Special Issue Article: Policy Failure

Public Policy and Administration

2015, Vol. 30(3–4) 261–276
State failure, governance ! The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0952076715581540

Exploring the linkages ppa.sagepub.com

B Guy Peters
University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Zeppelin University, Germany

Abstract
There is some tendency to lump together policy failures arising from different sources
and having different fundamental characteristics. This is a problem conceptually, as well
as for building effective theory about policy failure, but it can also be a practical difficulty
for policymakers if they fail to differentiate these various possible roots of failure. This
paper explores the linkages among these types of failure within the public sector.

Keywords
Administrative organization, administrative science, administrative theory, control, good
governance, policymaking

There is, somewhat worryingly, a large literature in political science, policy studies,
and in the real world of government on the failure of governance and public
policies.1 Leaving aside the psychological questions about why we tend to be
more interested in failures than with success (but see Kerr, 1976; Schwartz, 1983;
Light, 2002; McConnell, 2010), this literature does raise fundamental questions
about our collective capacity to make and implement public policy (Painter and
Pierre, 2005). The causes identified for failure in the policy literature are legion
(see McConnell, 2015, this special issue), but the majority of these failures have
been connected to characteristics of the policies themselves rather than to the pol-
itical or socio-economic environment within which those policies are being made.
There are, however, other approaches to failure in the public sector that focus
less on the details of each individual policy and more on the structural determin-
ants of action within the public sector, as well as on the interactions among poli-
cies. In this paper, I will attempt to differentiate the types and sources of failure in
the public sector, and examine the possible linkages among these forms of failure.
There is some tendency to lump together the public sector failures arising from

Corresponding author:
B Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, Atlantis, 12345, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Email: bgpeters@pitt.edu
262 Public Policy and Administration 30(3–4)

different sources and having different fundamental characteristics. These alterna-

tive forms of failure represent a problem conceptually, as well as for building
effective theory about policy failure, but it can also be a practical difficulty for
policymakers if they fail to differentiate these various possible roots of failure.2
As well as attempting to understand the varieties of failure, this paper will also
demonstrate how these various forms of failure can be linked to comparative pol-
itics. Comparative politics is, at least in part, about the performance of the political
system in supplying governance and policy; therefore, the various failures in
the public sector identified here can be seen as both independent and dependent
variables in comparative analysis.3

Failure in the public sector

When considered from a broad perspective, policy failure can be seen as one of
several types of failure within the public sector (see Table 1). For each of these
varieties of failure, I have identified the source(s) of the problem, the major char-
acteristics, and possible remedies. These descriptions are somewhat generic and
each case will have its own particular characteristics, but this is an introduction
to the varieties of failure and their dynamics.

State failure
At the extreme, e.g., contemporary Somalia or Central African Republic, the state
may fail and be incapable of providing even basic services such as public order for
the society in any meaningful form (Carment, 2004). The state may be replaced,
de jure if not de facto, by governance through warlords, clans, or other social
groups.4 Or market actors may provide minimal public services such as basic
education and public safety that support their economic operations.5 Even if the
social actors or market actors are successful in providing some public services for
the residents of failed states, those residents might lack the most basic political
rights.
State failure is most commonly the product of extreme poverty and (ethnic)
conflict, and therefore may not be amenable to solution through simple policy

Table 1. Types of failure in the public sector

State Governance I Governance II Policy

Source Conflict; poverty Politics Segmentation Design

Characteristics Alternative Inactivity Multiple policies No or perverse results
provision and programs
Major failure Total Gridlock Poor coordination Ineffectiveness
Remedy State Comity Collaboration Improved design
Peters 263

choices, or perhaps even through institutional design. That said, the development
of social pacts in some African countries has been a mechanism for bringing them
back from failure, and producing viable, if still weak, governing through the state
(Le Van, 2011). Further, if actors can build legitimacy through providing effective
public services they may be able to build the foundation for greater legitimacy for a
governing apparatus.

