Transgovernmental Policy Research Articles

Entangled agencies and embedded preferences: National Regulatory Agencies in multi-level European governance

ABSTRACT The emergence of trans-governmental policy regimes in Europe has fundamentally changed the role of National Regulatory Agencies (NRAs). Here we move away from the idea that there is a meaningful divide between the domestic and the European levels of governance and suggest that a different logic has emerged in recent decades, combining multiple chains of delegation and innovative coordination schemes. NRAs have come to occupy a ‘broker’ or intermediary position between domestic and European polities, that is no longer adequately described by the prevailing, mainly dyadic models of bureaucratic autonomy conceived just for national states. In this paper, we build the concept of entangled agencies to make sense of the linkages between NRAs and European Agencies (EAs) and provide some preliminary empirical evidence to show how they effectively articulate various levels of government, presenting empirical findings on the connections that ties NRAs representatives with EAs management boards.

Patterns in nascent, ascendant and mature border security: regional comparisons in transgovernmental coordination, cooperation, and collaboration

ABSTRACT This special issue raises the prospect of trust-based determinants of security communities other than cultural similarity. The case studies in this special issue document the emergence of cross-border and transgovernmental policy and enforcement networks that facilitate policy development, implementation and alignment through coordination, cooperation, and collaboration: nascent communities coordinate, ascendant communities coordinate and cooperate but struggle to collaborate, while mature communities coordinate, cooperate, and collaborate. Specifically, pluralistic forms of communication and interactions away from the actual borderline seem to play a key role in the emergence of friendly and trustful relationships among border dyads that need not necessarily be contiguous.

Science diplomacy and transnational governance impact.

Science diplomacy is coming to the fore as a formidable dimension of interstate power relations. As the challenges of the world increasingly transcend borders, so too have researchers and innovators forged international coalitions to resolve global pathologies. In doing so, new channels of influence and opportunity have opened up for states alongside the ‘traditional’ modes of foreign diplomacy. Understanding how these channels influence global socio-economic outcomes is thereby crucial for scholars interested in the still-ambiguous structure and processes of global governance. This article advances understanding of the domains of science diplomacy by drawing attention to the ‘political intercostalities’ of state actors, scientific communities and other transnational actors within the new architectures of global governance. Here we trace the growing array of informal international associations alongside transgovernmental policy networks and ‘global public-policy partnerships’ that deal with highly specialised and technical matters of international policy and how they are drawn into science diplomacy. This article thus presents a research agenda for a particular mode of ‘impact’ in politics and international studies.

Elite, exclusive and elusive: transgovernmental policy networks and iterative policy transfer in the Anglosphere

ABSTRACTThe prominent corridor of bilateral policy transfer between Australia and the UK is underpinned by a long-standing cultural and political proximity. While ad hoc cases of transfer have in recent years been the subject to concerted attention from transfer theorists, much less attention has been given to the rise of multilateral, or transgovernmental, policy networks based on similar cultural and political amity amongst the ‘Anglosphere’ group of states including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US. Populated by policy elites and regularly interacting, these networks represent potentially important modes of policy transfer yet little is known about how they operate, with what purposes or what outcomes. This article therefore sets out research findings that offer an insight into 23 identified networks, suggesting that understanding the emergence of these networks are crucial to explaining any bilateral transfer between Anglosphere states in general, and specifically Australia and the UK. The article contends that a consideration of these networks provides insight into (i) the substantive landscape of Anglosphere policy learning and collaboration, (ii) the attendant dynamics of collaborative policy networks as elite, elusive and exclusive and (iii) iterative policy transfers.

