IMPLEMENTATION

Given that Finland is governed by broad-based coalition governments that command decisive majorities in parliament, the political conditions for satisfactory government implementation are good indeed. In general, the (Prime Minister Matti) Vanhanen II cabinet achieved most of its policy objectives. Of course the economic global crisis has hampered the cabinet efforts as regards employment targets. The government’s own mid-term evaluation of its program from February 2009 also identified further shortcomings, including the situation of socially excluded children and inequalities in health care. While performing reasonably well in terms of general competitiveness, Finland placing sixth overall in the 2005 IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook and ninth overall in 2009, the country’s economic performance ranking was less successful. While Finland ranked 30th in 2005 and 36th in 2008, the overall rank in 2009 was 40th.

Because of the strong position of the executive branch with respect to the legislative branch, bills envisaged or proposed by the government in parliament rarely fail to be approved. Thus, the government has substantial influence, and achieves almost all of its policy objectives. However, one recent, prominent example of government failure is represented by the bill on Icelandic state guarantees for the so-called Icesave debt to Great Britain and Netherlands, which was debated in the summer and autumn of 2009 and 2010. After serious difficulties winning Left Green Movement support for the bill, the government finally managed to get the bill approved in parliament by a slender margin. However, the constitution grants the president of Iceland the right to refuse to sign laws, thereby referring them to a national referendum. For only the second time in the history of the republic, the president did so in this case, claiming that the people had the right to settle the matter. In a referendum in March 2010, the Icesave debt law was overwhelmingly rejected, partly because a new deal more favorable to Iceland was already on the table, thus rendering obsolete the agreement that the electorate was being asked to accept or reject. About 60% of the electorate participated in the referendum. The prime minister and the minister of finance did not bother to vote.

Governments in the period under consideration have held parliamentary majorities and have had no external constraint on implementing policies. The impediment to government efficiency has been the potential for conflict between the three parties in government, but collaboration between the three parties is generally good. After the 2009 election, the prime minister strengthened his grip on the reins of government and reshuffled accordingly, and is now in firm control. The main dimension of contention within the government has been foreign policy, as the Socialist Left Party is highly critical of Norway’s participation in NATO’s Afghanistan operation, but with no ability to scuttle that participation.

In a veto-ridden polity like the Swiss where policies have to be acceptable to many parties that have substantially differing policy positions, to cantons that have veto power in the second chamber, and to all interest groups that might otherwise successfully trigger a referendum, the government has to hammer out compromises carefully when drafting legislation. This is done in the pre-parliamentary stage of legislation. Thus, once a bill is introduced into parliament, many of the necessary compromises have already been reached. For this reason, a substantial number of bills are passed in parliament without being modified (Sciarini 2007: 479).

Canada’s current government has been partly successful in implementing its policy objectives. Of course, there are important constraints on the ability of any government to achieve its public policy objectives. One is the state of the country’s macroeconomic health. For example, the economic crisis reduced government revenues and hence the means to address policy goals. A second constraint is the presence of a minority government, which limits the government’s ability to pass legislation and forces compromises. A third constraint is that many policy objectives, such as the elimination of child poverty or the reduction in the education attainment gap between Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals, are complex social phenomena that are only partly amenable to public policy action. In addition, many of the programs funded by Canada’s federal government are implemented by provincial governments – among others, health care, post-secondary education, social services, the integration of new Canadians and so on. Nevertheless, the current government has done reasonably well in attaining its policy objectives, aided by its choice of modest objectives or benchmarks. In 2006, it identified five priorities: cleaning up government by passing the Federal Accountability Act; cutting the Goods and Services Tax; cracking down on crime; increasing financial assistance for parents; and working with the provinces to establish a wait-time guarantee for patients. The government argues that it had achieved these priorities by 2009. However, some have argued that the government does not have a good track record in terms of implementing its own programs (see, among others, various reports by the Office of the Auditor General). One example: One component of the accountability act was the establishment of a Parliamentary Budget Officer. He has proven to be a thorn in the side of the government, through a constant second-guessing of official fiscal forecasts. The government now sets a much lower priority on accountability mechanisms than it did when it was in opposition.

