Cross-national Policy Convergence Research Articles

To Harmonise or Not to Harmonise?: The Case of Cross-national Biotechnology Governance in Southern Africa

This paper is based on a study which investigated both existing and new regulatory responses to food emergencies and bigger challenges presented by modern gene-based biotechnologies. In particular, this paper looks at the challenge of cross-national cooperation in regulation of these technologies in southern Africa. One response to this challenge which has dominated policy agendas in the region for a long time, and with more prominence after the 2002-2003 food emergency, is that of harmonisation of national biosafety regulatory systems. Harmonisation is touted by its promoters as one way in which countries can buttress weaker national and sub-national regulatory capacities, and develop synergies that will place them in a strong position to deal with the dynamic challenges presented by modern biotechnologies. The desire for cross-national cooperation in biotechnology management was investigated from the broader perspective of policy convergence, with harmonization being but one of the mechanisms towards the policy convergence. A number of factors facilitating or inhibiting policy convergence were identified, including but not limited to cultural, institutional, socio-economic and policy community attributes. The paper concludes that an understanding of these factors is crucial if grounded empirical and theoretical proposals on cross-national policy convergence are to be advanced.

To what extent does transnational communication drive cross-national policy convergence? The impact of the bologna-process on domestic higher education policies

This study investigates if transnational communication in the context of the Bologna Process (BP) has led to the convergence of higher education (HE) policies. The country sample includes both Bologna participants and non-participants, for which systematic knowledge about the implications of the BP is absent so far. We investigate study structures and quality assurance measures, which differ in their suitability for transnational benchmarking activities and are explicitly addressed by the BP. Our results show that convergent effects differ across policy dimensions and according to the subsamples. We generally find that convergence is greater for the participant countries than for the control group. However, convergence towards the HE policies of Bologna participants is detectable in the control group, albeit to a lesser degree. Thus, some HE policies have diffused beyond the members of the BP. This lends evidence that transnational communication can induce policy change even for countries not participating in the respective harmonization process.

The Interaction of Competition, Co-operation and Communication: Theoretical Analysis of Different Sources of Environmental Policy Convergence

Comparative studies on cross-national policy transfer and diffusion emphasize an impressing degree of policy convergence in many areas. This holds true, in particular, for the environmental field. However, we are still confronted with limited knowledge about the mechanisms accounting for this phenomenon. Against this backdrop, we theoretically investigate the impact of three different convergence mechanisms that are generally seen as central sources of cross-national policy convergence: regulatory competition, international co-operation and transnational communication. In particular, our focus is on the analysis of the interaction of these three factors. As will be shown, the empirically rather likely interaction of different mechanisms constitutes a plausible explanation for the still puzzling gap between the theoretical prediction of a race to the bottom through regulatory competition and the lacking empirical support for this hypothesis.

Environmental Policy Convergence: The Impact of International Harmonization, Transnational Communication, and Regulatory Competition

In recent years, there is growing interest in the study of cross-national policy convergence. Yet we still have a limited understanding of the phenomenon: Do we observe convergence of policies at all? Under which conditions can we expect that domestic policies converge or rather develop further apart? In this article, we address this research deficit. From a theoretical perspective, we concentrate on the explanatory power of three factors, namely international harmonization, transnational communication, and regulatory competition. In empirical terms, we analyze if and to what extent we can observe convergence of environmental policies across twenty-four industrialized countries between 1970 and 2000. We find an impressive degree of environmental policy convergence between the countries under investigation. This development is mainly caused by international harmonization and, to a considerable degree, also by transnational communication, whereas regulatory competition does not seem to play a role.

Analysing the differential impact of the Bologna Process: Theoretical considerations on national conditions for international policy convergence

Although there is a growing interest of policy makers in higher education issues (especially on an international scale), there is still a lack of theoretically well-grounded comparative analyses of higher education policy. Even broadly discussed topics in higher education research like the potential convergence of European higher education systems in the course of the Bologna Process suffer from a thin empirical and comparative basis. This paper aims to deal with these problems by addressing theoretical questions concerning the domestic impact of the Bologna Process and the role national factors play in determining its effects on cross-national policy convergence. It develops a distinct theoretical approach for the systematic and comparative analysis of cross-national policy convergence. In doing so, it relies upon insights from related research areas—namely literature on Europeanization as well as studies dealing with cross-national policy convergence.

