Policy Failure and Policy Change

Abstract

The failure of a policy to achieve its goals is often an important reason for the decision to replace it. Failure alone, however, is rarely a sufficient explanation of the timing and direction of policy change. Change follows failure when alternative policies exist that are politically viable—that is, able to garner support from powerful actors—and that can explain past failure persuasively, and offer new policy prescriptions. This article evaluates this argument through a case study of British international security policy after the end of the cold war. British decision makers' initial policy was to rely on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as the vehicle through which to organize multilateral responses to “crisis management tasks.” The failure of this policy to deal successfully with the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia led British decision makers to search for and evaluate alternative policies. They concluded that the rival idea of basing more multilateral crisis management on a European rather than North Atlantic institution best explained the failures in the former Yugoslavia. This policywas not politically viable, however, leading the government to continue to rely on NATO for such missions. Only a change in government—the election of the Labor government in 1997 with a large parliamentary majority—allowed decision makers to adopt and implement this new policy.