The afterlife of policies: unpacking post-termination pathways and the enduring influence of self-undermining feedbacks

Purpose This study investigates the long-term consequences of policy termination, focusing on the dismantling of state-funded crèches in the Czech Republic. It examines how terminated policies persist through political, institutional and normative policy legacies that shape subsequent reform efforts. Design/methodology/approach It develops a typology of policy “afterlives” – void, replacement and reintroduction – along with their possible sequential combinations. Drawing on document analysis and interviews, the article traces a thirty-year trajectory of termination, replacement and contested reintroduction in Czech childcare policy. Findings The analysis reveals three key barriers to policy reintroduction: institutional inertia generated by replacement policies; resistance from entrenched policy domains and haunting policy legacies – the residual dissatisfaction, mistrust and adverse sentiments stemming from the self-undermining feedback of terminated policies. These legacies persist over time, shaping stakeholder attitudes and institutional memory, thereby complicating reform and narrowing the space for policy imagination. Together, these factors resulted in a difficult process of reintroduction – a challenging “re-defamilialization” – which produced a fragmented and under-resourced system, reliant primarily on external EU funding. Practical implications Termination is shown to be a high-cost strategy in foundational welfare domains. It can erode institutional capacity, entrench replacement regimes and constrain future reform, underscoring the importance of adaptive reform over outright withdrawal. Originality/value The article advances policy termination research by theorizing termination as the beginning of policy afterlives rather than an endpoint. It offers a novel conceptual framework for analysing post-termination trajectories and demonstrates its value through a longitudinal case from Central Europe.