Policy and Society

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Transnational policy transfer: the circulation of

ideas, power and development models

Diane Stone, Osmany Porto de Oliveira & Leslie A. Pal

To cite this article: Diane Stone, Osmany Porto de Oliveira & Leslie A. Pal (2020) Transnational
policy transfer: the circulation of ideas, power and development models, Policy and Society, 39:1,
1-18, DOI: 10.1080/14494035.2019.1619325

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POLICY AND SOCIETY
2020, VOL. 39, NO. 1, 1–18
https://doi.org/10.1080/14494035.2019.1619325

ARTICLE

Transnational policy transfer: the circulation of ideas, power

and development models
a b c,d
Diane Stone , Osmany Porto de Oliveira and Leslie A. Pal
a
School of Public Policy, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary; bInternational Relations
Department, Federal University of São Paulo, Osasco - SP, Brazil; cCarleton University, Ottawa, Canada;
d
Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
The study of policy transfer initially focused on transfers and transmis- Development cooperation;
sions among developed countries or from developed countries to the international organisation;
developing world. Today the circulation of policy and knowledge has policy diffusion; policy
network; policy transfer;
become more dense and complex. The articles in the special issue
South-South exchange
concentrate on the growing velocity of policy innovations spreading
from the developing world to other parts of the developing as well as
into developed countries and towards international organisations. The
context of international development cooperation has been particu-
larly fertile in the cross-pollination of ideas, models and policy experi-
ments, and the articles in this Special Issue draw deeply on this insight.
Using a ‘development lens’ enables the authors to view processes of
knowledge diffusion and policy transfer not from the centre, in the
ministries of national governments, but from policy perimeters, in cities
and local government, among those outside political power in opposi-
tion groups and movements, and bottom-up from policy
implementers.

Introduction
Knowledge diffusion fuels policy transfer. And in a recursive process, policy transfer lays
down routes for the continuous circulation of knowledge. Our focus in these articles is the role
of the “power” of ideas and knowledge in the transfer/diffusion process, and how that role
changes or is modified in development contexts as opposed to the conventional advanced
industrial policies that tend to preoccupy transfer and diffusion studies. We elaborate on this
in the next section, but the logic of exploring this theme is three-fold. First, we consider in this
Special Issue transfer/diffusion process at its basic level, which can be understood as the
displacement of information, knowledge, ideas, paradigms, and so on (for simplicity from this
point, we will use the term “knowledge”). Even policy models and instruments have
a component which is abstract and conceptual, later elaborated in institutions and
practices. Second, much of the literature to date has focused on western, or developed
world, organisations and fairly conventional forms of knowledge (policy paradigms, technical
policy models in terms of problem-objective-instruments). It is our aim to expand and
complement this perspective by bringing new cases, in particular from the South, and

CONTACT Diane Stone [email protected] Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://
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medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
2 D. STONE ET AL.

advanced dimensions of transfer/diffusion processes, that have been overlooked by the

mainstream. Third, and most importantly, the development cooperation policy context has
distinctive features from conventional, state-to-state, international relations context.
The articles in this issue of Policy & Society were selected from a wider pool of papers
first presented at the International Conference on Policy Diffusion and Development
Cooperation in São Paulo, Brazil, in May 2018. The conference was devoted to explor-
ing how policy diffusion and transfer are entangled in processes and institutions of
development cooperation and international aid. The conference’s inspiration was that
the two fields have distinct and rich research agendas but rarely connect with each
other, despite the fact that a good deal of transfer and diffusion takes place through
international development programming. In the view of the editors and contributors to
this issue of Policy & Society, there is great potential for fresh insights about key issues
in policy diffusion and transfer if we use a “development lens.”
The development context has not been ignored in the literature (think of the studies
on the World Bank, loan conditionalities, the spread of conditional cash transfers and
so forth). Yet, it is fair to say that mainstream studies have been focused mostly on
policy transfers and diffusion among the states of the Organisation of Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), as well as from states and international
organisations (IOs) from the North to the global south. The depictions of the organisa-
tions and actors that predominate in these states and these IOs, and the species of
knowledge and ideas that they produce, have converged around some shared assump-
tions, which we will term here the “conventional approaches” to policy transfer (see also
Draude, 2017). Those assumptions are:

(1) The policies being transferred and diffused are characteristic of developed states.
Notable examples are of health and pension schemes, environmental and tax
regulations.
(2) The governmental actors are roughly equal in state capacity, sovereign authority,
and formal status.
(3) Non-governmental actors are diverse, networked, reasonably resourced, capable
and professional.
(4) Non-governmental actors have formalised access to decision-
makers and can influence policy formation and the development of ideas.
Indeed, they often help devise standards and participate in implementation.
(5) Knowledge tends to be technocratic – that is, generated by experts in recognised
disciplines and/or professions, using sophisticated research tools, yielding theo-
retically and empirically robust results.
(6) The “directionality” of transfer is two-fold: first, the circulation among
a restricted set (OECD-type countries, principally in the global north) of states,
and second, from North to South, as the spread of “best practices,” informed by
research and modelled on the best of aspirational circumstances.

There are notable exceptions to these approaches, but we think it captures the core
assumptions of a great deal of the classical and even contemporary research. However,
the empirical scenario of policy transfers/diffusion has changed with the rise of
Southern countries and their presence in the international arena, and the resulting
 POLICY AND SOCIETY 3

new forces driving the flow of policies across countries. Northern states have learned
from the South, and practices of South-South knowledge exchange have become more
frequent. In this context, the aforementioned assumptions need to be revisited. Even if
there are certain“universal” elements in the transfer process, such as the transfer agents,
translations and instruments – as described extensively by Dolowitz and Marsh (2000),
Stone (2017) and Evans (2010) – expanding the empirical context of analysis to the
South implies bringing to these analytical tools consideration of other dynamics.
In shifting our focus from Northern countries to include the South, as well as the
development cooperation context, we shift our attention away from OECD-type countries.
That is, from relatively wealthy political and social systems, to a wider and heterogeneous
group of countries, thus more representative of the current global environment of policy
transfer and diffusion. These states have different needs, different capacities and patterns of
interactions, let alone diverse political cultures. They have their own way of interacting among
themselves and establishing relations with a heterogeneous constellation of leader and laggard
states, and with discontinuities and dispersions of power. Not only are they often markedly
unequal among themselves (for example, a Brazil versus a Mozambique), but they are on
unequal footing when confronting the global North. Moreover, the balance of local and
national, national and global, will be different. This leads us to a rich universe of transfer
patterns, dynamics and mechanisms, that are rarely addressed in the current literature.
Even this brief and stylised sketch suggests that ideas and knowledge will drive the
policy transfer process in radically different ways. To begin with, there will be a struggle
to characterise policy problems in ways more consistent with local circumstances.
Health issues in sub-Saharan Africa or urban transport in Latin American cities need
to be articulated and defined without the unconscious filters forged from a Western
European or North American experience. Within that development context, who are
the actors – whether they be policy entrepreneurs, epistemic communities or non-
governmental organisations (NGOs) – who can articulate these different models and
successfully oppose them to ones imported from abroad? What type of expertise is
validated and legitimate, when local knowledge becomes indispensable, and lived
experience becomes the measuring stick? We can hypothesise as well that knowledge
producers, knowledge brokers, and knowledge networks will be configured in different
ways, through different types of networks. For example, an often-overlooked channel of
policy transfer in the developed world is among former colonies, and within language
groups (the two of course overlap to some extent). Moreover, new institutional innova-
tions at global and regional levels provide greater scope for the circulation of policy.
A few examples of such dynamics are the fact that some of these governments from
the South, such as Brazil, and others in Latin America have invested on 'policy transfer'
as a local or national strategy, with the 'export’ of cycling lanes (Bogotá), Participatory
Budgeting (Porto Alegre), Conditional Cash Transfers (Brazil, Mexico and Chile), just
to mention a few (Porto de Oliveira, Osorio, Monteiro, Leite, forthcoming). However, if
in the past 20 years Latin American social policy diffusion and expertise was focused on
fighting poverty and hunger, this scenario is taking shape via the ‘conservative wave’ or
‘blue tide’ in the region – in contrast to the previous progressive ‘pink tide’ – with the
rise of right-wing populism. Keeping with the Brazilian example, Bolsonaro’s new
presidency is moving the country’s policy transfers (international cooperation and
foreign policy) pattern to an approximation with OECD countries (in contrast to
4 D. STONE ET AL.