Governance failure
State failure is the most fundamental form of failure in the public sector, but there
are also several other categories of failure that should be considered. Two of these
I will discuss as alternative forms of governance failure. The first of these
(Governance 1) is perhaps less dramatic than state failure, albeit still significant,
involving the incapacity to provide systematic direction to the society and econ-
omy. This failure may occur even when there is a viable and legitimate political
entity. A system facing this type of governance failure may be capable of making
and implementing a number of successful individual policies. However, the gov-
ernance apparatus is incapable of governing other than in extremis.
The contemporary United States may fit into this category with some ease, given
the incapacity to deal with fundamental, political, and governance issues such as
the public budget and appointment of significant public officials (Mann and
Ornstein, 2012; Sachs, 2011). Numerous policies continue to function reasonably
well, and sub-national government continues to function well, but the system is
incapable of addressing some very fundamental issues. As noted in Table 1, this
variety of governance failure tends to arise from politics and ideologies and the
incapacity to generate workable compromises, even when faced with potential
failure.
There are also governance failures that represent the incapacity of governments
to make other than policies addressing specific issues within specific policy
domains, and often tied to specific social and economic interests (Governance 2).
Most of the important policy issues now facing governments, and their societies, do
not reside neatly in the usual departmental or functional boxes but rather cut
across conventional departmental lines.6 Therefore, governance success may
mean more than simply hitting a narrow target and may require more comprehen-
sive considerations within and across policy domains.7 This is not just for the now
familiar “wicked problems” such as climate change (Dovers and Hezri, 2010;
Newman and Head, 2015, this special issue) but also for (seemingly) more mun-
dane issues such as health (see Puska and Stahl, 2010). Further, these versions of
policy and governance failure may be manifested in failures to cope with the longer
term policy problems, instead of focusing on shorter term issues and solutions.
Whereas the failures described as Governance 1 are the product of failures of
political parties and their leaders to cooperate, failures in Governance 2 are more
commonly the produce of failures of organizations within the bureaucracy to
cooperate and coordinate. Both types of failures produce either limited governance
264 Public Policy and Administration 30(3–4)

outputs, or outputs that are incapable of addressing more than a portion of the
problem confronting the public sector and the society. And like state failure dis-
cussed above, the remedy for these failures extends well beyond the design of public
policies.

Policy failures
Finally, there are policy failures; I discuss these as the least encompassing of these
categories. While this concept must be understood through more than simply tech-
nical definitions, this version of failure may occur independently of the other three
dimensions of failure. As already noted, even failed states may have some viable
policies, and governance failure is generally independent from the failure (or suc-
cess) of individual policies. Further, if we consider a range of possible providers of
public policy in addition to the State, the opportunities for formulating and imple-
menting successful policies become enhanced but so too do the sources for failure.
The definitions of policy failure tend to focus on the failure to reach posited goals,
and perhaps also the recognition, that if the unintended negative consequences of
the program are sufficiently great the policy cannot be termed a success. There may
indeed be “fatal remedies” in which success in delivering a particular program may
produce negative consequences, even in the same policy area as the intervention
itself (Sieber, 1981).
Policy failures, while certainly common and regrettable, are the easiest of these
forms of failure within the public sector to resolve. If a policy does not work, it is
not linked to the organic structure of the state but is only an instrument that can be
manipulated in order to produce better results. Policy change is not easy, and
designing the right policy is also not easy, but it does not involve the large-scale
political and even social change that may be required to address state failure or
governance failure.
The question raised in this paper is understanding the extent to which the fail-
ures we so often observe in policies are more a function of the designs those policies
and the politics involved in their implementation, or are these failures more a
function of general failures within the governance systems within which policy-
making is embedded, or the interactions between these possible causes. This ques-
tion arises for the failures associated with failed states and also for the less extreme
failures in governance. Thus, any specific policy failure may be only a symptom of a
broader failure in governing, so that focusing just on the policy failures per se may
focus only on the proximate “causes” of observed failure rather than on more
deeply seated roots of failure. Indeed, the difficulties in producing good policy
designs in stalemated and incoherent systems may make it appear that the more
proximate causes are indeed the culprits.
Introducing the notion of governance failure above also may require some
greater explanation. This concept is used and abused in the literature, and I am
running the risk of doing so again. In the above paragraphs, I have been using
governance in a rather general manner, meaning simply the capacity to provide
Peters 265

