The Future of Policy Transfer Research

Policy Transfer as an Independent Variable

While both Benson and Jordan (2011, p. 374) and Dussauge-Laguna (2012, p. 314) recognize that some work has treated policy transfer as an independent variable, it remains true that most authors view it as a dependent variable. One of us has explored this issue more recently (Fawcett and Marsh, 2012; Marsh and Sharman, 2009), but it is such an important issue that it is worth briefly rehearsing the argument here.

In broad terms, policy transfer is initiated by jurisdictions, international organisations, agencies, etc. in order to develop a policy that addresses a particular policy issue/problem, although, of course, whether the data are used, or used as intended, depends on a range of factors associated with the policy-making environment and situation which are often beyond the control of those who initiated the transfer process. As such, the relationship between policy transfer and policy outcomes is a crucial one. Indeed, one might start by posing the question, as we did in our earlier work: under what circumstances is policy transfer likely to result in a ‘successful’ or ‘unsuccessful’ policy? However, in that earlier work we failed to address a fairly obvious question: what do we mean by a ‘successful’ policy?

Marsh and McConnell (2010; see also McConnell, 2010) advance a simple distinction between three dimensions of success: process success; programmatic success; and political success. They also point to a number of complexity factors that affect our assessment of ‘success’, perhaps the most obvious of which raises the question of ‘success for whom?’ This is not the place to rehearse Marsh and McConnell's arguments, but it is important to make the obvious point that, if we are to treat policy transfer as an independent variable and examine its influence on policy outcomes, then some understanding of what we mean by policy ‘success’, or ‘failure’, is crucial. In addition, we need to recognise that a policy can ‘succeed’ on one dimension, or for one set of people, while ‘failing’ on another dimension, or for another set of people.

We have separately been involved in two of the few studies directly to address these issues (Dolowitz and Maderis, 2009; Fawcett and Marsh, 2012). Fawcett and Marsh (2012) analyse the transfer of the Gateway Programme for regulating public sector procurement from the UK to Victoria in Australia and then within Australia, while Dolowitz and Maderis (2009) analyse the transfer of urban storm water management techniques from Germany to the US. However, these are very much a first effort, using Dolowitz and Marsh's (2000) original suggestions about the factors that might lead to the failure of a transfer. In our view, we need more studies of this sort to deconstruct the link between policy transfer and policy outcomes.

Policy Transfer and the Policy Cycle

A crucial element of such a deconstruction will involve considering the role of policy transfer in the policy cycle (Dolowitz, 2009; forthcoming). As a policy develops and moves through the policy cycle, new actors and institutions are structurally obliged (and positioned) to become involved in the policy's development. As such, when new actors and institutions come to the policy-making table they bring different sets of knowledge, interests and motivations in relation to the transfer (and use) of information. Similarly, when and where an agent becomes involved in the policy-making process can tell us a great deal about his or her motivations for offering transferred information. In fact, depending on the agents and when they enter the policy-making process, it is clear that they will have to pursue (or engage in) diverse strategies for the transfer and use of information about how something is operating in another political or administrative system.

Although space does not allow for an extensive discussion of the issue here, the role of ‘games’ in the policy cycle is important. The ‘games’ that transfer agents engage in will shape what is borrowed, where it comes from, how it is understood, how it is sold, where it is used in the policy cycle and how the information is used (reused) as a policy works its way through the development and implementation processes.

In a similar way, the use of transferred information will change depending on where an agent who is interested in using it interacts with the policy-making system and the role he or she is playing in the policy's development. For instance, the type of transferred data necessary to place an item on the broad governing agenda will be substantially different from the types of information needed to generate alternatives to a problem, which will be different again from the type of information necessary to develop a programme on the basis of which ‘expenditures can be made, personnel deployed, and procedures developed that will reduce or eliminate the undesirable state of affairs without undue harmful consequences to related activities’ (Guess and Farnham, 1989, p. 7). In addition, all of this is likely to be different once a policy is enacted and enters the implementation stage(s). At this point, new actors will become involved, often motivated by very different needs and information requirements.

