Implementation Research as Empirical Constitutionalism

Abstract The purpose of this introductory article is to set implementation research in a political science setting. We understand it as having a distinctive and central place within the discipline. We argue that implementation research is not public administration research in disguise. Its frame of reference is not formal constitutional organization but the arrangements and procedures of the living constitution. And implementation research is not just public policy analysis by another name. Its ordering principle is not policy problems as defined and addressed by the ‘political system’ but policy problems as defined and addressed by relevant societal actors. The importance of implementation research for political science is that it offers scope for empirical constitutionalism: to ask, first, what are the organizational arrangements which generate policies and their effects, in order to ask, second, which of those various arrangements are or could be made optimal forms from a prescriptive constitutional perspective. Implementation research acknowledges the written constitution-but also the living constitution. It is a mind-set for sceptical enquiry into the structure and functions of policy processes, and to confront these manifestations of the living constitution with the prescriptions of the written.