steering and control within a society (see Peters and Pierre, forthcoming; for a
different perspective see Howlett, 2009). The meaning of governance will be elabo-
rated below, but the particular problem here is that below I will be introducing
“governance” as a means of addressing some of the failure issues raised, meaning
that involving non-governmental actors in partnership with formal actors in the
public sector may help address some of the problems of blockage and failure.8

Policy failure, governance failure, and comparative politics

Following from the above, this paper will attempt to link the study of policy failure
with the study of comparative politics and governance theory more closely than it
often has been. Despite the important and extensive literature on comparative
public policy, these areas of inquiry have tended to be kept apart more than is
desirable, given their inherent linkage. Policymaking, even when involving signifi-
cant amounts of action in the private sector, is affected by the manner in which
governance systems function. Indeed, fundamentally both policy studies and gov-
ernance are about making decisions (see Peters and Pierre, forthcoming), and in
both failures can to a great extent be ascribed to failures in making decisions.
Although both strands of literature rely on decision-making as a foundation of
their analysis, they tend to approach decision-making, and therefore the sources of
failures in decision-making, somewhat differently. Comparative politics, as mani-
fested through a concern with governance, tends to emphasize institutional and
regime factors (see Hyden et al., 2004) in explaining failures. The implicit assump-
tion is that either individual institutions (often the public bureaucracy) or the
interaction of institutions (presidential vs. parliamentary regimes, federal vs. uni-
tary regimes) are the principal causes of failures in policy. Further, specific policy
failure in this governance literature tends to be embedded in more systematic pat-
terns of failure of governing, again making any single policy failure representative
of a pattern rather than sui generis.
Although there are certainly differences within the literature on policy failure,
the emphasis in this literature is more on the design of the policies themselves, and
to some extent on the implementation of policies.9 It is almost impossible to
remove the effects of political institutions from success or failure, but the policy
failure literature tends to treat those effects as secondary when compared to
the nature of the policy itself. Stated differently, the causes for policy failure
(and success) in the policy literature tend to be endogenous to the policy, while
the governance literature failure is often exogenous to the policy itself.10 That said,
the exogenous nature of the governance system, tends to be built into policies – the
need to implement through the states in a federal regime, for example – so at times
the differences between the sources of failure may be difficult to distinguish.
The other argument in this paper is that state failure, governance failure, and
policy failure are not correlated perfectly. It is obvious that states providing ade-
quate governance can, and often do, still produce failed policies. Indeed, those
failures will be the primary concern of this conference. However, the usual
266 Public Policy and Administration 30(3–4)

assumption is that failed states and states with significant governance failures will
be incapable of delivering adequate public policies. That assumption, however, is
false and tends to ignore several important aspects of both contemporary govern-
ance and public policy.

Segmentation
The first point is that policymaking tends to be highly segmented, so that some
policies may be made and delivered successfully within their own “stovepipe”,
while the overall governance system is less than successful. For example, even in
failed states some aspects of economic management, and even public security, may
be effective simply because the economic actors who dominate the country require
them to work. In less extreme cases, some policy sectors may deliver programs
effectively, e.g., pensions, while others necessary for providing a high quality of life
for the same target population, e.g., health, may perform poorly.
Further, as noted in our third version of failure above, general failures may
result from the lack of integration of policies, especially policies addressing
major systemic issues such as climate change, poverty, and inequality. Indeed, to
some extent the success of delivering individual policies can undermine the overall
governance success, especially in the version of governance failure/success that is
focused on the integration of policy. The success of the New Public Management in
delivering individual programs, with the levels of autonomy that have been
involved in those successes, has tended to reduce levels of policy coordination
and overall governance success (Peters, forthcoming).

