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

“…its jurisdiction, federalism is also about something larger, and 1At a more general level, this issue is typically discussed by students of ‘policy transfer’ and ‘lesson drawing’ (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Rose 2004). qualitatively different: a principle of government (Burgess 2006; Requejo 2005).”

“Indeed, Dolowitz and Marsh (2000, 10) have remarked that ‘it is becoming increasingly clear that policymakers, at both the national and international levels, are relying on the advice of consultants’ and that commercial consultants are inclined to ‘offer advice based upon what they regard as the…”

“…to processes ‘ 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 and Marsh 2000, 5).”

“…of policy transfer is, however, challenging because it involves analysis of inherently vague, interacting, evolving processes in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions, and ideas are transferred from one place to another (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Giest 2017).”

“Finally, Dolowitz and Marsh (2000, 17) limit their definition of policy transfer success to ‘the extent to which policy transfer achieves the aims set by a government when they engaged in transfer, or is perceived as a success by the key actors involved in the policy area’.”

“Pour les saisir, il convient de faire osciller l’analyse entre le macrosco-pique des tentatives de transfert des prescriptions d’une part (Dolowitz, Marsh, 2000 ; Berny, 2011), et le microscopique des ces appropriations ter-ritorialisées (Pasquier, Weisbein, 2004).”

“The basic assumption in the policy diffusion literature is that political actors do not implement policies independently of each other (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Franzese and Hays, 2007).”

“Transfer then takes place across time, countries, and policy fields (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000).”

“There is, however, a long tradition in political science of exploring the diffusion of public policies (Walker, 1969), lesson-drawing (Rose, 1991) and policy transfer (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000).”

“…transfer occurs when ‘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 & Marsh, 2000, p. 5).”

“Email: joanne.vinke@utwente.nl 1523-908X Print/1522-7200 Online/12/020139-22 # 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2012.680700 munication means and the rise of international organizations (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000).”

“Differences in ideological perspective may end in incompatibility of the transferred ideas with the dominant values and ideas of the recipient (Chapman and Greenaway 2006; Dolowitz and Marsh 2000).”

“The learning orientation has been systematized in the widely used framework of Dolowitz and Marsh (2000), who urge attention to why actors engage in policy transfer and the bases for their selection of the learning exemplars from which lessons are drawn, noting that policy transfer exemplars can be…”

“Marsh and Sharman [17] note that transfer mechanisms may operate concurrently and sometimes it may be difficult to distinguish which one is working during a particular policy transfer process.”

“Over time, policy diffusion, institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and policy transfer (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000) research has expanded beyond focusing upon economic competition and learning mechanisms.”

“There are other important questions regarding the transfer of policy ideas – vis-à-vis the flow between the North (donors) and the South (recipients), and between global, regional and national levels – but this article is mainly concerned with global influence on national policymaking (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000).”

“…justification for adopting an international perspective on evidence-based policy is to gain a better understanding of the potential for policy transfer and learning across time and space, and to identify the conditions under which it is most likely to be successful (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000).”

“These posit the observed behavior of actors as rational action, or bounded rationality, unless being subjects to direct coercion from powerful actors (e.g., Börzel & Risse, 2012; Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Rogers, 2010).”

“Policy transfer generally refers to a process in which policy ideas in one time and/or place are used in the development of policy ideas in another time and/or place (Dolowitz and Marsh 1996, 2000).”

“…2011) Desde el punto de vista teórico, los ciclos de reforma educativa se inscriben en la problemática más amplia de los llamados policy transfer cuyos estudios han indagado la incidencia de diferentes actores, mecanismos y estructuras en la difusión de ciertas políticas (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000).”

“The role of knowledge in public policy research has also associated with lesson-drawing, policy transfer, policy diffusion and policy convergence (Bennett and Howlett, 1992; Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Nicholson-Crotty and Carley, 2016; Rose, 1991; Stone, 2012).”

“Scholars have used ‘policy transfer’ or ‘policy diffusion’ interchangeably to refer to the spread of policy ideas and practices across different political units (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Marsh & Sharman, 2009).”

“In studying 6 processes of policy transfer, Dolowitz and Marsh (30) identify four interrelated facilitators and constraints: past policies (i.e. the historical policy landscape), policy complexity (i.e. the number of facets of a policy), structural institutional feasibility (i.e. the likelihood a policy could be imple…”

“This refers to the ‘process by which knowledge of 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 2000; Dolowitz and Marsh 2000).”

“In contemporary jargon this is expressed in familiar terms as best practice, best evidence, or cognate terms such as, ‘lesson-drawing, policy convergence, policy diffusion and policy transfer’ (see Dolowitz and Marsh 2000 for a review).”

“The identification of ‘negative’ lesson drawing is well established in the policy learning literature (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Rose, 1991; Stone 1999).”

“The choice to import specific rules and institutions can follow a logic of consequences as ‘a rational response to a perceived problem’ (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, p. 14; see further Rose 1991).”

“…the role of focusing events, policy diffusion, agenda-setting, governance, and implementation capacity in shaping policymaking (e.g. Birkland, 2006; Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Kingdon, 2011; Nohrstedt & Weible, 2010) as well as findings elsewhere on the role of disaster events in policy development…”

“The policy transfer literature (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000), has illustrated how ideas, institutions and practices travel from one country or region to another.”

“However, we believe that mutual contact is a first step to lesson drawing and policy learning (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000), and we hope that diffusion and learning benefits the reduction of ethnic inequalities; an imperative if the cohesion of our increasingly diverse societies is a desirable goal.”

“Even if regions are willing to learn from each other and there is a consensus on ‘best practices’, there are still a number of barriers to policy transfer from ‘uninformed transfer’ through ‘incomplete transfer’ to ‘inadequate transfer’ (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000).”

“Scholars have studied in various different ways how policies in one country affect the policies in other countries (e.g. Dobbin, Simmons, and Garrett 2007; Weyland 2005; Simmons and Elkins 2004; Meseguer 2009; Gilardi 2010; cf. also Dolowitz and Marsh 2000).”

“…the Commission plays in institutionalizing the education OMC at the EU level, while at the domestic level the JIU is a key forum of civil servants who act as policy brokers and ultimately gatekeepers in the discursive translation of the education OMC between the EU and UK (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000).”

“The literature raises four different causal mechanisms for how diffusion might occur: coercion, competition, learning and emulation (e.g. Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Elkins and Simmons, 2005; Gilardi, 2010, 2012; Most and Starr, 1990; Simmons et al., 2006).”

“The mechanisms that explain policy diffusion can be anywhere in a spectrum from voluntary to coercive, although they might not always be easy to distinguish and might even be mixed (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Gilardi, 2012).”

“For instance, political orientation might dictate how much resource is invested in technological systems and the extent to which knowledge sharing agreements with other countries are implemented (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000).”

“The EU side has relied on copying – for instance, regarding VAT issues and, to a large extent, Form 302 – and the emulation of ideas behind policy or programmes with respect to military requirements (see Dolowitz and Marsh 2000).”

“When family planning programmes were launched in Pakistan, the religious groups opposed it on the ground that it is contrary to Islamic values and this resulted in total failure (Khan, 2009, pp. 19-32; Lee, et al., 1998; Thatcher and Rein, 2004, pp. 457-481; Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, pp. 5-21).”

“Additionally, city-specific analysis may overlook valuable opportunities for cities to systematically learn from their peers (Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996, 2000; Marsden and Stead, 2011; Marsden et al., 2011).”