Policy Transfer Framework Research Articles

Policy transfer from the UN to ASEAN: the case of trafficking in persons

ABSTRACTThis article examines the policy transfer from the United Nations (UN) to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the case of trafficking in persons (TIP). It presents pioneering empirical research that analyzes the processes and mechanisms of policy transfer between the UN and a regional organization. Institutional collective action and regime complex theories in international relations are used to complement the existing state-centric policy transfer framework. We argue that the UN-ASEAN policy transfer in TIP is characterized by a two-step process, starting with transfer from the UN to the ASEAN member states, followed by synthesis at the regional level. The consensus-based decision-making approach in ASEAN restricts transfer outcomes to a common low base of national preferences, which is the lowest common denominator. The ability of stakeholders in the TIP field to steer lesson drawing, emulation and coercive transfer at both the national and regional levels allows them to influence the lowest common denominator. At the same time, policy transfer to ASEAN is shaped by “forum-shopping” by the ASEAN member states and other stakeholders within the TIP regime complex, based on the comparative advantage between ASEAN and other cooperation mechanisms in solving TIP-related issues.

Policy transfer and role of policy entrepreneur in international aid: exploring international development cases of Korea and Vietnam

ABSTRACTThis paper looks at how an innovative policy comes to be transferred to another country and be successfully implemented. We explore three key dimensions (time, location, and people) in policy transfer studies using two cases of international aid (Saemaul Undong and e-Government projects). Utilizing a case study method, this paper upholds the predominant role of the policy entrepreneur over the environment (different time frame and different social, political, economic systems). The stakeholder analysis shows that policy entrepreneur’s role is critical in making policy transfer successful. In part, this argument is in line with previous “Advocacy Networks” studies, such as that of Keck and Sikkink (1998), highlighted the importance of policy entrepreneurs being able to navigate in the networks of international development. This paper aims to contribute to the literature by applying Dolowitz and Marsh’s policy transfer framework in the international aid context and calls for further empirical research employing the network analysis method.

Parallelism and evolution in transnational policy transfer networks: the case of Sino-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the policy transfer process and outcomes outside the occidental context. It extends the voluntary transnational policy transfer framework with an evolutionary perspective and a scalar understanding of space and power at the subnational level. When the Sino-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP), a government-to-government collaboration in promoting industrial development, was studied, it was revealed that two parallel policy transfer networks were developed in the early days of the SIP, which were embedded in different scales of governance and pursuing divergent targets. Their relationship affected the policy transfer outcomes for the SIP, and reveals the important governance and temporal dimensions in transnational policy transfers.

National responses to global health targets: exploring policy transfer in the context of the UNAIDS '90-90-90' treatment targets in Ghana and Uganda.

Global health organizations frequently set disease-specific targets with the goal of eliciting adoption at the national-level; consideration of the influence of target setting on national policies, programme and health budgets is of benefit to those setting targets and those intended to respond. In 2014, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS set ‘ambitious’ treatment targets for country adoption: 90% of HIV-positive persons should know their status; 90% of those on treatment; 90% of those achieving viral suppression. Using case studies from Ghana and Uganda, we explore how the target and its associated policy content have been adopted at the national level. That is whether adoption is in rhetoric only or supported by programme, policy or budgetary changes. We review 23 (14 from Ghana, 9 from Uganda) national policy, operational and strategic documents for the HIV response and assess commitments to ‘90–90–90’. In-person semi-structured interviews were conducted with purposively sampled key informants (17 in Ghana, 20 in Uganda) involved in programme-planning and resource allocation within HIV to gain insight into factors facilitating adoption of 90–90–90. Interviews were transcribed and analysed thematically, inductively and deductively, guided by pre-existing policy theories, including Dolowitz and Marsh’s policy transfer framework to describe features of the transfer and the Global Health Advocacy and Policy Project framework to explain observations. Regardless of notable resource constraints, transfer of the 90–90–90 targets was evident beyond rhetoric with substantial shifts in policy and programme activities. In both countries, there was evidence of attempts to minimize resource constraints by seeking programme efficiencies, prioritization of programme activities and devising domestic financing mechanisms; however, significant resource gaps persist. An effective health network, comprised of global and local actors, mediated the adoption and adaptation, facilitating a shift in the HIV programme from ‘business as usual’ to approaches targeting geographies and populations.