Interactive governance
A second factor making successful policymaking possible even in seemingly dys-
functional cases of governance is that the State, and the formal governance appar-
atus, is not the only possibility for delivering public services. Even in the seemingly
most dysfunctional cases social and economic actors may deliver a form of gov-
ernance and may provide some public services. In less extreme cases, the concept of
the “enabling governments” can and do “steer at a distance”. This capacity to
provide for policymaking and perhaps even governance without apparent direct
involvement appears to demonstrate that policy making is possible with minimal
direct involvement by public actors. These actors may function within a “shadow
of hierarchy” (Scharpf, 1997) but they still act and they still deliver some public
services.
Considering governance from the perspective of its relationship with policy-
making and its relationships with policy failure also helps to place some aspects
of the “governance without government” argument (Rhodes, 1997; Sørensen and
Torfing, 2007) into a broader context. Much of that literature has focused more on
the capacity to make and implement particular policies than it has on supplying the
more integrative style of governance that have been discussing here. As already
Peters 267

noted, the segmentation of public policymaking makes successful policies more

likely than successful governance. Networks and other interactive structures
(Torfing et al., 2011) may be better at making and managing specific policies
than they are in developing and implementing comprehensive interventions so
that even if one accepts the viability of networked policymaking in individual
policy areas, these outcomes may remain governance by a relatively low
common denominator.
This seemingly optimistic argument about policy and service delivery may not
hold so true for failed states. Even there, however, if we are willing to accept that
public services delivered by non-governmental actors (and sometimes rather rep-
rehensible non-governmental actors) may still be reasonable policies, then there
may still be policy successes in these extreme cases. Indeed, to some extent the
intervention of the private actors, even if perhaps reprehensible, may provide better
policies than might be those delivered under dysfunctional, and perhaps equally
reprehensible, governments. And much less reprehensible actors in the form
of NGOs and international organizations may still be supplying policies and
programs in these settings.

Policy and governance

Given limitations of space, I will not concentrate on the roots of policy failure at
the level of individual policies, nor on the extremes of state failure (Brinkenhoff,
2005). Rather, to add a dimension that is often absent from this discussion, I will
emphasize governance as a more encompassing term, and address the overall struc-
ture and process bases of policy success and failure. These processes can fail, just as
readily as can individual policies. And indeed, governance may be more likely to
fail in less developed systems, given the political demands on those systems and
their generally lower levels of policymaking capacity.
The definition of governance above is more general than some, and if we bring in
what have become more general definitions of governance as means of steering and
control that may involve non-government actors in the process (Kooiman, 2003),
another set of issues concerning success and failure arises. On the one hand, invol-
ving non-governmental actors in the process provides means of supplementing the
capacity of government actors to make policy and provide services. On the other
hand, the addition of multiple actors exacerbates the underlying complexity
of policymaking and may attenuate the process of making and implementing deci-
sions, even if there is more underlying capacity.

Policy failure as comparative politics and governance

Governance is about the capacity of the public sector, with or without allies in the
private sector (market or non-market), to steer the economy and society. As such
governance is a process that involves setting goals, formulating program designs,
implementing those designs, and evaluating the success or failure of the designs
268 Public Policy and Administration 30(3–4)

