de Souza Jeferson Tadeu, Rossoni Luciano
Graduate Program in Administration, University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil.
Front Sociol. 2025 May 21;10:1505494. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1505494. eCollection 2025.
Why do some public policies mandated by the highest levels of government succeed, while others fail? This essay offers a partial answer by proposing that the effectiveness of a public policy depends on the congruence between the legal legitimacy of the law that establishes it, and the shared cultural schemas of the public servants tasked with its implementation. First, we contend that the effectiveness of top-down public policies enacted through laws and regulations relies on two key forms of validity: the legitimacy of the authority enacting the law-whether through constitutional or statutory frameworks-and the acceptability of the law's content as something perceived as inevitable, fundamentally consensual, and recognized as a social obligation, reflecting the normative nature of the law. Second, we argue that top-down policies are more likely to be implemented effectively when their content aligns with the cultural meaning structures held by public servants. This alignment or congruence fosters a sense of ownership, increasing the likelihood of compliance with the law's provisions. Finally, recognizing that a law's legal validity and the propriety attributed to it by implementers may be only loosely coupled, we identify the conditions under which implementation is likely to result in conformity, customization, or ceremonial non-conformity. We conclude by discussing the practical and methodological implications of ensuring alignment between public servants' cultural schemas and policy content, and we suggest empirical strategies to investigate this relationship.
为什么一些由政府最高层强制推行的公共政策会成功，而另一些却会失败？本文提出，公共政策的有效性取决于制定该政策的法律的合法性与负责实施该政策的公务员所共有的文化模式之间的一致性，从而给出了一个部分答案。首先，我们认为，通过法律法规制定的自上而下的公共政策的有效性依赖于两种关键的有效性形式：制定法律的权威的合法性——无论是通过宪法框架还是法定框架——以及法律内容作为被视为不可避免、基本达成共识且被认可为社会义务的事物的可接受性，这反映了法律的规范性本质。其次，我们认为，当自上而下的政策内容与公务员所持有的文化意义结构相一致时，这些政策更有可能得到有效实施。这种一致性或契合会培养一种主人翁意识，增加遵守法律规定的可能性。最后，认识到法律的法律效力与其实施者赋予它的适当性可能只是松散地联系在一起，我们确定了实施可能导致符合、定制或形式上不符合的条件。我们通过讨论确保公务员的文化模式与政策内容之间保持一致的实际和方法学意义来得出结论，并提出实证策略来研究这种关系。