previous alliances made with the BRICS and other Global South nations). It is possible
that in the future, countries like Italy, Hungary, Philippines and the United States –
where there appears to be an ideological alignment – may draw lessons from each other.
In this special issue, we are not arguing for a completely separate and distinct
world of policy transfer – our conventional tools and theories are still eminently
useful. In fact, our proposal is inspired by classic studies and their contributions
to the understanding the transnational movement of policies, such as Hugh Heclo
on social learning, Peter Hall on policy paradigms, John Kingdon on policy
entrepreneurs and Richard Rose on lesson-drawing. However, we believe that
these classic concepts need revisiting in the development and South–South and
South–North context, in order to be more sharp and precise to access, understand
and explain contemporary policy transfer/diffusion dynamics.1 This can be seen
through the notion of policy entrepreneurs, that will be discussed later in this
introduction. The role of policy entrepreneurs remains an analysis of the role of
élites, but their characteristics, performance, skills and roles are no longer limited
to national and local levels of policy change. To have an accurate and more
comprehensive analysis of their agency (which includes the role of Southern
agents), we need new concepts like “policy ambassadors’ to take account of
their transnational roles. Our intent in this Special Issue is to build on the
work we have summarised under the rubric of the ‘conventional model/
approaches,’ to complement and address blindspots in the literature, providing
empirical cases that show new or different policy transfer dynamics, and that
invites the research to move forward. In this sense, the articles in this issue
provide arresting examples of how these theories and tools need to be tweaked
and calibrated – along the lines we itemise below – to better capture the
dynamics of transfer outside the conventional cases that have dominated the
literature.

(1) The growing cohort of ‘policy ambassadors’, and other specific types of transfer
agents operating in complex transnational networks;
(2) Policy transfer is increasingly used as an instrument of ‘foreign policy’;
(3) Global re-ordering is driven by new norms and practices development
cooperation;
(4) New global policy venues appear, such as the SDGs, G20 processes, the BRICs or
other forms of summitry;
(5) Policy transfer shifts from being an expert or technocratic process to including
manifestations of ‘everyday’ or subaltern exercises of power and resistance;
(6) Directionality of transfer as linear, bilateral or multilateral mobilities moves towards
continuous, transnational, multi-scalar, and multi-stakeholder circulations.

We highlight this set of new dynamics as a complement to the earlier approaches.

1
There is no need to do another literature review of the field; these have been outlined extensively by (Dolowitz &
Marsh, 2000; Elkins & Simmons, 2005; Evans, 2010; Graham et al., 2013; Hadjiisky, Pal, & Walker 2017; Porto & Pal,
2018).
 POLICY AND SOCIETY 5

