Learning from Abroad: The Role of Policy Transfer in Contemporary Policy‐Making

“There are different forms and degrees of transfer, which can range from copying to emulation to inspiration (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000).”

“…see also Bevir and Richards, 2009); the processes through which ideas take hold and propagate, such as policy transfer, learning and evolution (e.g. Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; John, 1999; Pemberton, 2000); the way in which specific actors (or groups of actors) describe and interpret their position…”

“1 The policy transfer framework is neutral with regard to policy success or failure (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000).”

“(Dolowitz and Marsh 2000: 5) Conceptually, this early policy transfer analysis framework – described by Dolowitz and Marsh (2012: 339) as a heuristic – has widened its scope to accommodate critiques of the framework’s inattention to layers of government and governance involved in the development…”

“…reasons given for policy borrowing are the need to meet international standards (Steiner-Khamsi and Stolpe 2006; Steiner-Khamsi 2012a), to gain international acceptance (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000) and to legitimatise contested local reforms (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Steiner-Khamsi 2002; Ochs 2006).”

“…‘the process by which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political system (past or present) is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political system’ (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000, p. 5).”

“Dolowitz and Marsh (2000) and later de Jong et al. (2002) introduced their own frameworks for analyzing policy and institutional transfer.”

“The voluntary category primarily represents when a jurisdiction internally engages in learning from the experience of other jurisdictions for development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Ertugal, 2018).”

“The bulk of the rapidly growing research approaches interdependent decisionmaking by studying policy diffusion (Braun and Gilardi 2006) or transfer (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000), but it has also been tackled by analyzing the ways in which global ideas and trends are evoked in national policymaking…”

“…as a process in which ‘knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political setting (past or present) is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political system’ (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000: 5).”

“Voluntary transfer that is perceived as a necessity, for instance to gain or maintain international acceptance, is located in the middle of the voluntary-coercive continuum (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000: 13).”

“As Bulkeley (2006) notes, the literature on the construction and political utility of a best practice extends the literature on policy transfer, diffusion, and convergence (see Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; McCann, 2008; Peck, 2011).”

“…2003), and (c) promote the transfer of supranational policies and institutions to member countries by fostering awareness about the complementarity between national and supranational economic institutions using, for example, conferences, summits, publications, and speeches (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000).”

“In line with policy transfer theory, RIS3’s status as a budgetary conditionality without clear sanctions (Bulmer & Padgett, 2005; Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Evans, 2009) creates confusion as to whether the EDP is an institutionally legitimate or relevant concept for industrial policy across many of…”

“…on heuristic models to theorize the spatial-temporal patterns of policy movement between nation-states and examine the power-laden conditions under which this occurs (Dolowitz and Marsh 1996 ; 2000 ; Marsh and Sharman 2009 ; Benson and Jordan 2011 ; Dolowitz and Marsh 2012 ; Minkman et al. 2018 ).”

“Another corollary of policy diffusion and learning exists in the form of ‘policy transfer’ (Dobbin, Simmons, and Garrett 2007; Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Newmark 2002).”

“It should be noted that some authors such as Gilardi (2012) exclude coercion from this list since it is a hierarchical and not a voluntary process (on this point, see, e.g. Dolowitz and Marsh 2000).”

“A range of analytical approaches exist for developing analysis of transfer and lesson-drawing between nations (Dolowitz, 2000; Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Rose, 1991) and a number of these ideas will be considered.”

“Some scholars have pointed out that, in a context of uncertainty, when an administration recognizes that another one pursues an efficient policy, it is led to adopt a similar policy (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000).”

“Scholars recognize that policy mobility is a socially constructed process, so that the movements do not happen evenly or randomly among places (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Peck and Theodore, 2010).”

“50 Dolowitz, Greenwold, and Marsh 1999; Dolowitz and Marsh 2002; see also Ezrow et al. 2019. fully adopted catchall strategies that broadened their electoral support beyond the working class.”

“…institutions’ (1996, p. 345) or ‘transfer agents’ (Stone, 1999); (ii) the content of policy transferred, which might include ‘policy goals, policy content, policy instruments, policy programs, institutions, ideologies, ideas and attitudes and negative lessons’ (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000, p. 12).”

“Dolowitz and Marsh’s (2000) definition of this process is useful; they describe it as “a process by which knowledge of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions, and ideas in one political system is used in the development of similar features in another” (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, 5).”

