Leadership Attention and Bureaucratic Operations: Case Studies Based on a Policy Implementation Elements-Stage Framework

“Leadership attention” is not a panacea for bureaucratic operations, especially when it encounters soft resistance from within the bureaucracy, often leading to stagnation in policy implementation. The existing literature pays insufficient attention to the mechanism that connects leadership focus to active bureaucratic operations and, ultimately, policy implementation. In order to explore the tensions between the attention of superior leaders and the operation of the bureaucracy, this paper looks at the issue of policy implementation. We deconstruct and reconstruct classical policy process theory and establish a two-dimensional analytical policy implementation elements-stage framework. Empirically, we examine the policy implementation process for the opening up of school sports facilities in X City as an example to describe the entire process of bureaucratic operations from obstruction to implementation based on a micro perspective, presenting different combinations of the “key elements” of various policies at different stages of the implementation process, thereby opening the black box between leadership attention and policy implementation. The results of the case study show that attention from the superior leadership is a necessary but insufficient condition to drive the bureaucracy; policy implementation is also affected by factors such as the definition of the problem, the policy landscape, institutional tensions, and especially executive coalition resources. The bureaucracy works well only when it internalizes the priorities of its leaders. When confronted with the bureaucracy's invisible resistance, policymakers can employ a variety of resource strategies to tame the bureaucracy. The study reveals the bureaucratic counterforces against superiors in the process of policy implementation. This finding challenges the stereotype of traditional bureaucracy, highlighting the elasticity of space in bureaucratic organization that results in bureaucratic autonomy to counteract the mechanical nature of a bureaucratic organization.