The government during the period under review was a minority government, and thus must seek parliamentary support for its policies. The parliamentary support is ensured by the Danish People’s Party, so compromises have to be found between the government and this party.

Danish government administration is reasonably good at implementation. It is important to point out that a large part of implementation is carried out by local governments, as Denmark is a relatively decentralized state. Much of the services of the welfare state are provided by decentralized units and the intention is actually to allow some geographical variation. But through stipulations in framework laws and budget constraints, the government is quite successful in steering agencies and administrative bodies even if they are not in a direct hierarchical relationship with the central government.

In recent years tensions have developed between the municipalities and the government/political system. This involves cases where policymakers at the national level do not accept the choices made by local governments, and thus attempt to control their actions via rules and regulations. More recently, the difficult financial situation in most municipalities and the need to coordinate local needs with national budget issues have caused tensions. Municipalities have violated negotiated budget agreement s and sanctions have been enforced.

A major structural reform effective in 2007 changed the structure of the public sector. Counties were replaced with regions that were mainly responsible for health care provisions, and municipalities were merged into larger units (now a total of 98). The reform is new and still being implemented, so it is too early to assess its consequences.

Like elsewhere, policy effectiveness and efficiency are hard for the government to measure and judge. In 2008, the Dutch government stated that, based on information regarding 74 policy goals, implementation was mostly “on track.” Yet, in that same year, the General Audit Chamber, an independent and well-staffed High Council of State charged with measuring policy performance and effectiveness, observed that the quality and transparency of available government information precluded parliament from determining whether promised policy performance is delivered and policy goals achieved. A mere 22 of 74 goals have been formulated in measurable terms. In just two cases, government indicated how much additional money was spent on policy implementation. Performance descriptions, usually with contestable indicators, involve just 27 goals. In the same year, budget overruns related primarily to emergency spending on bank bailouts, totaled €43 billion. Although technically illegal, these expenditures were approved by the General Audit Chamber. Whereas the government evaluated its own performance as above standard, surveys among the general population showed trust in government to be low. Given the fragmented and certainly incomplete overall picture, with partial successes here and partial or outright failures there, government efficiency may still be considered mostly adequate. There is no reason to assume that Dutch government is doing better or worse than most other countries with a similar level of education, economic well-being and technological resources.

In the period under review both Labour-led and National-led governments held minority status throughout. This implies that the government has to anticipate the policy preferences of other parties in Parliament and has to seek legislative support on an issue-by-issue basis.
Nevertheless, minority-coalition governments have been relatively successful in implementing their agenda. The National Party started their term with a “100-day action plan” on areas such as the economy, law and order, education, health and electoral law. As stated in the annual report of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, this plan was implemented on time.

If policy coordination in the Central Government Office (CGO) is the biggest current problem in the Swedish government, policy implementation in the form of steering the agencies is the second biggest challenge. These problems are strongly related, a lack of coordination leads to a lack of executive capacity and poor steering by the agencies. According to the original idea in the constitution, the CGO was supposed to engage in long-term policy planning while the autonomous executive agencies (which Sweden has had for more than 200 years) in policy implementation. Over time, however, the CGO has become more and more bogged down in day-to-day matters on policy while the agencies have enjoyed a growing staff, a concentration of expertise and insulation from the media. As a result, expertise on policy today rests just as much with these agencies as with the CGO. This complicates the CGO’s capacity to steer the agencies, and the result has been that exchanges between the CGO and the agencies are more characterized by mutual consultation and informal dialogue than by strict command and control exercised by the CGO. Thus, agencies are still highly effective instruments of policy implementation but they are, to a growing extent, also involved in the design of the policies they are to implement.