Knowledge diffusion and policy transfer

Social scientists have long been puzzled by how, why and when policy advice and expertise
are incorporated into government deliberations and bureaucratic activity. A contemporary
version of this question concerns how policy knowledge is transferred and utilised between
and among countries or for purposes of global governance. In the case of both questions, the
causal nexus between the impact and influence of ideas is muddied by many other factors,
events and interests which also impinge upon policymaking. The ‘soft’ transfer of ideas and
policy knowledge is relatively straightforward, but the constant re-circulation of ideas
through many contexts makes it a more difficult endeavour first to map such ideas and
how they structure thinking and reform policy agendas of governments, and then secondly,
whether the same recommendations become institutionalised and implemented.
The kaleidoscope of policy circulations points to a methodological problem in policy
transfer studies. Establishing causality is fundamentally complicated not only by the
many intermediaries in transfer processes among countries but also by the unique
pathways of policy tinkering and adjustment, hybridisation and customisation that
unfold within countries. Accordingly, the general stance adopted by the contributors
to this special edition are social constructivist or interpretivist positions (Yannow,
2009). Rather than seeing ‘regularities’ in policy transfer or seeking to predict patterns,
we identify unique ecologies of densely networked experts and decision-makers both
inside government and international organisations, and outside in universities and
policy labs or in thinks tanks, business associations and the professions.
Despite ongoing debates about the degree and depth of ideational impact, knowledge
agents have some intrinsic governance capacities in their propensity to define problems,
shape the climate of debate or engage in standard-setting, rule-making or other
advisory activity. However, the knowledge utilisation literature has been criticised for
assumptions that paradigmatic shifts or policy learning occur as ideas are ‘diffused’ into
the policy atmosphere. There has been an insufficient explanation of the mechanisms
and agents through which change occurs (Campbell & Pedersen, 2011). The agency of
(teams of) individuals, organisations and networks is central to understanding the speed
and direction of the circulation of policy ideas. Knowledge is not simply neutral
‘evidence’ or data functioning as a technical input to governance in the global order
but also represents a form of (technocratic) power working to shape ‘who gets what’
policy design and outcome, that is, those communities and countries that receive
certain, and often times ‘imposed’ policy reforms.
It is a complex ecology. Expert actors and government agencies create ‘codified
knowledge’, that is, a concrete intellectual and scientific product found in publications,
conferences, websites and declarations of advisory groups. However, knowledge agen-
cies also produce ‘tacit knowledge’ – shared understandings, on-the-ground knowledge
and common identities that take shape and sustenance in ‘epistemic communities’ or
‘interpretative communities’ (Yanow, 2009).
To help navigate the ecologies of knowledge diffusion, a three-part order of knowl-
edge actors (individuals), knowledge institutions (in their organisational format) and
knowledge networks are outlined. The contributors to this issue discuss in various ways,
how individuals, organisations and networks are not simple technocratic ‘transmitters’
of foreign models: They are also interpreters, resisters and transformers of policy
6 D. STONE ET AL.

transfer who develop new circuits of ‘revised’ policy transfer (Porto de Oliveira & Pal,
2018; Stone, 2017).

Individuals
The renowned economist John Maynard Keynes was one person who traversed the
international scholarly and policy worlds alike. His statement on ideational influence is
famous and incanted regularly: ‘The ideas of economists and political philosophers . . . are
more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else’
(Keynes, 1936, p. 383). Other notable examples of scholars who have spread policy ideas to
other countries and communities include the sociologist and former President of Brazil,
Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Nobel laureates such as economists Muhammed Yunus
(spreading micro-credit practices) and Joseph Stiglitz (in his capacity as Chief Economist of
the World Bank). They might also be thought of as ‘policy ambassadors’, a notion devel-
oped by Osmany Porto de Oliveira in his article and discussed below.
At an ‘everyday’ level of bureaucratic lesson-drawing, public servants such as statis-
ticians, lawyers or parliamentary researchers facilitate the exchange of policy lessons.
Political advisors have an impact on the direction of policy even if it only means
‘screening’ or ‘editing’ the types of international evidence that is promoted. Other
‘policy entrepreneurs’ advocate policy lessons and target decision-making elites in
political parties, government, development assistance agencies or in (transnational)
policy communities with their solutions in the form of international standards or
‘best practice’. ‘Academic-administrator entrepreneurs’ importing foreign policy ideas
has been highlighted in the Indonesian case (Wicaksono, 2018). Policy entrepreneurs
hold significant personal resources in their powers of persuasion. Such resources can be
a mix of epistemic authority (such as that held by economists), former government
service or policy experience in the field combined with personal passion and persever-
ance and the political skills to push global knowledge into policy debate (Maxwell, 2005;
Nay, 2012). Identifying policy entrepreneurs who work internationally, the ‘policy
ambassador’ idea also draws attention to charismatic individuals who are cosmopolitan
and can traverse different cultures, operating as brokers building bridges among
different countries, and they often speak more than their native language.
The influence of individuals as policy ambassadors, entrepreneurs, or advisors depends
on many factors, not least their organisational and network affiliations (see below).
However, from the narrow perspective of their roles as knowledge brokers, the emphasis
has typically been on technocratic expertise (part of the conventional approaches described
above). If for the moment we abstract this expertise from all other factors, technocratic
expertise relies on some recognised mastery of a field of science and evidence. One is an
expert ‘in something’ – and one would naturally look to economists for advice on economic
issues, or agronomists for advice on food production and security.
In the development cooperation context, we would argue that there are some
unacknowledged but powerful ‘markers’ of expertise that shade off from the purely
technocratic into what we might term ‘representational knowledge.’ One example is
location or rootedness. Eyebrows today will often arch when ‘experts’ from the global
North lecture their colleagues from developing countries on their best interests and
preferred policy options. Technocratic expertise might still trump the lack of
 POLICY AND SOCIETY 7

