Policy Ad-Hocracy: The Paucity of Coordinated Perspectives and Policies

Postwar Western European foreign-worker policies generally evolved in an ad hoc, piecemeal fashion and were characterized by a lack of long-term planning and coordination with emigrant-sending countries. In some instances official immigration policies were poorly implemented or unenforced, and therefore unofficial, de facto policies emerged. In other cases official assumptions concerning postwar labor migration persisted long after they had been shown to be inadequate, contributing to inconsistencies between declared and de facto policies. Policy ad-hocracy arose from the disjuncture between official and de facto policies, from an inability to foresee the outcomes of policy decisions and subsequently to harmonize public policies with the unplanned situations that developed, as well as from the poor adaptation of sovereign states to transnational policy processes. Immigration policy ad-hocracy resulted in largely unplanned settlement and persisting policy dilemma or malaise. Specific examples are examined in France, Switzerland, and the Federal Republic of Germany to illustrate the general patterns and to suggest some significant variations across national contexts.