Lack of Integration in Policy Formulation and Policy Implementation:

A common thread uniting these diverse diagnoses and prescriptions can be seen among most of the critical evaluation of various policies. Often, they seem to find little fault with the theoretical basis (like, e.g., the direct effects of taxes, public debt, public spending and indirect effects on the incentive to work, save and undertake risky entrepreneurial activities, import and/or export, etc.) and the choice of objectives, etc. Whatever limitation and drawbacks of these issues are pointed out are often rectified. For example, the high marginal tax rates have successively been brought down; many privatisation measures have been carried out, ostensibly to move the state out of the activities the private sector,  particularly the big companies, are confident of undertaking. Trade and financial opening up have scaled new heights. The main culprits they identify are the agencies, the bureaucracy, politicians, business ethics, the implementation procedures, legal and administrative framework wanting in transparency, accountability, archaic methods of financial controls, etc. which impede effective implementation of policies.  

In brief, while the theoretical framework and the mechanism of the interaction between the policy variables and the economy are usually declared appropriate and/or easily correctible, a  rather sticky and difficult terrain is encountered in the sphere of implementation. The whole understanding is predicated upon the treatment of policy formulation and implementation as two distinct processes with little common ground to extend the logic of the one to the other. On this reasoning, implementation is considered the main factor for policy failures. It seems the policy analysis proceeds on the basis of stipulating a sharp division between the policy or plan formulation and policy or plan-implementation processes. While the former is usually taken to be not much at fault, the latter is, by and large, taken to be defective. This understanding seems to be based on an incomplete non-operational, truncated comprehension of the policy processes.