The international sources of policy convergence: explaining the spread of environmental policy innovations

How do international processes, actors and institutions contribute to domestic policy change and cross-national policy convergence? Scholars in the fields of international relations and comparative politics have identified a wide array of convergence mechanisms operating at the international or transnational level. In order to categorize this wide array of possible causes of policy convergence, we propose a typology of three broad classes of mechanisms: (1) the co-operative harmonization of domestic practices by means of international legal agreements or supranational law; (2) the coercive imposition of political practices by means of economic, political or even military threat, intervention or conditionality; and (3) the interdependent but uncoordinated diffusion of practices by means of cross-national imitation, emulation or learning. We illustrate and substantiate this claim through the empirical analysis of the international spread of three different kinds of policy innovation: national environmental policy plans and sustainable development strategies, environmental ministries and agencies, and feed-in tariffs and quotas for the promotion of renewable electricity.

Introduction: Cross-national policy convergence: concepts, approaches and explanatory factors

Although there is an increasing number of studies on policy convergence (in recent years especially in the context of Europeanization and globalization research), we still have a rather limited understanding of this phenomenon. This deficit can be not only traced back to a lack of empirical findings, but is also the result of the heterogeneous and partially inconsistent theoretical literature on policy convergence. Although policy convergence constitutes a central concept in comparative public policy, it is not always consistently used and mixed up with related but not equivalent concepts. It is thus a basic objective of this paper to clarify the analytical relationship between policy convergence and related concepts used in the literature. Moreover, different approaches for the assessment and measurement of policy convergence will be presented. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of causes of policy convergence.

Causes and conditions of cross-national policy convergence

It is the objective of this article to review the existing literature and to address theoretical deficits in the study of policy convergence. First, we briefly present the central indicators we apply for the assessment of policy convergence. In a second step, we identify and compare different causal mechanisms of cross-national policy convergence. Having elaborated on the major causes of policy convergence, however, we still know little about the conditions under which these factors actually lead to convergence. This is the central objective of the third part of our analysis, in which we develop theoretical expectations on different indicators of cross-national policy convergence.

Globale Ausbreitungsmuster Umweltpolitischer Innovationen (The International Spread of Environmental Policy Innovations)

Studies in comparative political science and international relations found that nations increasingly tend to adopt similar environmental policy innovations and thereby contribute to the innovations' international proliferation. In their sum, these individual policy adoptions add up to a remarkable degree of cross-national environmental policy convergence. This empirical phenomenon begs the question why and how environmental institutions, laws, policies and instruments spread across nations. Based on a unique empirical database, this study searches for answers to these questions. It explores the international spread of 22 environmental policy innovations across 43 industrialized and Central and Eastern European countries. In eight cases, even the global spread of environmental policy innovations is analyzed. The analysis starts from the assumption that the causes for national policy changes and the international spread of environmental policy innovations cannot be exclusively reduced to independent and autonomous domestic policy responses to identical environmental problem pressures. Therefore, the study puts the emphasis on the international sources of domestic policy change and cross-national policy convergence. Namely, the report identifies three distinct international mechanisms which may drive the international spread of environmental policy innovations: non-obligatory diffusion, legal harmonization and coercive imposition. For each environmental policy innovation the study demonstrates how and to what extent these mechanisms matter as sources of environmental policy convergence. The study concludes that non-obligatory policy diffusion constitutes an important source of international policy convergence which complements the mechanisms of legal harmonization and coercive imposition. Without a consideration of its impacts on the international proliferation of environmental policy innovations explanations for cross-national policy convergence remain fragmented.

