City of Cape Town Solar Water Heater Bylaw: Barriers to Implementation

Abstract

This paper builds on the rich literature on implementation that has developed since the topic started to attract scholarly attention in the early 1970s. The richness of this literature relies on its large repertoire of findings, perspectives and policy ideas. From this resource we extracted four ideas, which have guided this study.

1. We adhere to the ‘relaxed’ definition of implementation suggested by Ferman (1990) as that which happens between policy expectations and policy result. In line with this interpretation we define our study - of how a municipal government declared its expectation that a new city bylaw would be adopted, which never happened - as a case of a failed policy implementation.

2. Policy implementation can be perceived as a ‘negotiated order’ (Bardach, 1977), necessitating a focus on the political processes, through which such orders are established, maintained and changed (O’Toole and Montjoy, 1984).

3. Implementation usually implies the involvement of different organisational units, and requires an exploration of inter-organisational relations and inter-institutional linkages (O’Toole and Montjoy, 1984) as well as a focus on the organisational cultures (Barrett, 2004).

4. Policy implementation may be viewed as problem-solving, necessitating a focus on organisational learning processes. This requires exploring how learning takes place – or is inhibited – within and across organisational units (Schofield, 2001; 2004).