Contemporary western societies can be described as negotiated economies, as multi-actor societies with fuzzy borders between public and private organizations and institutions. In this article it is argued that if we aim at understanding the processes of policy-making, we have to start our investigations from a point where we do not unreflectively assume that political administrative hierarchy prevails. The relevance of formal political institutions has to be proved, not taken for granted. Adopting a naive `stage-model' of the policy-making process, however, may lead to anticipating reality, or replacing empirical findings with political administrative norms. This is due not only to the history of political science, with its focus on formal institutions, but also to the fact that hierarchy is a human way of simplifying a complex environment. The implementation structure approach is suggested as an alternative methodological device for conducting a nonhierarchical implementation analysis to circumvent this problem. The approach provides a fruitful point of departure for a broad discussion of alternative ways of achieving constitutional order in society.