When Institutions No Longer Matter: Reform of Telecommunications and Electricity in Germany, France and Britain

Many studies of privatisation and liberalisation in utility industries stress the importance of national institutions for reform. However, powerful transnational forces and cross-national policy convergence in telecommunications have led to a questioning of the role of institutions. Single sector studies are limited in their ability to assess the relative influence of sector-specific technical and economic forces in the policy process. This article presents a cross-sectoral and cross-national analysis of privatisation and liberalisation in telecommunications and electricity in Germany, France and Britain in terms of national institutions, techno-economic forces and ideas. Although institutions shape shorter-term policy responses and the emerging regulatory regimes, in the longer term their role is limited to the pace and timing of policy change rather than its impetus and direction. To understand the latter it is necessary to investigate sources of the key ideas which led to reform. The ideas were not embedded within institutions but originated from outside as a response of interests to techno-economic forces and from groups ideologically predisposed to favouring neo-liberal ideas.

Reconsidering the Domestic Causes of Immigration and Citizenship Policies

Reconsidering the Domestic Causes of Immigration and Citizenship Policies Miriam Feldblum (bio) Fences and Neighbors: The Political Geography of Immigration Controlby Jeannette Money. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999. 247 pp. $40. Immigration and the Nation-State: United States, Germany, and Great Britain, by Christian Joppke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. 356 pp. $75. Is national control over immigration diminishing? Are domestic determinants or transnational influences propelling contemporary change in immigration and citizenship policies? Two central debates in immigration studies today revolve around the changing nature of national immigration and citizenship policies. The first focuses on the extent and causes of cross-national policy convergence in immigration and citizenship practices. Scholars debate whether domestic or transnational factors best explain the contemporary patterns of increasing convergence across states. The new trends have displaced the traditional landscape of national policy divergence. The second addresses the changed capacity of state [End Page 205] sovereignty over issues of immigration flows, immigrant incorporation, and membership practices. Scholars debate whether national control over immigration has diminished in recent decades, or to the contrary, been reinforced. Two recent books, Fences and Neighbors by Jeannette Money and Immigration and the Nation-State by Christian Joppke, are very useful comparative studies and ultimately provocative contributions to these debates. Money and Joppke both firmly stress the determinative importance of domestic factors in shaping national immigration policy. They each contend that national control over immigration is undiminished, and that transnational influences are overestimated. From this shared point of departure, both authors strive to identify domestic determinants that are comparable across dissimilar national contexts in order to illuminate the causes as well as the limits of cross-national convergence. Each author has chosen a set of three case studies that mix traditional settler countries with less traditional immigration countries, including examples where post-colonial immigration has been significant. Money’s case studies are Great Britain, France, and Australia, whereas Joppke examines the recent history of Great Britain, Germany, and the United States. Indeed, both scholars take Gary Freeman’s insight that the concentrated benefits and diffuse costs of immigration in liberal polities generally lead to client-based politics and liberal policies as an important point of departure, before proceeding to offer substantive corrections to his arguments. 1 For her part, Money reconsiders the costs and benefits of immigration from a spatial perspective to demonstrate that the costs as well as benefits of immigration may be concentrated, leading to more restrictive policy outcomes. Joppke focuses on the applicability of a client-based model to European polities in order to highlight other domestic factors that may also explain expansive policy outcomes. Each of these approaches stands in sharp contrast to many recent immigration studies, which emphasize transnational influences and global economic determinants on the one hand, or particularistic national immigration histories and membership model cultures on the other. But there the similarities of the two studies end, and the authors’ respective agendas and frameworks diverge considerably. Jeanette Money contends that geographically concentrated electoral pressures propel change in the measures determining immigration entry. In this narrowly focused study, she concentrates on only one strand of immigration control policy, namely, “state [End Page 206] policies that define the permissible level of resident alien admissions.” The question driving the analysis in Fences and Neighbors appears straightforward: why, Money asks, do some countries with advanced market economies accept large numbers of foreigners while others are “less hospitable,” and what accounts for change in policies over time within countries? The book actually explains less the liberal immigration flow policies than the shift to more restrictive policies in each of the country case studies: Britain, France, and Australia. Choosing countries with very different immigration histories and policy institutions, Money seeks to identify common determinants found across these distinctive national contexts. Her central insight rests on a reconsideration of the benefits and costs of immigration. While Freeman argued that immigration benefits generally are concentrated (in specific groups and sectors) and immigration costs usually are more diffuse, Money persuasively contends that we need to situate both the benefits and costs of immigration geographically. The key, according to Money, is to account for the differential effects of immigration on various regions...