It is voluntary transfer! Exploring healthcare reforms in Turkey

ABSTRACTThe Turkish healthcare system has been transformed in the 2000s by adopting a comprehensive health model – the so-called Turkish Model. Although Europeanization dynamics were effective in Turkey in recent decades due to the acceleration of European Union (EU) accession process after 1999, healthcare reforms demonstrate a distinct process. This article analyzes the factors behind the health transformation through employing a policy transfer framework. It argues that a parallel process of health-policy transfer with Europeanization in other areas emerged in Turkey, and rather than the EU push, the Turkish healthcare model was a result of voluntary engagement for eliminating problems in this domain.

The Politics of the Diffusion of Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America

Is the emergence and rapid expansion of Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) in Latin America associated with the turn to the left in Latin American politics? The paper applies a modified version of the Dolowitz and Marsh (2000) Policy Transfer Framework to successive waves of policy diffusion in nineteen countries in the region. The analysis did not find a “New Left” footprint in the motivations, actors, and lesson-drawing processes that characterised the expansion of CCTs. It concludes that social assistance is at the top of the agenda of governments in Latin America regardless of the ideological leaning of ruling coalitions.

Why FCTC Policies Have Not Been Implemented in China: Domestic Dynamics and Tobacco Governance

The international community, under the auspices of the World Health Organization, developed the landmark Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to curb the global tobacco epidemic. As an internationally binding convention about global best practices on tobacco control, the FCTC has become an overriding source of policy transfer for developing countries in the fight against smoking. However, since its ratification of the first global norm over tobacco governance and against the grim background of the widespread tobacco-induced public health devastation within its borders, China has failed to genuinely pursue FCTC policies because of domestic political and social factors. The empirical findings of this article point to the dominance of political-social dynamics for China's nontransfer of FCTC policies, arguing that the government's GDPism, its sovereignty-first mentality, and hostility to NGOs as well as widespread social acceptability of tobacco consumption and high smoking prevalence are fundamental causes of China's nontransfer of FCTC policies. The article explicates how these variables correspond to FCTC policies in an analytic framework of policy transfer.

Overseas and over here: policy transfer and evidence-based policy-making

This article examines the relationship between evidence-based policy-making and policy transfer. The policy transfer framework has been widely employed across a range of disciplines in recent years, yet has also attracted criticism for its failure to adequately explain why policy officials engage in transfer at all. This article considers the changed political landscape after the election of New Labour in the UK in 1997 and argues that the policy transfer of welfare-to-work policy ideas from the USA was at least partly driven by pressure to develop evidence-based policy. In doing so, this article provides two new contributions to the literature. First, it asserts New Labour's injunction to use evidence-based welfare policy provides an important explanation as to why UK officials adopted US welfare approaches. Second, using a series of interviews and document analysis, this article finds that, in addition to welfare policy ideas, UK policy officials adopted policy evaluation techniques from the USA.

Regional Development Agencies in Turkey: Are They Examples of Obligated Policy Transfer?

EU requires the candidate states to introduce the necessary legal arrangements and administrative reforms to harmonize with the EU’s regional policy, and the establishment of RDAs is an important element of those administrative reforms. This is an example of “obligated policy transfer,” which is a subtype of policy transfer. In this context, this article aims to analyze the establishment of RDAs in Turkey as an example of obligated policy transfer. Within this perspective, this article primarily explicates the conceptual framework of policy transfer and obligated transfer as a subtype of policy transfer. Second, the place of RDAs within the EU regional policy and Turkey’s view of regional governments and development conception will be briefly dealt with. Finally, establishment of RDAs in Turkey will be analyzed, using official documents, as an example of obligated policy transfer and the role of EU will be demonstrated.

