ORGANIZING FOR POLICY INNOVATION IN PUBLIC BUREAUCRACY - AIDS, ENERGYAND ENVIRONMENTAL-POLICY IN CANADA

Governments often operate under considerable pressure to respond effec tively to the emergence of increasingly complex policy dilemmas. This article first explains some key difficulties in bringing forth compreh ensive policy interventions. Despite the ubiquity of social and politi cal constraints to policy innovation, many failures can be attributed to public bureaucracies that are not designed to deal with complex pro blems, and which all too quickly exceed their policy-making capacities . This study then analyzes why comprehensive policy-making does someti mes occur, and links its occurrence to bureaucratic design factors, ar guing that extending organizational capacity for innovation involves m ore than generous budgets and expertise. The article draws upon, and d evelops further, Mintzberg's ideas on administrative adhocracy to show how administrative units can be organized to enable bureaucracies to transcend professional compartmentalization and routine; and how struc tures can be designed for comprehensive policy innovation. The study f ocuses on Canadian federal bureaucracy, and it is supported by three c ase studies of recent policy experiments: energy, environment and AIDS .