In the highly centralized political system of the United Kingdom, there are no discernible “veto players” who could effectively keep the central government from achieving its own policy objectives. Although devolution has changed the political landscape in the United Kingdom over the last decade or so, the country has not developed into a federal system where subunits have influence on central state decision-making. Furthermore, there is no written constitution and no Constitutional Court to act as counters to the government. The central bank, while independent in the implementation of monetary policy, has an inflation target set by the chancellor of the exchequer that it must adhere to, and is formally required to write an explanatory letter if the inflation rate falls outside the target range (currently plus or minus one percentage point around the inflation target of 2%). During the acute phase of the financial market crisis, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the autumn of 2008, the government’s response demonstrated its ability both to come up with a viable solution and to implement it effectively.

In the usual circumstances of a single-party government with a working majority in the House of Commons, party whipping ensures that governments nearly always win votes. On the rare occasions where a vote is lost, it tends to be because the merits of the government case are widely questioned within the governing party. The House of Lords can hold up but not ultimately stop a bill, unless it runs out of parliamentary time. There is a convention that the Lords will not block a bill that is part of the governing party’s electoral program commitment. Most often, the government will recognize that amendments are needed and offer compromises; however, the government can still be defeated, as was the case in October 2008 over proposals to extend to 42 days the period a suspect could be held before being charged.

Focusing on the Labor government elected in 2007, the government has a majority in the lower house of Representatives, but not in the upper house, the Senate. This has posed a problem for the government in passing major pieces of legislation. For example, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was passed by the lower house but was defeated in the Senate in December 2009; the measure was designed to combat climate change and was a major plank in the government’s 2007 election platform.

One further complicating factor in some aspects of the government’s legislative program is the relationship with the states and territories under the federal system. While the Commonwealth has the power to override the states and territories in many areas, it endeavors to implement legislation that affects the states through agreement. In some areas, such as Indigenous affairs, water resources, a national school curriculum, and the funding of health, this has proved to be problematic.

Since Austrian governments are usually the product of complex negotiations between different parties, any coalition government features an inherent inconsistency: The government’s objectives, which are officially declared in a government manifesto (Regierungsprogramm), contradict on some major points the electoral manifestos of each governing party. This proclivity for incoherence and inconsistency is exacerbated later, if and when the government proves unable to implement some of its official agenda. One coalition partner will always be tempted to point at the other party as the main culprit. This dynamic engenders a situation in which one governing party tends to act in opposition to the other governing party.
If, however, the coalition partners agree on a policy, it is most likely to be adopted, given the high degree of party discipline in parliament and the limited influence of the second chamber.

The government is efficient in implementing its program as it can rely on a relatively disciplined cabinet and an obedient majority, while other veto actors are basically absent. The question if government policies are effective is another matter. There is a growing tendency to privilege communication over substantive policy and to believe that a reform is in place when a law is passed. This phenomenon is illustrated by the recurrence of legislation on the same topics. For instance, to address the concerns of the population over law and order issues, there have been a series of new laws passed aiming to strengthen police controls, crime penalties and so on. The same can be said for fiscal policies, which are characterized by a high rate of instability.

The grand coalition (2005 – 2009) was reasonably successful in achieving important policy objectives. For example, it successfully changed the Basic Law by introducing a new deficit limit, and reformed the corporate tax system. On the other hand, many of the reforms to welfare state policies were inconclusive, and it seems likely that the relevant problems have not been solved. Furthermore, the government failed outright to privatize the railways and to codify environmental law, two objectives the government had set itself.
The new government has not yet been in office long enough to evaluate its success.
Structurally, it makes a difference whether a German government also commands a majority in the Bundesrat, which was the case for the grand coalition until spring 2009 and for the new government until July 2010.

The records of the Gyurcsány and Bajnai governments have been mixed. Despite the dismal economic situation and the tough political resistance by Fidesz, both governments succeeded in improving Hungary’s fiscal situation and in preventing a currency crisis. Both governments have been less successful in addressing other, more long-term issues.

