Logo image
Back
Understanding Policy Overload in Sub-Saharan African Education Reforms: A Critical Theoretical Analysis of Implementation Complexity and Street-Level Bureaucracy
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Understanding Policy Overload in Sub-Saharan African Education Reforms: A Critical Theoretical Analysis of Implementation Complexity and Street-Level Bureaucracy

John Issahaku and Kristy Kelly
Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education, v 10(1), pp 1-25
26 Jan 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7577/njcie.6405
url
https://doi.org/10.7577/njcie.6405View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open CC BY V4.0

Abstract

education reform policy policy overload street-level bureaucracy Sub-Saharan Africa
This article presents a systematic critical literature review examining how policy overload and related concepts such as policy accumulation, layering, and administrative burden are defined, applied, and studied in Sub-Saharan African education research. Drawing on thematic synthesis, the review analyzes forty peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2025. The analysis identifies three central patterns: fragmented conceptualization of policy overload, predominantly qualitative and descriptive empirical approaches, and limited integration of street-level bureaucracy and policy implementation complexity perspectives. The findings show that policy overload in African education systems is most often treated as an implicit condition rather than an explicit analytical construct, with reforms accumulating faster than institutional capacity to implement them. The review highlights key research gaps, including the absence of a shared conceptual vocabulary, limited longitudinal and comparative designs, and insufficient theorization of agency in mediating overload. The article concludes by proposing an interpretive framework that conceptualizes policy overload as both a structural governance condition and a lived implementation experience, offering directions for future theory-building and empirical research.

Metrics

1 Record Views

Details

Logo image