Review Article: What Is Policy Convergence and What Causes It?

Abstract

Studies of policy convergence among advanced industrial states are often based on an overly deterministic logic, a static conception of convergence and an unclear specification of the aspects of policy that are supposed to be converging. This article reviews a body of recent comparative policy literature to identify a fourfold framework of processes through which convergence might arise: emulation, where state officials copy action taken elsewhere; elite networking, where convergence results from transnational policy communities; harmonization through international regimes; and penetration by external actors and interests. In drawing some conceptual, methodological and theoretical lessons about how to study this phenomenon in the future, the article concludes that policy convergence should not denote an absence of state autonomy. Rather, an application of state-centred theory suggests that, with the exception of penetration, the other processes may occur through the autonomous preferences of policy makers to fashion convergent policies. © 1991, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.