Ambitious social programs of the sixties and seventies encountered practical difficulties unanticipated by their visionary sponsors. Millenarian labels like "New Frontier" and "Great Society" began to suggest lack of realism and pragmatism. Policy failure or the suspicion of policy failure renewed a basic and controversial issue: the appropriateness, feasibility, and legitimacy of governmental intervention into private affairs and the affairs of other governments. The focus of policymaking began to shift from the formulation of societal goals to the formulation of competent, feasible programs. In this way, the notion of implementation as a topic of policy analysis and scholarly research was born. The shift by policymakers away from utopian goals to consideration of program design seemed to promise greater manageability on two fronts. Not only would programs be more realistic and more effective but the relevant body of knowledge might be narrower and more orderly. Anticipation of more effective programs is not unreasonable; but it is now clear that hopes for a discrete and tidy discipline were misplaced. Implementation as a discipline is conceptually disorganized. The boundaries that define what is and is not implementation are so unclear that the issues have not even been defined.