representational qualifications, but there is often a tussle. The presumption is that

a ‘true’ expert will have a rich grounding in the experiences and realities of development
in a given country or even more specifically a given region. This extends to another
example of representational knowledge – solidarity with the oppressed, a solidarity that
may come from evident moral conviction, life experiences that would have educated the
expert to the reality, or an expertise filtered through an emancipatory ideology like
Marxism. An example of ‘representational knowledge’ can be observed in the power of
ideas from individuals like Paulo Freire, priests who have championed liberation
theology, or radical economists highlighting inequities and advocating social progress
through redistribution. Their ideas have sometimes gained traction in well-established
democracies seeking renewal in their traditional ways of policymaking.
Nevertheless, it is also the case that the organisational affiliations of individuals
contribute to the value acceptability of their ideas for policy reform. Notwithstanding
some exceptional cases, most development experts, scientifists and consultants do not
operate alone. Instead, they have built ‘communities of practice’ and transnational
knowledge networks to circulate policy models and speed ideational diffusion. These
are diverse sets of engagements that are often bankrolled by international foundations,
universities, international organisations and other development agencies.

Organisations
The European Union (EU), the World Bank, the OECD and the United Nations (UN)
agencies are just some of the international organisations that are forceful agents of policy
transfer. The rise of the BRICs, the G20 and other informal international organisations
alongside a growing gaggle of issue-specific global and regional public–private partner-
ships (like GAVI in the field of vaccines and immunisation) ramps up the circulation of
policy models globally. And regionally, there is fertile cross-communication within
regional arrangements like the Association of Southeast East Asian Nations (ASEAN)
including attempts of the diffusion of regionalisation (Beeson & Stone, 2013).
There are also unofficial global dialogues and elite meetings such as the World
Economic Forum in Davos that broadcast policy ideas alongside global taskforces
from the Club di Roma in the 1970s to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change today. The organisation of both regular global conferences and ad hoc global
taskforces convening multiple actors from business, the NGO world, businesses, trade
unions and academia has become commonplace since the UN first embarked on
‘conference diplomacy’ in the 1970s. Prominent examples include the Millennium
Summit, the Rio Conferences on the Environment, and G20 Engagement Groups, all
of which are increasingly important venues for the circulation and development of new
policy ideas, building networks and constituencies of (donor) support, and constructing
consensus around ‘ways of doing things’ in ‘global policymaking’ (Cooper, 2019;
Pouliot & Thérien, 2018, p. 9).
At the subnational level, local governments have also created and developed their
own international institutions, summits and networks to advocate their interests in
a global scale. Regular meetings like the World Mayors Assembly, as well as
structures such as the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and the
Global Task Force of Local and Regional Governments are spaces where local actors,
8 D. STONE ET AL.

sometimes in cooperation, others in resistance with traditional international organi-

