Global Public Policy, Transnational Policy Communities, and Their Networks

TLDR

Public policy has traditionally been confined to the state, but globalization and new global public‑private partnerships and transnational executive networks are reshaping authority, yet scholars have largely ignored fully global policy processes. The article seeks to define global public policy and identify the actors involved in its delivery. The authors map global public policy onto new public spaces called the global agora, extend the policy cycle heuristic to global and regional levels to expose pluralized actors and multiple‑authority structures, and focus on transnational policy communities. They find that the global agora functions as a policymaking and administrative space where authority is diffuse, decision making dispersed, and sovereignty muddled. No additional metadata provided.

Abstract

Public policy has been a prisoner of the word “state.” Yet, the state is reconfigured by globalization. Through “global public–private partnerships” and “transnational executive networks,” new forms of authority are emerging through global and regional policy processes that coexist alongside nation‐state policy processes. Accordingly, this article asks what is “global public policy”? The first part of the article identifies new public spaces where global policies occur. These spaces are multiple in character and variety and will be collectively referred to as the “global agora .” ,” The second section adapts the conventional policy cycle heuristic by conceptually stretching it to the global and regional levels to reveal the higher degree of pluralization of actors and multiple‐authority structures than is the case at national levels. The third section asks: who is involved in the delivery of global public policy? The focus is on transnational policy communities. The global agora is a public space of policymaking and administration, although it is one where authority is more diffuse, decision making is dispersed and sovereignty muddled. Trapped by methodological nationalism and an intellectual agoraphobia of globalization, public policy scholars have yet to examine fully global policy processes and new managerial modes of transnational public administration.