Home  About us  Contact
 

Policy Diffusion (policy + diffusion)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Transnational Networks and Policy Diffusion: The Case of Gender Mainstreaming

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2001
Jacqui True
How can we account for the global diffusion of remarkably similar policy innovations across widely differing nation-states? In an era characterized by heightened globalization and increasingly radical state restructuring, this question has become especially acute. Scholars of international relations offer a number of theoretical explanations for the cross-national convergence of ideas, institutions, and interests. We examine the proliferation of state bureaucracies for gender mainstreaming. These organizations seek to integrate a gender-equality perspective across all areas of government policy. Although they so far have received scant attention outside of feminist policy circles, these mainstreaming bureaucracies,now in place in over 100 countries,represent a powerful challenge to business-as-usual politics and policymaking. As a policy innovation, the speed with which these institutional mechanisms have been adopted by the majority of national governments is unprecedented. We argue that transnational networks composed largely of nonstate actors (notably women's international nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations) have been the primary forces driving the diffusion of gender mainstreaming. In an event history analysis of 157 nation-states from 1975 to 1998, we assess how various national and transnational factors have affected the timing and the type of the institutional changes these states have made. Our findings support the claim that the diffusion of gender-mainstreaming mechanisms has been facilitated by the role played by transnational networks, in particular by the transnational feminist movement. Further, they suggest a major shift in the nature and the locus of global politics and national policymaking. [source]

The diffusion of environmental policy innovations: cornerstones of an analytical framework

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2005
Kerstin Tews
Abstract Comparative policy analysis increasingly faces the challenge of incorporating external forces on national policy developments into its analytical framework. Scholars of international relations have recognized that the behaviour of states , in terms of policy outputs , converges even in the absence of binding international agreements. These two branches of research can be bridged by the concept of policy diffusion. Diffusion analysis asks for those conditions that favour or hinder the spread of policy innovations within the international system. However, the scientific community struggles with different meanings and notions of the term policy diffusion. Thus, the aim of this paper is to offer a general conceptual framework for the study of diffusion processes within the international system. Understanding the process of policy diffusion requires an analysis of the complex interplay between transnational and international forces, national factors and the characteristics of policy innovations. By providing a conceptual framework this paper hopes not only to contribute to the theoretical debate but also to give guidance for empirical research. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source]

Learning from Abroad: The Role of Policy Transfer in Contemporary Policy-Making

GOVERNANCE, Issue 1 2000
David P. Dolowitz
In recent years there has been a growing body of literature within political science and international studies that directly and indirectly uses, discusses and analyzes the processes involved in lesson-drawing, policy convergence, policy diffusion and policy transfer. While the terminology and focus often vary, all of these studies are concerned with a similar process in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in one political setting (past or present) is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political setting. Given that this is a growing phenomenon, it is something that anyone studying public policy needs to consider. As such, this article is divided into four major sections. The first section briefly considers the extent of, and reasons for, the growth of policy transfer. The second section then outlines a framework for the analysis of transfer. From here a third section presents a continuum for distinguishing between different types of policy transfer. Finally, the last section addresses the relationship between policy transfer and policy "failure." [source]

Different routes, common directions?

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 3 2004
Activation policies for young people in Denmark, the UK
This article analyses and compares the development of activation policies for young people in Denmark and the UK from the mid-1990s. Despite their diverse welfare traditions and important differences in the organisation and delivery of benefits and services for the unemployed, both countries have recently introduced large-scale compulsory activation programmes for young people. These programmes share a number of common features, especially a combination of strong compulsion and an apparently contradictory emphasis on client-centred training and support for participants. The suggested transition from the ,Keynesian welfare state' to the ,Schumpeterian workfare regime' is used as a framework to discuss the two countries' recent moves towards activation. It is argued that while this framework is useful in explaining the general shift towards active labour-market policies in Europe, it alone cannot account for the particular convergence of the Danish and British policies in the specific area of youth activation. Rather, a number of specific political factors explaining the development of policies in the mid-1990s are suggested. The article concludes that concerns about mass youth unemployment, the influence of the ,dependency culture' debate in various forms, cross-national policy diffusion and, crucially, the progressive re-engineering of compulsory activation by strong centre-left governments have all contributed to the emergence of policies that mix compulsion and a commitment to the centrality of work with a ,client-centred approach' that seeks to balance more effective job seeking with human resource development. However, attempts to combine the apparently contradictory concepts of ,client-centredness' and compulsion are likely to prove politically fragile, and both countries risk lurching towards an increasingly workfarist approach. [source]

International Institutions and Domestic Compensation: The IMF and the Politics of Capital Account Liberalization

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2010
Bumba Mukherjee
Certain governments have been faster than others in relaxing their restrictions on the cross-border movement of capital. How can we explain the timing and extent of financial liberalization across countries since the 1970s? We argue that IMF stabilization programs provide a window of opportunity for governments to initiate financial reforms, but that policy makers are more likely to seize this opportunity when welfare expenditures are high. Large loans from the IMF shield policy makers from the costs of financial reform, while welfare expenditures provide credibility to the government's,ex ante,promises of compensation to individuals who are harmed by the reforms. We test this hypothesis on data for 87 countries from 1975 to 2002. We employ a spatial autoregressive error sample selection model which accounts for the nonrandom participation of countries in IMF programs as well as the processes of international policy diffusion. The results provide strong support for the interactive effect of IMF programs and domestic welfare expenditures on financial liberalization. [source]

Bottom-Up Federalism: The Diffusion of Antismoking Policies from U.S. Cities to States

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 4 2006
Charles R. Shipan
Studies of policy diffusion often focus on the horizontal spread of enactments from one state to another, paying little or no attention to the effects of local laws on state-level adoptions. For example, scholars have not tested whether local policy adoptions make state action more likely (through a snowball effect) or less likely (through a pressure valve effect). This study conducts the first comprehensive analysis of vertical policy diffusion from city governments to state governments, while simultaneously examining the influence of state-to-state and national-to-state diffusion. Focusing on three different types of antismoking laws, we find evidence that policies do bubble up from city governments to state governments. State politics are crucial to this relationship, however, as local-to-state diffusion is contingent on the level of legislative professionalism and the strength of health advocates in the state. [source]