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

“The motivations underpinning the decision to borrow policies from other countries can be positioned on a continuum from “want to” at one extreme to “have to” at the other (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000: 9).”

“Scholars with interest in the Pacific region have also alluded to the impact of conformity mechanisms in policy development in PICs, an idea which is often conceptualized in the literature as policy transfer (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Larmour, 2005) or policy diffusion (M€orth, 1998).”

“Predominant approaches to policy transfers and learning provide important insights but are of limited utility as they essentially remain instrumentalist, with learning depicted as a deliberate exercise of which agency is in full control (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Jc The Author 2012.”

“…contrast with the prior literature on cross-country institutional learning that centred on the exchange of knowledge but did not reflect on institutional aspects and compatibility issues (Rose 1993, Dolowitz and Marsh 1996, Dolowitz 1999; Stone 1999; Evans and Davies 1999, Dolowitz and Marsh 2000).”

“Our concept of party policy issue transfer across legislative levels speaks to an extensive body of literature on policy transfer (Bulmer and Padgett, 2005; Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Evans and Davies, 1999).”

“Over the last two decades, a growing body of literature has discussed related concepts of lesson-drawing, policy diffusion and policy transfer (Rose, 1991; Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Marsh & Sharman, 2009; Stone, 2012; Carroll & Common, 2013; Mukhtarov, 2014).”

“To get more insight into their roles and their effects on the success or failure of transfer, Dolowitz and Marsh posed the following questions: 1) Why do actors engage in policy transfer?; 2) Who are the key actors involved in the policy transfer process? (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000).”

“This overarching principle is applied across various research domains, notably in policy transfer studies, which highlight the numerous side effects arising from borrowing policies between contexts without sufficient consideration of contextual differences, as discussed by Dolowitz and Marsh (2000).”

“The horizontal approach focuses on policy learning through emulation across countries in explaining the emergence of NRAs (Meseguer 2005; Dolowitz and Marsh 2000 ).”

“Implications for Policy-Makers and Public Managers How can policy-makers and public managers best apply the comparative knowledge provided about the dynamics of devolution processes? A model for effective lesson-drawing (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000) has been outlined by Rose (2001).”

“For example, Dolowitz and Marsh (2000) argue that coercive transfer occurs when an organization, a country, or supranational body imposes policy adoption or implementation on the other organization or country.”

“Another dimension of coercive adoption, highlighted by Dolowitz and Marsh (2000), is the idea that although transfer is externally induced, adoption becomes obligatory because of a country’s membership in international organisations.”

“A wide variety of international organizations and global knowledge networks (Alasuutari, 2011; Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Stone, 2001) conduct cross-national comparisons and disseminate information about policies in different countries making this kind of data abundant.”

“…outside national boundaries, with various terminologies used for describing the process or outcomes of policy change, such as “policy transfer” (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000), “policy borrowing” (Phillips & Ochs, 2003), “policy learning” (Bennett & Howlett, 1992), “policy diffusion” (Mooney,…”

“As the policy transfer(1) literature has been especially comprised by case studies that address the reasons, processes, and impacts of traveling policies (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Hadjiisky et al. 2017; Stone et al. 2020), attention has been mostly focused on how diffusion begins and initially progresses.”

“The mechanism of international policy transfer holds particular promise in this regard, as countries often draw lessons from abroad either voluntarily or by compulsion to solve existential problems during crises (Brummer & Bamkin, 2024; Dolowitz & Marsh, 1996, 2000).”

“Generally, policy nature is closely related to the purpose of policy formulation; in this paper, policy nature includes prediction, guidance, description, supervision, planning, and support (64, 65).”

“For example, development agencies and institutions such as IMF and World Bank have pushed the idea of economic and public sector reforms in Africa that culminated in the adoption of privatization policies and performance management programmes in both the public and private sectors (Dolowitz and Marsh 1996 , 2000 ).”

“A review of the concepts of this issue is provided by Marsden and Stead (2011), which puts particular emphasis upon a framework developed by Dolowitz and Marsh (1996, 2000) who list seven questions concerning policy transfer: (1) What is transferred?”

