As fashionable as implementation studies were in the 1970s and 1980s, as en vogue it has become currently, four decades later, to consider implementation as an obsolete research theme. It is clear that in the study of government, new themes and concepts have been put on the agenda. In the ‘age of governance’, that study takes place under a variety of headings beyond ‘implementation’. At the same time, a continued attention to what happens with policies-on-paper can be observed. In this special issue, the development of implementation research as a scholarly field is assessed. A closer look reveals some paradoxes, but also steady advancement.
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