What this suggests is that the motivations underpinning an agent's use of foreign information need to be understood. Understanding motivation not only helps explain where information is sought and the extent to which the agents learn from this information, but it also helps explain how this information is subsequently used. For instance, a politician might only seek basic information that he or she can use to defend a position or support a colleague. However, this same politician, while attempting to monitor the implementation of a policy, may turn to the same information source to discover the minutiae of how a policy operated in a foreign system. While a politician's motivation may alter his or her need and desire to engage with data about a foreign model, bureaucrats charged with implementing policies are more likely to become involved in the transfer process to learn about the detailed operations of any given model, so as to understand better how to affect outcomes.

Policy Transfer and New Modes of Governance

Of course, the policy transfer literature also raises questions at higher levels of abstraction than we have considered to date. As Benson and Jordan (2011, p. 374) argue: ‘Evidently a concept like policy transfer has an innate capacity to combine with many different theoretical toolkits’. One theoretical framework that seems potentially fruitful, as they acknowledge, is the concept of governance. In particular, it seems important to examine how policy transfer relates to differing modes of governance. Indeed, if we do so, we can see that different ideas about the dominant mode of governance in contemporary polities are related to different approaches to policy transfer and, indeed, at a higher level of abstraction, to the ontological and epistemological issues addressed in the next section.

Most of the governance literature distinguishes between three modes of governance: hierarchy; markets; and networks. In essence, the argument is that, within late modernity, these different modes coexist. However, there is little doubt that most observers of the industrialised nations see networks as replacing hierarchy as the dominant mode. This is not the place to discuss this literature at length; the point here is that the nature and role of policy transfer in a political system with hierarchy as the dominant mode would be very different from one in which networks are the dominant mode.

If hierarchy is the dominant mode, then one would expect policy transfer to be more of a top-down process – one in which it would either be at the coercive end of the Dolowitz and Marsh continuum or, if it was voluntary, initiated by an agent acting at the level of the state. In contrast, if networks are the dominant mode, then one would expect the process to be a negotiated one, with other actors, both at various levels of government and outside government, to be involved in the decision to transfer, the process of transfer and the implementation of policies once transferred. However, even here, it is vital to consider the different stages of the policy process, as what might originate as a top-down transferred policy can be undermined by local agents involved in the implementation of the policy. Similarly, a policy may be developed in a top-down manner, but be implemented based on data local-level administrators draw from other locations in an approach that more reflects network governance (see Dolowitz, forthcoming).

In our view, who is involved and how they are involved in transfer are empirical questions, but it is probably not a coincidence that we would still argue that hierarchy is the dominant mode of governance in a polity like the UK, or when international loan organisations are involved, while McCann and Ward (2012) seem to us to operate from a network governance perspective, which reflects their constructivism; this is an issue we turn to in the next section.

As we already argued, this is, in part at least, an empirical question. However, the key point, which Benson and Jordan hint at, but do not emphasise, is that we need to locate discussions of policy transfer within these broader conceptual debates, because, while transfer clearly seems a growing phenomenon, the reasons for that growth, and the forms it takes, will clearly reflect the dominant mode of governance and any changes in it.

Beyond Positivist Approaches?

Approaches to the study of policy transfer (or whatever else we term the process[es]), like most things in social science, reflect the explicit, or implicit, ontological and epistemological positions we adopt. This is abundantly clear in McCann and Ward's (2012) response, which seems to us by far the most interesting of the three contributions to the debates considered here.

It is important to make clear where we agree with McCann and Ward (2012), while acknowledging our differences and identifying what is at stake in this debate. The best way to do so is probably briefly to consider McCann and Ward's (2012) four critiques of the existing literature, which link to the four features of the new approach to policy transfer that they identify.

They argue that the existing literature focuses on agents, not agency, arguing (p. 326) that: ‘The political science literature tends to downplay the fundamentally social – practical, interpersonal, institutionally embedded, yet fluid and processual – character of policy making'. This is a key constructivist argument. From this perspective, the policy transfer literature has reified models and typologies. The point is that, from this perspective, there is no ‘reality’, which could be reflected in a typology, independent of the way in which it is narrated/socially constructive. We are not constructivist, so we do not accept, although we acknowledge, their perspective. However, our main point here is that a heuristic does not reify a ‘reality’; rather it offers a way of approaching a subject that can provide a basis for empirical investigation. It is also worth emphasising that McCann and Ward (2012), like most constructivists, tend to downplay the importance of structures and institutions and privilege the role of agencies and ideas/narratives.