Discourse, Learning and Welfare State Change: The Case of German Labour Market Reforms

Abstract In this article we argue that Germany has significantly changed its approach to labour market policies (LMPs) during the past decade; in many instances Britain has served as a model to learn from. In a first step, we identify the core institutional arrangements of the conservative approach to LMP in Germany and contrast them with the liberal approach, using the UK as an example. Secondly, we trace the development and nature of changes in German LMP since the 1990s. We show that the policy has increasingly incorporated elements of, and to a considerable extent shifted towards, a liberal approach. Thirdly, we review competing theoretical approaches that might explain this turn in LMP and conclude that changed interpretative patterns have been crucial to understand the overall shift. Fourthly, utilizing the policy transfer framework, we show that in regards to the specific policy instruments German policy‐makers have learnt from the experiences in the UK.

Malaysia as model

This article uses a case study of public human resource management (HRM) in Malaysia to explore policy ‘transferability’, proposed as a refinement of Dolowitz and Marsh's policy transfer framework. HRM in the Malaysian civil service is found to be relatively performance-orientated, though that is qualified by the Government's affirmative action policies. Malaysia's approach is attributed to factors that have their roots in Malaysia's history: the pervasive respect for authority, the ethnic mix, its Anglo-Saxon orientation, the successful economy, the National Development Policy of 1990 and the personal role of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed. These factors suggest that public management is both shaped and constrained by its historical roots. The case suggests that successful policy transfer requires an understanding of those roots, especially when there is a significant distance in cultural, political, economic or linguistic terms between the countries transferred from and to.

Bring Back the States: Correcting for the Omissions of Globalization

While globalization is commonly viewed as leading to an ever-decreasing capacity of the nation-state to govern within its territorial boundaries, this article will argue that by overlaying a policy transfer framework on the processes more commonly associated with globalization it is possible to bring the states back into the debate. Specifically, it will be argued that the processes associated with globalization provide national actors the means (opportunity) to learn how to govern more effectively—ensuring that the nation-state is as important today as it ever was in relation to the governing process.

Globalization, Governance and Public Policy Transference

Globalization and governance pave the way for the ocurrence of policy transfer processes. This article shows that higher education policy in Mexico has been historically influenced by foreign educational models. By using the Policy Transfer Framework, this article also makes three claims: (1) the academic debate has been generally focused on the role of specific international organizations, so a limited perspective about the policy transfer approach emerges; (2) the process of identifying what objects are being transferred to Mexican educational agenda is blurred, and thus, (3) as a consequence of methodological weaknesses, it is difficult to validate whether or not policy transfer processes are taking place in this Latin American country. Therefore, further research needs to be done in order to broaden the understanding of the policy transfer processes in Mexico.

Policy Transfer in the European Union: Institutional Isomorphism as a Source of Legitimacy

This article examines public policy in the European Union (EU) by drawing upon the framework of policy transfer, which has been recently refined by comparativists, and the concept of isomorphism developed within organizational theory. Three case studies—namely, the single currency, tax policy and media ownership policy—are discussed and compared with the aim of assessing the potential of isomorphism for the analysis of policy dif‐fusion. The author argues that European institutions, which have a serious limitation in terms of legitimacy, stimulate policy transfer by catalyzing isomorphic processes. Policy transfer, however, is constrained when there are no national cases to be imitated. Yet European institutions, most notably the European Commission, can overcome the problem by “inseminating” solutions into national political systems.

British Employment Policy in the 1980s: Learning from the American Experience

During the 1980s the Thatcher Government implemented numerous changes to the British employment system. Most of these changes had the effect of linking the receipt of welfare benefits to an individual's willingness to participate actively within a government sponsored employment or training scheme. These changes culminated in the Social Security Act (1989) which linked the receipt of welfare payments to an individual's active job search and willingness to accept any officially offered job after a maximum grace period of 13 weeks. While these changes are important in their own right, more interestingly, most trace their origins back to the American welfare‐to‐work system initiated by the Reagan administration during the early 1980s. This article will demonstrate why the Thatcher government turned to the United States in the development of their employment policy. Once an explanation for this has been provided the article will highlight the key policies transferred by the Thatcher Government in the development of the British welfare‐to‐work system. This entire analysis will be placed within a policy transfer framework in order to illustrate its usefulness in the analysis of policy development.