From paper to practice: how reform design shapes implementation

This article investigates how the design of policy reforms can influence their implementation, analyzing the case of initial teacher education and training (ITET) reforms in Italy. It addresses the following question: To what extent can the design of policy reforms, as codified in legal texts, help explain subsequent implementation failures? Building on a framework that draws together insights from the policy evaluation literature and the policy analysis literature, it focuses on three key dimensions of design as reflected in legal texts: precision, internal coherence, and external coherence. The framework is applied to a within-case comparison of five major ITET reforms enacted between 1989 and 2019. The study, conducted through qualitative text analysis and process tracing, reveals how unclear policy goals, internal inconsistencies between objectives and instruments, and especially misalignment with recruitment systems as well as financial and administrative capacities undermine implementation. By bridging evaluation and design perspectives, the article offers an ex ante approach to understanding how policies-as-written can anticipate implementation failures.