(Peters and Pierre, forthcoming). Those “designs” are in essence policies, although
in the governance context they may actually be aggregations of individual pro-
grams intended to function together to alter the economy and society. In the per-
spective being used here, the design of that integration of programs may be more
implicit than explicit, and even that assumption may be granting the “designers”
more credit than they deserve, given the inconsistencies and lacunae one finds in
sets of programs.
The most comprehensive means of explaining governance failure may be to
begin with the now familiar logic of George Tsebelis (2000) based on the
number of veto points in a governing system. Everything else being equal, a gov-
ernance system is more likely to fail the greater the number of independent veto
points and veto players there are in that system. Just as Pressman and Wildavsky
(1974) argued that multiple clearance points in implementation could easily prevent
decisions from being implemented effectively, so too can multiple points at which
decisions must be made tend to produce governance failures.
Tsebelis argued that policymaking institutions were in essence structures com-
posed of multiple actors and formal positions that had to agree to a proposal before
it could be enacted. Each of the actors had a veto over a program, either as an
individual or because of their structural position, and programs cannot succeed
without agreement from all the relevant actors. Clearly, an autocracy will have
fewer veto players than will a democracy, although there can be substantial variance
within each of those broad categories (Lijphart, 2012). While the number of veto
players may not be as self-evident as some advocates of the approach might assume,
it remains clear that the differences in the number of such players does matter.
The veto player perspective has particular relevance for understanding the ver-
sion of governance failure characterized by stalemate, and by an incapacity to
make decisions of other than the most basic type. As Fritz Scharpf (1988)
argued about decision-making through unanimity in the European Union and
Germany, decision-making with multiple veto points is likely to produce govern-
ance through the lowest common denominator rather than generating the types of
more positive and comprehensive decisions that would be required for effective
governance.
The veto player approach also has some relevance for the second version of
governance failure discussed above – the failure to integrate multiple policies.
These effects may be, however, somewhat different than those discussed for gov-
ernance as inaction. The policy making literature that emphasizes the segmentation
of policymaking in the several silos implies, or in some instances states that even if
there may nominally be a number of veto players within each silo those actors
appear to agree more on policy content than do veto players in government taken
more generally. Therefore, the likelihood of producing a decision within any one
stovepipe is, a priori, significantly higher than in decision-making situations taken
across government.
This argument about policymaking within silos is not dissimilar to the familiar
“groupthink” argument for the failure of individual policies (‘t Hart, 1980).
Peters 269

The groupthink approach to policy failure has been used most commonly in the
analysis of foreign policy, but the logic would be similar for domestic policy deci-
sions made by a small number of like-minded individuals (see Goodsell, 2011). The
absence of external voices, whether simply coming from a different policy perspec-
tive or having some form of authority over the small group of decision-makers,
may be important for producing less narrowly conceived decisions (see also
Rosenthal et al., 1991).
Therefore, in this version of governance failure the problem may be the absence
of veto players who can effectively encourage, or force, integration of programs
and policies, or perhaps control public spending on multiple programs (Raudla,
2010). Seemingly what would be required would be strong center of government
that could produce that action (Dahlström et al., 2011). Likewise, the government
failure version of failure might want more veto players as checks and balances to
slow the actions of government. Thus, the veto player model for governing appears
to work reasonably well in understanding some at least one type of failure in the
public sector, but not for explaining failures in which simple, linear models of
governing are insufficient for understanding failures.
While the veto players’ argument is useful for understanding barriers to enacting
and implementing policies, and especially collections of linked policies, it may be
excessively pessimistic, as Bowen (1982) argued concerning the Pressman and
Wildavsky arguments about implementation. Most of the models utilized to under-
stand the policy process assume differences among actors and identify numerous
mechanisms for overcoming opposition through bargaining, learning, and political
power.11 Therefore, saying that there are multiple veto players involved in a policy
process needs to be a beginning for understanding policy success and failure rather
than the end of the discussion.
Thus, like the Pressman and Wildavsky model, the veto player argument needs
to be considered as a stochastic model rather than a deterministic model of how
governance can, or does, function. Ganghof (2003) also argues that veto-player
analysis encounters difficulties in identifying the policy preferences of actors and
how they are manifested in specific policy choices. That deficiency is less significant
for understanding governance failures than specific choices about individual poli-
cies, but still represents a concern for understanding governance. Governance suc-
cess involves reasonably coherent sets of preferences among actors and across
policy areas.
From the perspective of governance taken more broadly, another source of veto
points that may contribute to governance failure, and to policy failure, derives
from the absence of independence of most policies and even more governance
programs. Public programs often depend upon other programs and organizations
for their success, so that some policies may fail because of the absence of adequate
connections with other programs. And again, somewhat paradoxically, govern-
ment organizations that are highly integrated may be less successful in delivering
programs that are truly effective because of their decreased ability to interact
effectively with other programs.
270 Public Policy and Administration 30(3–4)

