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The chapter returns to the questions raised in the beginning of the book: how might we understand the self-generative character of bureaucracy? And what might we learn about how implementation works in general based on a discussion of this specific ethnographic study? Building on the insights developed in the previous four chapters it sets out to chart the systematic ways in which policy implementation fails. The chapter presents seven theses on how implementation works which it suggests can be observed in most if not all cases of policy implementation – be that national policy or international development policy.

The introduction lays out the book’s empirical interest (the repercussions of policy), the analytical focus (decision-making) and its theoretical aim (to theorize the non-linear aspect of implementation by addressing it through the lens of the absurd). This introduction firmly places the book in the fields of implementation and development studies, but does so by introducing a focus on all that is rejected, ignored and excluded from planning and bureaucratic decision-making. The introduction also provides a reflection on how best to write complexity and incoherency, and it develops the book’s primary analytical writing style inspired by photojournalism, more specifically environmental portraiture (Kobré 2008).

This concluding chapter highlights how the strengths and weaknesses of court-based reform and community organizing mirror each other, and how neither type of advocate is likely to single-handedly realize students’ right to a high quality education. This raises the question: Why don’t litigators and community organizers work together more to realize the educational rights they aim to achieve? The chapter identifies some of the challenges and opportunities such collaborations present, and it draws upon what worked well in Kentucky to consider how potential barriers can be overcome with a focus on the policy implementation stage. Even when such collaborations come together, a moral dilemma remains: if local advocacy does not have broader impact, a premium is placed on the community into which children happen to be born and educated. The chapter concludes by emphasizing how local control of education policy is a significant obstacle to the realization of educational rights in the US, and highlights some promising shifts in federal policy that suggest openings for reform on this front.