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Do consistent government policies lead to greater meaningfulness and legitimacy on the front line?
Author(s) -
van Engen Nadine,
Steijn Bram,
Tummers Lars
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.313
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-9299
pISSN - 0033-3298
DOI - 10.1111/padm.12570
Subject(s) - legitimacy , consistency (knowledge bases) , bureaucracy , government (linguistics) , autonomy , public policy , public administration , political science , politics , situational ethics , policy studies , policy analysis , front line , public economics , public relations , economics , law , linguistics , philosophy , geometry , mathematics
We investigate the impact of policy consistency on frontline workers’ perceptions of policy meaningfulness and legitimacy. The results from an experiment involving 779 teachers indicate that policy consistency does have a positive effect on legitimacy and to a lesser extent on meaningfulness. However, the extent depends on policy content and the degree of autonomy. Overall, our findings emphasize the potential positive impact of policy consistency. Although this, to some extent, conflicts with the nature of political decision‐ and policy‐making (i.e., democratically elected governments have been mandated to change policy), our study suggests that policy consistency could be a valuable strategy for governments to strengthen successful policy implementation. This adds a new perspective to the continuing debate within policy implementation and street‐level bureaucracy research on how to account for the complex, messy and sometimes contradictory implementation of public policies.