The Berlusconi government has a double agenda with respect to policy objectives. It is performing quite well with regard to “normal” political projects. However, many votes in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate have essentially been used as a vote of confidence on Prime Minister Berlusconi. This shows that the coherence of the government’s (large) parliamentary majority is in fact quite weak. The other part of the government’s policy objectives is represented by personal interest legislation, which often touches on constitutional issues and is contradictory to EU, OECD and Western standards, the rule of law, democratic fundamentals, existing law and the constitution itself. In these cases, the government has provoked resistance from the opposition, constitutional bodies, media and civil society, and even from within the governing coalition itself. Unfortunately this “personal interest” agenda is often given priority by Berlusconi and his government, with the effect of blocking reasonable and necessary policy objectives.

In general, the government is able to implement its strategic objectives, although this process often takes much longer than planned, given that policy based on consensus is often cumbersome. Projects are sometimes not only slowed down but delayed indefinitely, especially when powerful lobbies are involved.
This is particularly the case for major infrastructural or zoning projects, such as a tramway system for the city of Luxembourg, which has been under discussion since the 1990s. A law proposal that was already very far advanced was postponed before the 1999 election, as the CSV were afraid of the reactions of some local business lobbies. Since then, different variants have been discussed, studies have been carried out and it has been decided to go ahead with the tram in principle. The Alternative Democratic Reform Party (ADR) made its opposition to the project a key election issue in 2009, but it did not meet with the hoped-for response of voters. A final decision is subject to finance questions and is still pending.

There are conflicting views as to the efficiency of the Korean government during the last two years. Some say that efficiency has increased due to the more authoritarian and hierarchical character of the new government as compared to the discursive and ultimately hesitant approach of Lee’s predecessors. Due to the strong conservative majority in the parliament, the government is more likely to get bills through the parliament.
On the other hand, others argue that accomplishments in the last two years have been meager compared to Lee’s original plans. More importantly, many of Lee’s major policies, such as the “Grand Canal Project,” have triggered substantial criticism and opposition. In the case of the proposed new administrative city, Lee changed course suddenly and now opposes the move of government administration offices to a newly constructed city.

The Spanish government has been relatively successful in implementing its major policy objectives. Two main obstacles stand in the way of better performance: the weak mechanisms of coordination among autonomous regions (i.e., the 17 autonomous regions are responsible for implementation in many policy areas, and the government cannot fully guarantee the achievement of its objectives) and the fragmentation of sectoral policy networks (which include private groups and even line ministries more oriented toward their individual institutional or ministerial interests than to governmental strategic objectives).
Despite these constraints, internal executive power has gradually been redistributed in favor of the prime minister and the generalist ministries during the last 35 years, thus creating conditions under which a coherent set of major objectives can be developed, and policy priorities successfully achieved at the national level. This centralization and strengthening of coordination has been used to promote a transformation of the welfare capitalist model in Spain, which was linked to extreme fiscal austerity and dirigisme until 1975. The growing power and autonomy of the government as a whole has also benefited from EU membership since 1986.

Neither the opposition parties nor public opinion represent the most serious constraints for the incumbent government in pursuing policy. The real obstacles to the implementation of government policy in Turkey are the so-called veto players, the military and the high judiciary. On April 27, 2007, the military released a memorandum warning the government that it would protect the secular nature of the state. At the end of March 2008, the chief prosecutor appealed to the Constitutional Court to close down the governing AKP party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which had gained a very strong 47% of the vote in parliamentary elections eight months previously. On July 30, 2008, the Constitutional Court called the AKP a “focus of anti-secular activities.” However, the court refrained from the immediate closure of the party, saying that for the time being, it posed only a limited danger. Thus, the AKP was clearly in a delicate position, particularly in the first half of the period under investigation. Not long earlier, in June 2008, the Constitutional Court had already seriously limited the right of the parliament to change the constitution.
The resistance of the military, the high judiciary and the support they have from opposition parties were responsible for the government’s failure to make head scarves acceptable at universities, to put graduates of imam schools on an equal footing with graduates of other high schools, and its inability to take anything more than symbolic steps toward the solution of the Kurdish question. However, the government was by and large successful in pursuing its policy in the fields of economics, social security, taxes and foreign affairs.