Second, they suggest that the existing literature focuses overwhelmingly on the national scale. We would question that conclusion. Indeed, McCann and Ward (2012) acknowledge that there have been extensive studies of the role of the EU, and indeed of international organisations, so their argument rests on the claim, which is more accurate, that less attention has been paid in the political science literature to transfer between sub-national governments. In our view, that is a relevant observation and we also agree with their later claim that ‘we must avoid the temptation to understand policy transfer through a straightforward import-export metaphor’ (p. 327). However, we doubt that this justifies their intermediate claim that ‘the sites from and to which policies are transferred need to be understood not as discrete territories but, rather, as unbounded, dynamic, relational assemblages’ (p. 327). Here again their constructivism is obvious.

Third, they suggest (p. 327) that the orthodox literature focuses upon ‘the importation of fully formed, off-the-shelf policies’. Even a cursory reading of our work, or of Benson and Jordan's review article, would indicate that this is not true, but they establish this straw man to stress their focus on the complexities, fluidities and mutations involved in the process, all of which we would acknowledge.

Fourth, they emphasise the focus in the orthodox literature on the rationality of the process and, implicitly, on the positivism of most contributions. However, as Benson and Jordan acknowledge (2011, p. 374), we made this point ourselves and the ‘mainstream’ approach has broadened. Nevertheless, our key point here, which we return to below, is that constructivism is not the only alternative to positivism.

McCann and Ward (2012) suggest that the new approach they advocate, while there are differences between authors, has four common characteristics. However, the first three overlap significantly. Here, the emphasis is upon the need to focus on ‘policy assemblages’, recognising that policies and policy making are complex and fluid. From this perspective, policy making is ‘a multiply scaled, relational and emergent social process’ (p. 328). More specifically, policy transfer involves ‘a complex and power-laden process, rather than a straightforward A-to-B movement’ (p. 328). As such, in any policy process, including policy transfer, there is mutation: ‘policy is not only remoulded when it is adopted in a new setting, but the mobilising of policy, as a socio-spatial, power-laden process, often involves change along the way, as policies are interpreted and reinterpreted by various actors’ (p. 329).

The fourth aspect of the new approach is methodological and here the argument is less clear. McCann and Ward (2012) argue for an anthropological methodology that involves ‘mov[ing] with or after transfer agents’ and following the process ‘through to those affected by the policy’ (p. 329, emphasis in original). In essence, this methodology reflects the broad approach and the focus on the social construction of the meanings of policy and policy transfer.

As already indicated, we (and we would argue most others working on policy transfer) have no problem with the view that policy and policy making are complex and fluid, or that policies are rarely transferred unaltered or unmediated by the role of actors, context, etc. Indeed, as we have already suggested, it seems to us that McCann and Ward (2012) set up political transfer orthodoxy as something of a straw man. However, their view that policy is best viewed as a ‘constructed whole’ (p. 328) is not unproblematic. It reflects what might be called a constructivist/discursive institutionalist position and constructivist ontology. While this issue has been addressed elsewhere by Marsh (2009), the key point here is that, in this view, institutions, and the policies that they produce, are seen as having no role, independent of the way in which they are narrated or discursively constructed. This position is becoming more important in public policy (see Bevir and Rhodes, 2003; Hay, 2006). However, it is heavily contested (Marsh, 2009). Crucially, most researchers of policy transfer, certainly within political science, do not operate from this position; rather, most operate within a realist ontological and a positivist epistemological position, while others, like Marsh, operate with a realist ontology and a critical realist epistemology, rather than a constructivist institutionalist view (on these issues see Marsh, 2010).

This is not the place to rehearse the differences between these positions. Rather, the important point, in our view, is that one cannot decide between ontological positions on empirical grounds, so it is crucial that we acknowledge the contributions made by researchers operating within different traditions. McCann and Ward (2012) offer many important insights into the policy transfer process, although they seem to us to be too harsh on what they term the orthodoxy. As such, we can and should recognise their contribution, without necessarily embracing their constructivism.