Triage Bureaucracy

Shows how bureaucracies manage continuous policy growth via 'policy triage,' balancing limited resources and rising implementation demands.

This book reveals how government agencies manage policy growth with limited resources, introducing 'policy triage' to describe crucial trade-offs. Drawing on cross-national insights, it appeals to those interested in governance, public administration, and real-world policy challenges. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.In an era of constant policy growth (known as policy accumulation), effective policy implementation is a growing challenge for democratic governance across the globe. Triage Bureaucracy explores how government agencies handle expanding portfolios of rules, programs, and regulations using 'policy triage' – a set of strategies for balancing limited resources across increasing implementation demands. Drawing on case studies from six diverse European countries, the authors show how organizations' vulnerability to overburdening and their ability to compensate for overload determine why policy implementation succeeds in some cases while it fails in others. Triage Bureaucracy offers a deeper understanding of the organizational dynamics behind effective governance and, by placing bureaucratic actors at the center of the policy process, shows why policy growth often outpaces our ability to implement it – shedding light on the consequences of an ever expanding policy state. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.