The European TREVI Conference in the 1970s: Transgovernmental Policy Coordination in the Area of Internal Security

JEIH Journal of European Integration History , Seite 29 - 46

TRANSGOVERNMENTAL POLICY NETWORKS IN THE ANGLOSPHERE

Recent scholarship in public administration has drawn attention to the proliferation of transnational policy‐making processes and administrative practices. Although policy transfer and transgovernmental scholars have recognized the influence of these practices on domestic policy outcomes, little is known about how distinctive configurations of cross‐jurisdictional policy networks form. This article addresses this issue by exploring three novel transgovernmental policy networks situated in the Anglosphere: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Drawing on constructivist perspectives, the article holds culture, values and norms as critical to the coalescence of Anglosphere policy networks and an important additional explanation of how transnational policy communities emerge. These hitherto unreported networks facilitate, first, the transfer of policy ideas to resolve domestic policy problems and, second, collaborative mechanisms to resolve transnational challenges. Consideration of these novel public sector ‘assemblages’ deepens our empirical and theoretical knowledge of the new spaces of transnational administration.

The merry mandarins of Windsor: policy transfer and transgovernmental networks in the Anglosphere

This article looks at the formation, evolution, operation and outcomes associated with a hitherto unexamined elite policy transfer network. The Windsor Conference, as it is known, is an Anglophone international policy network that is populated by the mandarins of labour market and social policy institutions in the Anglosphere countries of Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. This article presents the preliminary findings of qualitative research undertaken with senior policy officials active in the network. The research highlights the impact that transnational policy networking can have on the dissemination of policy ideas, especially amongst a cohort of elite policy officials. These findings offer an opportunity for critical reflection on the intersection of the concepts of policy transfer and transgovernmentalism, and it is contended that the research yields valuable empirical insights into the murky processes of transgovernmental policy transfer, policy learning and discrete regulation.

Planting the Seeds of Change Inside? Functional Cooperation with Authoritarian Regimes and Socialization into Democratic Governance.

Is functional cooperation with authoritarian regimes a blessing or a curse for democratization? Scholars predominantly view cooperation with authoritarian regimes as counterproductive in terms of democratization because it helps the incumbent government to remain in power by stabilizing the regime. This article presents evidence to suggest that functional cooperation can also be considered a promising way of yielding subtle processes of democratization that have hitherto been overlooked. It explores to what extent state officials become acquainted with democratic governance by participating in transgovernmental policy networks, notably the Twinning Program, set up by the European Union in order to implement functional cooperation with its Southern neighborhood. The study conducts regression analyses based on original survey data on Moroccan state officials’ attitudes toward democratic governance and complements these analyses with a qualitative comparison of different networks. The findings corroborate an optimistic reading of functional cooperation. By significantly shaping the attitudes toward democratic governance of involved state officials, cooperation appears to be able to plant seeds of change inside authoritarian regimes.

Transgovernmental networks as catalysts for democratic change? EU functional cooperation with Arab authoritarian regimes and socialization of involved state officials into democratic governance

With the European Neighbourhood Policy, the European Union (EU) intensified functional cooperation in a wide range of sectors. This contribution investigates whether this kind of transnational exchange can trigger subtle processes of democratization. It argues that third state officials become acquainted with democratic governance by participating in transgovernmental policy networks implementing functional cooperation between state administrations of established democracies and authoritarian regimes. In this vein, it enriches the governance model of democracy promotion by adding a new level, the micro-level of democratic socialization. Empirically, the argument is tested taking two Twinning projects that the EU has set up in Morocco, that is, the projects on competition policy and on the environment. The conclusion is that in some non-politicized policy fields, such as the environment, EU transgovernmental policy networks can successfully yield processes of democratic socialization in the context of a stable authoritarian regime, like that in Morocco.

The demand for international regimes

International regimes can be understood as results of rational behavior by the actors—principally states—that create them. Regimes are demanded in part because they facilitate the making of agreements, by providing information and reducing transactions costs in world politics. Increased interdependence among issues—greater ‘issue density’—will lead to increased demand for regimes. Insofar as regimes succeed in providing high quality information, through such processes as the construction of generally accepted norms or the development of transgovernmental relations, they create demand for their own continuance, even if the structural conditions (such as hegemony) under which they were first supplied, change. Analysis of the demand for international regimes thus helps us to understand lags between structural change and regime change, as well as to assess the significance of transgovernmental policy networks. Several assertions of structural theory seem problematic in light of this analysis. Hegemony may not be a necessary condition for stable international regimes; past patterns of institutionalized cooperation may be able to compensate, to some extent, for increasing fragmentation of power.