Publication | Open Access
Understanding Policy Transfer: A Multi‐Level, Multi‐Disciplinary Perspective
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1999
Year
Policy AnalysisSocial SciencesPolicy CooperationGovernance (Urban Studies)Policy Transfer AnalysisPolicy Transfer NetworkGeopoliticsPublic PolicyInternational RelationsInternational Relation TheoryRegulationComparative PoliticsPolicy TransferGovernance (Data Management)World PoliticsPolicy StudiesBusinessGlobal PoliticsInternational OrganizationPolicy PerspectivePolitical ScienceInternational Institutions
Comparative and international political scientists are grappling with state behaviour under uncertainty, while state‑centred scholars confront the growing complexity of modern governance, yet the disciplines continue to speak past each other. The article argues that policy transfer analysis can integrate key concerns of comparative, international, and state‑centred political science, and hopes to stimulate an empirical agenda illuminating domestic and world‑politics developments. The authors propose a structure‑and‑agency framework with global, international, and transnational dimensions, using a policy‑transfer network as a middle‑range level that links micro‑decision making, macro‑systems, and global, transnational, and international systems.
At the same time that comparative and international political scientists have been confronting the problems of analysing state behaviour under conditions of uncertainty, state‐centred political scientists are attempting, somewhat belatedly, to deal with the increasing complexity and uncertainty which underpins modern governance. Yet despite similar research agendas these disciplines have continued to speak past each other. This article contends that policy transfer analysis can provide a context for integrating some key concerns of these disciplines. Further, we argue that the process of policy transfer should be examined through a structure and agency approach with three dimensions: global, international and transnational levels, the macro‐level and the interorganizational level. This three‐dimensional model employs the notion of a policy transfer network as a middle‐range level of analysis which links a particular form of policy development (policy transfer), microdecision making in organizations, macrosystems and global, transnational and international systems. It is hoped that this approach will stimulate an empirical research agenda which will illuminate important policy developments in domestic and world politics.