The Policy Termination Process

The purposes of this article are twofold. First, from a review of the extant literature on termination of policies, programs, and organizations, we identify the “crucial variables” that are believed to affect termination. In doing so, we develop a descriptive model of program termination. Then, we utilize this model as a hueristic device to examine the termination of federal revenue‐sharing programs in 1986. After reviewing the available literature on this topic and analyzing the case of revenue‐sharing, the article concludes that program termination is affected by three categories of variables: 1) inherent characteristics of the program in question; 2) the political environment within which termination takes place; and 3)