public works or to do
nothing. The economic assumptions may have been naive when judged against what
ought to be but not when judged against the practical realities of EDA (unless one
believes that it would have been best not to try at all).
The main strengths of the book lie in the first four chapters. In particular, the
description of the maze of occurrences which happened during the attempts to imple-
ment the Oakland Project gives the reader an intuitive grasp of the complexities
of working out the technical details of a project. Unfortunately, the analysis of the
reasons for the failure to implement the Project do not appear as strong. The model of
implementation failure described in chapter five is too broad a generalization from the
specific case of the Oakland Project. Furthermore, because of the lack of rigorous
analysis of the failures of the Oakland Project itself, some of the conclusions in the last
chapters contradict earlier observations about the Oakland Project. For example.
Pressman and Wildavsky indicate that going through the bureaucracy is a part of the
necessary price to be paid for eventual agreement (p. 135) but their earlier observations
about the failure of implementing the job training program lead them to conclude that
the bureaucratic red tape, which required agreement by HEW, EDA, Labor, and six
other local and state departments, would have probably prevented agreement on the
training program anyway (p. 47). Furthermore, the delay price of going through the
bureaucracy may be excessive because "program delay is often difficult to distinguish
from program failure" (p. 122).
The weakness of the analysis also produces a failure to sufficiently note a critical

483
 dimension of their own model of the complexity of joint actions. The number of
decision points and clearances will affect the probability of success and delay time
only if these are independent agreements. Intensity of commitment to the project goals
may not facilitate agreement or reduce delay unless there is operational agreement on
what constitutes success. For instance, one participant may be intensely committed to
the Project but have a radically different view of how to proceed than another partici-
pant. This may foment delays and disagreements more than low intensity participants.
High intensity of commitment to a different perspective of the criterion of success can
produce additional delays. These differences are differences in perspective which
although Pressman and Wildavsky mention, they fail to put in proper analytic
perspective and thus fail to grasp the critical strategic implications for implementation.
Although they observe that "when perspectives differ, so also do measures of success"
(1. 98), they fail to note that it is these differences in perspectives that determine
(operationally) how independent the various sequences of clearance points will be.
Given that there is basic similarity of perspective, the higher is the probability of swift
agreement. Given a similarity of perspective and success criterion, high intensity
commitment may reduce project delays. The multiple perspectives of the participants
seems to be a more critical factor in delay than intensity of commitment per se.
One way to improve implementation is to design the programs to be self-learning
and adaptive. This requires a strategy for implementing a program. Although Press-
man and Wildavsky cogently argue for making implementation a part of the policy-
making process, they fail to explain how this might be accomplished. It is doubtful that
many experienced politicians fail to recognize (at least intuitively) that a well-conceived
policy may have "unanticipated consequences" which thwart the implementation. The
critical question is how to redesign the policymaking process to include implementa-
tion. Thus, the authors fail to discuss how to implement their basic conclusion—the
need for more implementation in policy making. Despite these flaws Pressman and
Wildavsky have written a glib and interesting saga about the failure of the EDA's
Oakland Project. Their work indicates the need for more careful consideration of the
implementation process during policy formulation and how the best of motives may be
dashed by failure to consider this important part of the policy making process.

ALAN HIRSHBERG
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech

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