The governance perspective on policy and policy failure may therefore be some-
what broader than that encountered in most studies of public policy. In this per-
spective, individual policies are not often embedded in larger collections of policies
intended to produce systemic change. These governance strategies tend to involve
multiple programs and actors with broad and at times seemingly vague goals such
as security and well-being. That more comprehensive conception of policy has
become a part of governing as presidents and prime ministers attempt to impose
more sweeping goals on the individual programs and ministries (Dahlström et al.,
2011).
Not only may policy failure and governance failure be independent, in some
cases they may be inversely correlated. For example, an emphasis on policy success
measured through performance management mechanisms and other relatively
simplistic tools may undermine the capacity to address larger governance issues.
While in some ways helpful in guiding managers and policymakers, performance
management focuses attention of relatively short-term goals of individual organ-
izations. As such, it may exacerbate the coordination and coherence difficulties
mentioned above of a fragmented policy-making system that encounters difficulty
in coping with larger scale governance concerns.
Agriculture policy represents an excellent example of the potential clashes
between policy and governance. Most agricultural policies have been dominated
by a ministry linked directly to farmers and to food processors. The principal goals
of these policy sub-systems have been to support agriculture through higher prices
and limited regulation. With the advent of crises such as Bovine Spongiform
Encephalopathy (BSE), Escherichia coli (E.coli) and the like, it became clear that
agriculture need to be considered in a broader framework of food safety (Jann and
Wegrich, 2007). In global governance terms, agriculture also needs to be considered
in terms of increasing supply perhaps more than in terms of maintenance of higher
prices, or perhaps even some aspects of safety.
Conversely, success in governance can be related to a lack of success in policy-
making. As has been implied above, governance involves more comprehensive
steering of economy and society, whereas in this paper at least were conceptualizing
policies as more limited, targeted interventions. For most developed political
systems this is indeed “business as usual”, with the system as a whole performing
reasonably well, but individual policies failing and then being replaced. In this
setting, the failure of those individual policies may be considered more a nuisance,
and an opportunity perhaps, rather than evidence of fundamental difficulties in the
governance arrangements as a whole.

Hypotheses about failure

The above discussion has made a number of assertions about policy failure and the
links of the conventional understanding of policy failure with other dimensions of
failure in the public sector, and with characteristics of political systems. I will now
proceed to make several more explicit hypotheses about these various versions of
Peters 271

