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Policy Failure

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Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance

Synonyms

Ineffectiveness of public policy; Policy failure

Definition

The inability of a public policy to achieve its goals, to get results that benefit – or at least do not harm – the population to which it should serve, to materialize the values and purposes promoted by its proponents, to give legitimity to the government, and to generate greater efficiency and/or effectiveness compared to other public policies that could have been implemented to cope with the same problem.

Section

Latin America and the Caribbean

Introduction

The expression of the failure of public policies is conceptually complex, because it has been used in an unsystematic and elastic manner to refer to different kinds of situations, results, consequences, and with some frequency, as an argument in political confrontation with the purpose of achieving support for a given cause or delegitimizing the initiatives of opponents (Zittoun 2015).

Furthermore, a public policy may have failed in some aspect or area in which...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Mauricio Olavarría-Gambi

Authors
  1. Mauricio Olavarría-Gambi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mauricio Olavarría-Gambi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

    Ali Farazmand

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Olavarría-Gambi, M. (2018). Policy Failure. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3182-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3182-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31816-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31816-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Policy Failure
    Published:
    28 July 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3182-2

  2. Original

    Policy Failure
    Published:
    23 January 2017

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3182-1

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