“More narrowly, my argument challenges another line of argument in the literature, that EU-induced learning and socialisation processes are mainly associated with the transfer of liberal democratic values (Dolowitz & Marsh 2000; Rose 1991).”

“IOs also employ a range of “softer” instruments to foster policy development (6,19).”

“In the classification of Dolowitz and Marsh (2000), both the processes of incomplete and inappropriate policy transfer were at play in this case.”

“Policy transfer and aid are common features of a globalized policy-making and delivery world (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000).”

“Email: fenger@fsw.eur.nl © 2015 The Editor, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice Dolowitz and Marsh 1996, 2000) and the role of policy analysis in learning by using an advocacy coalition approach (Sabatier 1998).”

“This transfer was greatly influenced by national path dependencies and a new policy was imposed within the pre-existing system, a typical feature identified in other studies as well (see Bouwma et al., 2016; Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000).”

“As pointed out in note 1, ‘policy transfer’ was used by Dolowitz and Marsh (1996, 2000) as a generic term that contained concepts ranging from the voluntarism associated with Rose’s lessondrawing, through structural accounts of policy diffusion (e.g. Simmons and Elkins 2004) to others that combine…”

“In the policy transfer literature, Dolowitz and Marsh state their belief that transfer based upon financial necessity or for international acceptance is more likely coerced rather than voluntary, and thus may be more likely to result in policy failure due to inappropriate transfer of the policy to that context (Dolowi…”

“The EU has actively transferred WFD institutions to non-EU states, either through a process of policy transfer via network influence [7], or more coercive forms of transfer [8] whereby these states are incentivised to adopt them through accession conditionality.”

“Moving on from diffusion studies, some criminologists began to draw on notions of ‘lesson drawing’ (Rose 1991) and ‘policy transfer’ (Dolowitz and Marsh 1996, 2000) that developed within political science.”

“The spread of amalgamations is partly explainable by a socialisation or peer imitation effect inherent in lesson drawing, policy transfers, and institutional isomorphism across countries (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Dolowitz & Marsh, 1996, 2000).”

“It is the most widely used theoretical model to describe the transfer of policies across time and space.(13,14,22,23) It uses a series of questions to examine policy transfer including: Why does policy transfer? Who is involved in the transfer process? What is transferred? From where is policy transferred? What is the…”

“In contrast, the notion of ‘policy transfer’ (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000), which argues for a rather direct adaptation of ‘best practices’ (determined by the ‘goodness to fit’; cf. Lendvai and Stubbs, 2007: 180), will also be challenged, as it tends to ignore the globally widely differing historical…”

“ON INTER/CROSS-NATIONAL POLICY-INNOVATION DIFFUSION: Schneider & Ingram 1988; Rose 1993; Bennett 1997; Dolowitz & Marsh 2000; True & Mintrom 2001; Tews et al. 2003; Jensen 2004; Meseguer 2004, 2005; Brooks 2005, 2007; Gilardi 2005; Gilardi et al. 2005; Murillo & Schrank 2005; Weyland 2005; Braun &…”

“When confronted with a common problem, policymakers learn how their counterparts elsewhere responded (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000).”

“Dolowitz and Marsh (2000) explain that this process occurs because a borrowing, although voluntary, can be associated in the new context with externally imposed mechanisms, and thus brings about resistance to its full implementation.”

“This can involve a trans- Authoritarian Learning in China’s Civil Society Regulations 153 fer across jurisdictions within the same country (domestic learning) or an emulation of policies observed in other ones (transnational learning) (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000).”

“With the aim to improve governance in the public sector, the PCS can be considered a typical case of policy transfer (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000).”

“One main criticism against the policytransfer perspective (Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996, 2000) is the latter’s dominant focus on the state as a key “agent of transfer,” placing the government (often national) at the center stage of policymaking.”

“This is known as policy transfer, whereby one political system uses the knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas from another (past or present) to develop their own (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, Cairney 2012).”

“This article discusses case-specific data as well as presenting an approach to producing empirical data for research on think-tanks as actors in ‘epistemic communities’ (Haas, 1989), ‘advocacy coalitions’ (Sabatier, 1987), ‘discourse coalitions’ (Hajer, 1993) and in ‘policy transfer networks’ (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000…”

“In policy transfer theory, Dolowitz and Marsh (2000) referred to the degree to which a transfer of any program, value, policy, or institution is transferred by stating that such transfers can be copying (straightforward attempt to replicate), emulation (some intentional adaptation to the local…”