Abstract
This article re-assesses the literature on policy transfer and diffusion in light of what constitutes failure or limited success. First, it looks at imperfect, incomplete or uninformed transfer processes. Second, it addresses the concept of ‘negative lesson-drawing’ as well as the role of interlocutors who complicate policy transfer processes. Third, the idea of ‘transfer’ as a neat linear transmission of an intact policy approach is criticised by drawing attention to hybridity, synthesis, adaptation and ‘localisation’. Finally, policy ‘translation’ is a better conceptual framework for comprehending the learning and policy innovations that come with the trial and error inherent in policymaking.
Highlights
This article re-assesses some of the literature on policy transfer and policy diffusion in light of ideas as to what constitutes failure, partial failure or limited success
Just as ‘policy failure’ and ‘policy success’ are often portrayed as polar opposites in a binary distinction, so too policy transfer and diffusion approaches can suffer from similar binary distinctions
Rather than working in a framework where “success and failure are bound inexorably with each other” (McConnell, 2008: 346), the concern in this article has been to escape the idea of these dual tendencies to evoke the metaphor of policy translation as an experimental process in constant policy motion turning between innovation and reaction, compliance and invention
Summary
This article re-assesses some of the literature on policy transfer (inter alia, Benson and Jordan, 2011; Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000; Evans and Davies, 1999) and policy diffusion (inter alia, Dobbin, et al, 2007; Meseguer, 2005; Shipan and Volden, 2012) in light of ideas as to what constitutes failure, partial failure or limited success. The diffusion of knowledge and transfer of policies across countries can involve a large number of ‘proponents’ and as will be discussed later, the intermediaries in these processes reflect different interests, sometimes with discordant views on what may amount to success. Policy translation can be understood as multiple and variable processes incorporating (i) diffusion/transfer (ii) assemblage/bricolage; (iii) mobilities/mutation; (iv) interpretation/localisation; and (v) trial and error. The sixth concluding section returns to the dualism encapsulated in the study of both policy failure/success and in policy diffusion/transfer studies as attempting to impose a rational order over the reality of chaotic and messy policy processes
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