The basic make-up of the U.S. system with its separation of powers is designed to make policy achievement of the president’s or any other coherent set of goals difficult. This is true even when the president’s party has the majority in Congress given the nature of differing incentives and voter bases. One also has to take into account that an administration can modify its approach to a policy during the legislative process when compromises with the legislature become necessary. For instance, the Bush administration’s initial efforts to stabilize the financial market failed. Only in October did Congress pass the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which was then used to recapitalize the banking sector instead of removing bad assets from banks’ balance sheets. The Obama administration also faced resistance to its stabilization program by those objecting to assistance being given to the banking sector. In the end, the financial system was successfully stabilized, and securities markets began to work properly. Altogether, the administration’s record on this issue is impressive for the American context.

Implementation performance varies widely, ranging from excellent in areas where benchmarks and oversight mechanisms are strictly enforced (i.e., the general government budget) to awful in less rigidly monitored areas (i.e., implementation of some sectoral reforms such as Transantiago, the Santiago transport system).

Cabinets in Japan changed in rapid succession during the period under review. Prime ministers Fukuda and Aso each lasted only about one year, while Yukio Hatoyama, the first prime minister from the DPJ, left office after only about nine months. In none of the three cases did cabinets have the time to pursue their chosen agenda effectively.

There is indeed a 2009 government program, but the government has not been successful in implementing much of it. This includes policies regarding the environment, economic policy, unemployment and more. There is, for example, a strategy to invest European funds, but this aim was not well realized. By the close of the period under review, just 6% of the 2007 – 2012 National Strategic Reference Framework (Quadro de Referência Estratégico Nacional, QREN) funds had been invested. The government did develop a plan for investing funds, and the European Union was slated to provide implementation funding. However, Portugal was to monitor the disbursement of the funds with the help of an electronic system, which took a year to develop. During this time the government of Portugal could not receive the funds from the European Union. Thus, the government could not implement its plans, since the conditions under which the funds could be received and invested had not been met.

The Mexican government does its best to implement its policies, but is not fully the master of its own house. Many policy objectives require cooperation from municipal and state governments, which are mostly run by opposition parties and are rather variable in their policy-making abilities. The government has little control over its legislative program, since opposition parties control both houses of the National Congress. Moreover, to the extent that policy objectives have financial implications, implementation is affected by problems in the world economy and domestic constraints associated with tax collection problems. Within the area that the presidency does control, implementation of policy is reasonably professional. Nevertheless the government has failed to advance several of its major objectives, particularly the war on drug cartels and reform of the state-owned oil company PEMEX. Still, the blame for implementation failure can only partly be put on the current government, because the root causes of these problems were not addressed sufficiently by previous administrations.

The 2006 Government Manifesto of the Fico was relatively vague, especially in the field of economic and social policy. As a result, there was a certain discrepancy between the bombastic goals and declarations (“restoration of the social state”) and the limited measures adopted. However, the government succeeded in meeting well-specified goals, most notably the introduction of the euro in January 2009. The legislative output of the Fico government was similar to that of its predecessor. In order to achieve its objectives, the government often relied on the controversial “fast track procedure,” thereby limiting the participation of parliament.

Governments’ ability to achieve objectives has varied with those objectives. After parliamentary elections in 2006 resulted in a parliament evenly divided between left and right, the only alternatives were a grand coalition or a potentially unstable government. Topolánek rejected the first possibility, but his initial successes in introducing a flat tax, fees for health care and cuts in social spending came at the cost of exacerbating divisions within the coalition. The government failed in the most fundamental objective of surviving a full electoral period. The Fischer government was intended to last out six months to new elections, without an ambitious program of its own. Following the postponement of elections set for October 2009, it had to struggle on for several more months. In view of its limited ambitions, it could be judged as reasonably successful. However, it lived through what in effect was a permanent pre-election period, in which parliamentary parties pressed their own policy priorities. The main practical goal was preparation of a state budget, and it was impossible to create consensus on its form. The constraints imposed on the Fischer government peaked in spring 2010, when the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) blocked discussion of all bills through the use of procedural obstructions.