Table 2. Governance failure and policy failure

Governance failure

Policy failure Yes No

Yes (A) Systemic (B) Business as usual

No (C) Micro success (D) Systemic success

failure and the linkage with political factors. These hypotheses are not readily
testable in the usual quantitative manner now common in political science and
public administration, however.
The first and most important of these hypotheses is that the forms of failure are
not necessarily correlated, as already implied. For example, Table 2 provides some
possible relationships among policy failures and governance failures as described
above. It may be that (as in Cell A), that both individual policies and governance
are successful, or it may also be that both individual policies and the general gov-
ernance system are failing (Cell D). That may not, however, mean that the state
itself has failed, but only that there are severe problems involved in producing
effective policies with the possibility of state failure.12
Perhaps the most common outcome in the Organisation for Economic
Development and Cooperation (OECD) world and other more developed systems
is that identified in much of the policy failure literature, with individual policies
failing although the government and governance systems continue to be successful
– this is the cell described as “business as usual”. And finally there is the cell
characterized as “micro-success”, meaning that individual policies may be perform-
ing reasonably well, but the system as a whole is less successful. While this absence
of correlation is perhaps not remarkable once identified, it remains important to
understand how these levels of success and failure may interact.
In terms of governance and the relationship of policy success and failure with
broader political success, it may also be important to know which policies are being
successful. It may be hypothesized, for example, that if a State is capable of mana-
ging the “defining functions” of the State (Rose, 1976) reasonably well is may be
able to maintain itself but perhaps only through the use of coercion. Building
capacity to deliver other types of policy may be required to legitimate the system
and develop a more virtuous cycle of success.13
The above discussion of possible interactions among different types of failures
within the public sector demonstrates the extent to which governance is always
occurring “in the shadows”. Frtiz Scharpf (1997) argued that delegations to non-
governmental actors always occurred within the “shadow of hierarchy”, meaning
that if those delegations failed it was always possible for government to withdraw
the delegation. At the same time, if the State is not functioning well there are other
options available in the market and in social actors, or perhaps even in expertise, to
compensate for those failures.
272 Public Policy and Administration 30(3–4)

In some parts of the governance literature (as well as in the government failure
literature), there has been a tendency to assume that the public sector will fail,
without understanding that other options for failure are equally possible. The need
for the public sector to intervene when markets fail has been well developed in the
literature (Wolf, 1987) but the possible movements among other possible providers
of governance (defined broadly) has been explored less. Thus, considering the range
of governance opportunities, and the various shadows that exist over the actors
involved, may provide more insights into the selection (and dissolution) of policies
and programs.
In addition, policy failure may be an independent variable of sorts for explaining
governance success. If individual policies fail, especially if they fail in the context of
an e´tatiste political system, then there may well be a search for an alternative
format for reaching the policy ends. This alternative may involve governance, in
the sense discussed above of attempting to coordinate one policy more effectively
with the collection of other on-going policies that may contribute to success. To
make a health policy work may require forging closer connections with other allied
policy areas such as nutrition or social protection.
Policy failures within government may also spur policymakers to seek alterna-
tives such as increased use of non-governmental actors. Again, especially in policy
making situations, in which the public sector historically has been the dominant
actor, policy failures may produce significant search behavior in which new alter-
natives are considered.14 One logical option may be to expand utilization of
non-governmental actors, whether to improve capacity, diffuse blame, or both.
However, while a common strategy, it is no guarantee of success given that is
may simply add new veto players to the process, and players with perhaps different
values and goals from the dominant government players involved.
Policy failures may also be hypothesized to be an independent variable for
explaining the success of political leadership (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 1999)
but only in particular circumstances. Rather naturally, if governments and their
allies in the private sector are incapable of achieving policy success their leaders are
not likely to survive in office, even in non-democratic countries. Popular support
appears strongly correlated to the survival of governments, but the nature and size
of the political coalition supporting the leader does not. As implied by the discus-
sion of veto players above, the number of veto players in a government coalition
may produce leadership failure as well as policy failure.

Governance failure and comparative politics

The implications from the above discussion of veto players and failure may lead to
some unhappy conclusions. Political systems with fewer veto players appear less
likely to produce failures, and also less likely to have political failures. We naturally
tend to deplore governance failure just as we do all other types of failure. But in
democratic political systems, especially those with a Madisonian foundation, the
failure may not always be negative. Checks and balances in the public sector are
Peters 273