“in light of globalization suggests that there is increasingly less scope for unique choices (DiMaggio and Powell 1991; Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Simmons et al. 2008; Busch and J€ orgens 2005; Holzinger and Knill 2005).”

“This phenomenon has attracted growing attention in the academic literature from a number of different perspectives (Bulkeley 2006; Bulmer and Padgett 2004; De Jong et al. 2002; Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; James and Lodge 2003; e.g., Rose 1993).”

“Unable to sufficiently take the local geographic and historical context into account, this kind of mobilized policy is problematic and these policies often fail (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Kuus, 2015).”

“Springing from a critique of policy transfer that analyzed mobilization of policy solely on the national scale (cf. Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000), policy mobilities studies claim to present a more scale-sensitive approach to the dissemination of policy models and ideas to other geographic scales…”

“Possibly, when S3 was first proposed it was assumed that such scholarly concepts could be unproblematically translated into effective policies (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Flanagan & Uyarra, 2016) and that the policymaking community would have no difficulties in dropping their long-established vertical…”

“…in the Europeanization and policy transfer literature, focusing on how domestic institutions and actors mediate international conventions and ideas, and create national politics from them (Börzel & Risse 2003; Dolowitz & Marsh 2000; Schimmelfennig & Sedelmeier 2005; Schmidt & Radaelli 2004).”

“Such emulation may, exceptionally, take the form of direct and complete transfer (copying), but more typically involves adaptation to local needs (lesson-drawing) (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Rose 1991).”

“It may be a story of policy transfer, grounded in relations among local or provincial epistemic communities, that produced the patterns that we have uncovered (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Haas, 1992).”

“…interconnectedness, so that policy-makers have a greater tendency to refer to different political systems and a range of international organisations for knowledge and ideas about institutions, programmes and policies (Dolowitz & Marsh 2000, p. 7), leading to policy transfer and diffusion of ideas.”

“While this literature is far from uniform, its usefulness for research in geography or even outside of political sciences in general is somewhat limited (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000).”

“This will enable other countries that are perhaps more embracing of a precautionary approach to benefit from a strengthened evidence base in either replicating the policy or not—in essence, policy transfer [16].”

“The Western democracies that exemplify these movements have also endured protracted conflicts, and increases in public participation and citizen empowerment did not appear overnight (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Fischer 2009a).”

“To align with the global policy mobility of community placemaking (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Evans, 2009), Taiwan borrowed the concept of community placemaking from the Japanese Machizukuri approach and American tactical urbanism (though at different times).”

“This represents a departure from the political science literature on policy transfer, represented by authors such as Dolowitz and Marsh (2000: 8), who focus on the international diffusion process of policies, and addresses questions such as ‘What is transferred?”

“…choice literature, explanations of why governments change their instruments are manifold; learning, changing discourses, struggles between involved actors, national policy styles and policy networks (Bressers and O’Toole Jr 1998; Hall 1993; Dolowitz and Marsh 2000; Sabatier 1998; Howlett 2009).”

“Nevertheless, consensus about comprehensive convergence or divergence of municipalities’ policies remains unreached in political science literature, for there are studies supporting and neglecting this thesis (Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Radaelli, 2005).”

“To understand the processes of regional development policy change in Turkey, the widely cited framework developed by Dolowitz and Marsh (1996, 2000) is used.”

“…branch of study has developed within the policy and public administration literature that considers how policy and the associated ideas, institutions and administrative systems transfer across levels of government and from one jurisdiction to another (Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996, 2000; Evans, 2009b).”

“In policy transfer, entrepreneurs can also be think tanks, NGOs, or consultants, which promote best practices internationally (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, 10).”

“…movement and influence of policies and ideas as policy transfer, policy diffusion or lesson-drawing (Evan & Davies, 1999; Dolowitz & Marsh, 1996; Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Marsh & Sharman, 2009; Rose, 1991; Vinke-de Kruijf, 2013), viewing the travel of policies as a rather linear process, the…”

“…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 and Marsh 2000, 7).”