Depending on the policy sector in question, the success of the government in implementing its policy objectives varies; generally, however, it is low. There are a number of areas where successive governments have identified reform objectives, but been forced to accept more limited implementation performance, including the pension system, privatization and employment regulation, for example. Efforts to implement structural change have run against entrenched interests and practices, and the policy areas have proven difficult to separate from other issues. The failure to make greater progress has undermined competitiveness, and has placed Greece in a vulnerable position with respect to its deteriorating fiscal position at the end of 2010.
In the Karamanlis government, the state-owned Olympic Airways airline was successfully privatized, although with some delay. On the other hand, the objective of streamlining the pension system, the finances of which are unsustainable, was not attained. The 2008 law on pension reform, passed by the Karamanlis government, essentially amounted to an administrative reorganization of the current social security system’s ailing pension funds.
In the Papandreou government, the aim to amend legislation on the rights of migrants was fulfilled by passing a new law in March 2010, which opened up opportunities for migrants to acquire Greek citizenship and granted migrants the right to vote in local government elections. However, the Papandreou government was unable to raise enough state revenue from taxes or loans drawn on international financial markets in the first three months of 2010. As a consequence, in April 2010 Greece applied to the European Union and the IMF for financial support in order to meet its obligations toward creditors.

The Tusk government’s ability to implement reforms was limited by the far-reaching veto powers of President Kazcyński. The two parties in government lacked the three- fifths majority required for overturning a presidential veto, and only occasionally succeeded in getting the support of the SLD, the leftist opposition party. As a result, the Tusk government’s major reform projects, including the reform of the health care sector and the overhaul of the public media, could not be implemented. In many cases, the threat of a presidential veto led the government to abandon parliamentary discussion of bills.

The government’s main goals (as articulated on the prime minister’s website) include radical measures to address environmental challenges, improve the country’s rate of employment and foster business creation, improve social cohesion, adapt social policies in light of longer life expectancies, improve security and improve the efficiency of the state administration.
However, since the creation of the government, Belgium has suffered through a serious political crisis exacerbated by linguistic tensions at a time when the world was hit by a paralyzing economic crisis. This clearly prevented the government to from pursuing its stated goals. Regional elections as well in 2009 created another crisis at the national level as interparty tensions grew (coalition parties were competing in tight races at the regional level). The result of such a political morass meant that pension reforms were not enacted and little was achieved regarding administration improvements. Some environmental plans were seen through but that was only because such plans were the result of previous decisions. Several mayors complained of insufficient resources to address security concerns (prison space and crime prevention methods are also insufficient), but some reforms were introduced to be enacted in years to come. On the economic front, employment rates fell, poverty worsened, and business sentiment indicators were negative. Of course, all these failures cannot be entirely attributed to misguided government action. ,Some policies were implemented in the regions but they were not done through the initiatives of the federal government. All in all, the combination of an internal political crisis and an external economic crisis prevented the government from pursuing its main goals.

The Irish government has failed to realize its major policy objectives. Following the general election of April 2007, a new government was formed with 89 supporters from the three coalition parties and independents, giving a majority of 13 out of 165 voting members of parliament. The new government adopted a program for 2007 – 2012, setting out a blueprint of the targets and objectives policymakers wished to achieve over the course of their term. This program placed particular emphasis on rolling out infrastructure nationwide, combating climate change, and delivering a fully modern, patient-centered health service. The document is 87 pages long and contains quite detailed targets under 30 separate headings, ranging from broad macroeconomic objectives to areas such as civic life, the arts and the Irish language.
Over the three years that have passed since this program was adopted, circumstances have made it increasingly difficult to deliver on the blueprint’s main objectives. The optimistic economic assumptions that were assumed in the program became irrelevant almost overnight.
The program set the following broad macroeconomic targets or assumptions (it was not always clear which) for the five-year life of the government:
• maintenance of an average growth rate of 4.5%;
• creation of 250,000 net additional jobs; and
• keeping the government’s budget broadly in balance.
The reality has been horribly different: The economy has shrunk by over 12% since the program was published, the level of employment has fallen by 262,000 (or 12.5%), and the budget deficit has reached 12% of GDP.