conceptualized in some democratic systems as means of preventing excessive

action.15
This paper has demonstrated the importance of considering policy failure in a
broader context than may sometimes be utilized. As concerned as I am in policy
design and the internal dynamics of public policies, there are also more systemic level
influences that must be considered carefully when assessing failure. The best
designers will be incapable of producing effective policies if the fundamental factors
within their governance arrangements are not conducive to success.
This point also raises the need to consider in more detail the linkages between
systemic conditions and policy success or failure.16 In particular, we should look
toward building contingent relationships between the characteristics of governance
arrangements. The design literature may examine the linkages between the nature
of policy problems and interventions but there has been less concern about the
linkages to political variables. This paper has, I hope, laid a groundwork for
examining these relationships, but also identified the need to consider policy failure
in a significantly wider context.

Notes
1. See, for example, Hall (1980), Bovens and ‘t Hart (1996).
2. To the list presented in the body of the paper here we could add the notion of government
failure coming from the economics literature (Tullock et al., 2002; Dolfsma, 2013). Given
the ideological perspective of this approach, government failure is generally defined
through excessive expenditure and regulation, as well as internal inconsistencies and
lack of coordination resulting from the above excesses in intervention.
3. The use of the term variables does not refer only to quantitative analysis but rather is
meant more generally to include case study methodologies or other qualitative
approaches. See Peters (2012).
4. The same phenomenon occurs on a smaller scale in inner-city neighborhoods in the United
States (and perhaps in other countries) as well as in some areas in Southern Europe.
5. We tend to think of this phenomenon in contemporary terms, but historically market
actors such as British and the Dutch companies in India and Indonesia, respectively
provided governance for those regions. See also Haldén (2011).
6. This paper focusses on domestic policies and policymaking, but much of the same logic
appears in transnational attempts at governance. For example, Zürn and Faude (2013)
demonstrate the manner in which fragmentation exacerbates problems of environmental
governance at the international level.
7. Sometimes it may be difficult to identify what a more comprehensive approach to the
policy problem may be. For example, what is the tobacco policy of the United States? On
the one hand we still subsidize growing tobacco while at the same time spend millions of
dollars trying to stop people consuming it.
8. Ultimately we will have to address “governance with adjectives” (see Collier and
Levitsky, 1997) but that will have to wait for a subsequent paper.
9. The implementation literature was, of course, largely founded on the study of failure.
And much of the literature since the original Pressman and Wildavsky book (1974)
has seemed to try to learn more from failure than from success in implementation (see
Hupe, 2011).
274 Public Policy and Administration 30(3–4)

10. This is a statistical and not a deterministic statement. There are certainly counter-exam-
ples in each segment of failure. The analytic problem is that often there is not the
attempt to sort out the several causes of failure in public sector actions, while many
(if not most) failures will have some design failures as well as some more systemic
failures. Politically it is easier to play the “blame game” and target specific aspects of
a policy rather than consider systemic effects that are both less mutable and more
difficult to ascribe to the failings of one’s opponents (Hood, 2011).
11. Obvious examples are the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Weible and Sabatier, 2007)
and the several multiple streams approaches (Zahariadis, 2003).
12. The state may continue to function in a path dependent manner, implementing basic
programs but not experiencing much success in governing in more than this rather basic
manner. Further, the absence of any viable alternative to the status quo, and the use of
repression, may permit the maintenance of the existing state structure. The final days of
Tsarist Russia and the Qing Dynasty in China may be examples.
13. This argument is not dissimilar to that made some years ago by Huntington (1968)
concerning political development and the institutionalization of capabilities in the
public sector.
14. It may be that the search behavior first engendered is one in which the alternatives
considered are proximate to the existing policy, whereas continued failures will produce
larger scale and more differentiated searches. This pattern would be consistent with
arguments coming from bounded rationality approaches to organizational behavior
(Cyert and March, 1963).
15. More linear and unitary styles of governing are not, of course, immune to failure. See
Crewe and King (2013).
16. We did this to some degree in Bovens et al. (2000) but were perhaps too light on the
characteristics of the individual policies.

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