International Policy Transfer

Abstract

The policy transfer literature has evolved from its nation state, bureaucracy-centred origins to encompass a broad range of governance institutions and actors operating at difference levels of governance and sectors, from the local to the global. This chapter evaluates the implications of this change in scope for both the study and the practice of policy transfer and provides an understanding of the relationship between systemic globalizing forces and the increasing scope and intensity of policy transfer activity. Its contribution is threefold. it provides: (1) an explanation of policy transfer as a process of organizational learning; (2) an insight into how and why such processes are studied by policy scientists from different disciplinary perspectives; and (3), an evaluation of its use by policy practitioners. It concludes by arguing that the limits of policy transfer analysis can be addressed through democratizing policy transfer practice through ‘action learning’, ‘co-design’, and ‘experimentation’.