Generation learning framework: Applying Margaret Mead's typology to agenda-setting stage of policy diffusion

Palina Prysmakova

doi:10.33119/kszpp/2020.2.2

Abstract

The prompt development of the world's South and the stagnation in the evolution of the world's North altered the directions of policy diffusion. Up to date, the literature lacks a clear framework that captures these changes. This article contributes to research by offering a Generation Learning Framework to study the new paths of policy and technology dissemination around the globe. Anthropological propositions of Margaret Mead are adapted to capture a higher demand and popularity of the South-South transfers over the less frequent South-North transfers. Illustrating the framework with the examples of South-Korean lesson-drawing, the study concludes that the era of knowledge transfer exclusively from the North to South is over. The proposed framework can be further applied to the fast-growing experiences in the learning practices that take place in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa.

Highlights

The prompt development of the world’s South and the stagnation in the evolution of the world’s North altered the directions of policy diffusion
Less attention has been paid to the agenda-setting stage of a policy diffusion with some notable exceptions of Karch (2007) and Pacheco and Boushey (2014)
While almost every empirical study of policy diffusion contains some explanations of why a foreign example has been considered first-hand, to the best knowledge of the author, the literature lacks an established theoretical framework to assess such selections systematically

Summary

Organizational learning

Organizational learning frameworks refer to the learning of a government analyzing the learning process (1) of government officials as the transporters of a policy from one country to another, or (2) that happens by ingesting new members into a government who have knowledge that the organization did not previously possess (Simon, 1991), or (3) obtained by government officials through professional intergovernmental networks (Füglister, 2012). In further attempts to contextualize and account for the unknown, March and Olsen (1975) proposed to understand the organizational learning process through the lens of the uncertainty of the past In his turn, Simon (1991) proposed to look at organizational learning as a social phenomenon that happens inside of organizations. While shedding some light on the learning process of employees and, as a result, of their organizations, the exiting organizational theories and propositions are weak to explain learning processes that happen in-between political and administrative contexts They do not fully address the international policy diffusion as a process, where the institutions play an important role as the cognitive processes of single administrators

International learning

Findings

Proposed framework