sations, pledge their participation in the discussion of global issues. These arenas
and organisations have constituted important platforms for policy transfer among
subnational units, with a strong capillarity across cities in the world. With funding
for urban management transfer coming often from development cooperation or
international organisations, these arenas and institutions have not only become the
locus where ‘best practices’ are established, but also serve as showcases for urban
policies.
The multi-level architecture of governance is paralleled in some degree by the trans-
nationalisation of socio-economic organisations. Universities, for instance, share and
spread governance knowledge, and university social scientists were directly involved in
the world-wide spread of ‘new public management’ ideas in the 1980s. The international
exchange through scholarship schemes, secondment of staff to international organisations
or their participation in government delegations further imbricates universities and
colleges in policy transfer. Likewise, a range of other organisations in business and civil
society have been proactive agents of policy transfer. The World Social Forum, first held
in Porto Alegre in 2001 (as a counter-event to Davos-based World Economic Forum), has
performed as a global platform for civil society to create, legitimate and diffuse ideas,
techniques and solutions for public action to deal with social problems, show-casing
Participatory Budgeting (Porto de Oliveira, 2017).
Notable are the large international philanthropic foundations such as Ford, Nuffield,
Aga Khan, McArthur and Sasakawa in spreading policy paradigms through funding
instruments. The Gates Foundation is a significant player in global health policy (and
was the key instigator of GAVI), while Open Society Foundations promotes ‘open
society’ liberal values through the advocacy and transfer of policy recommendations
on civil liberties, freedom of law, budget transparency or early childhood programs
amongst many other initiatives.
Part of the modus operandi of think tanks is to spread international policy lessons.
International consortia of think tanks such as Think20 (which revolves around the
G20 – see Cooper, 2019) or the BRICs Think Tank Summit has emerged. The think
tank theme is developed by Diego Silva Ardila in his article discussing how two think
tanks became key policy transfer brokers of the Columbian model of bus rapid trans-
port (BRT). Surprisingly overlooked in the increasingly vast literature on policy diffu-
sion and transfer is the role of the large management consultancy firms, such as
McKinsey, PWC and Accenture, most of which are headquartered in the US and the
UK with networks of offices spread across the most important economic centres of the
world. Many have been instrumental in the international spread and application of
ideas concerning the ‘new public management’ or other kinds of global programmes
such as the REDD Initiative sponsored by the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change (Morgan, Sturdy, & Frenkel, 2019).
The non-governmental status of these types of ‘soft actors’ is a major structural
constraint to their role in policy transfer. They cannot bring about policy transfer alone
but are dependent on governments and international organisations to see policy
transfer instituted. But by the same token, while government organisations – ranging
from line departments to quangos or a specialised office within a ministry – are central
to the ‘hard’ transfer of policy tools, legislation or structural adjustment programmes
 POLICY AND SOCIETY 9

through formal decision-making procedures – the ‘soft’ transfer actors are often
essential to legitimising and normalising policy practices with foreign origins.
This tangled relationship between official bureaux and ‘soft actors’ is further compli-
cated in a development context. For the sake of brevity, we highlight only three aspects.
First, the ecology of think tanks, universities and other soft actors varies by country but
generally is less extensively institutionalised in developing contexts – the range of
organisations is more limited, as are the pools of expertise. This can lead to paradoxical
outcomes: (1) weak knowledge resources may mean that receiving countries lack the
capacity to modify transfer or critique it, raising the chances of inappropriate transfer or
outright failure; (2) the scarcity of expertise makes the existing resources – a single,
leading think tank, for example – more influential since there is no other game in town.
International organisations will target the ‘soft actors’ as ‘partners’ because they need
them for credibility with both northern donors and client governments.
Second, the influence of ‘soft actors’ is misconstrued if it is calibrated entirely in
terms of ‘outcomes’. Think tanks, global summits, the endless rounds of conferences of
the great and the good earnestly seeking solutions to the world’s problems all contribute
to a global ‘ideational space’ that reinforces a common-sense of the right ‘ways of doing
things.’ It is very difficult for actors from the developing world to substantially con-
tribute to this ideational space unless explicitly invited to do so. Unlike conventional
approaches that focus on the horizontal country-to-country exchange of policy, the
global ‘ideational spaces’ – international summits, dialogues in locations like Porte
Alegre and Davos, or deliberations in transnational public–private partnerships –
have become important venues for multi-scalar circulation of policy ideas and instru-
ments and the generation of consensus.
Third, the configuration of organisations generating policy knowledge (and hence
facilitating or impeding transfer) differs substantially in the development context. Think
tanks and foundations are routine features of advanced states and economies that have
the resources to support them. In developing country contexts, ‘soft actors’ like trade
unions, community associations, agrarian co-ops, and the not-for-profit sector can have
higher profiles than they do in developed countries. Once again, conventional
approaches to policy transfer may underplay the importance of these subaltern actors
in the circulation of alternative policy lessons (Draude, 2017).

Networks
Network forms are complex. Knowledge networks are distinct from but often overlap
with policy networks. Knowledge networks are epitomised by a shared scientific interest
and set of norms that consolidate around intellectual exchange and coordinated
research, systematic dissemination and publication of results, as well as pooling of
resources and financing across national boundaries. Many are temporary arrangements
that last as long as the funding flows. Some are loose relationships to exchange
information with like-minded policy institutes, university centres and government
agencies, in a given issue area. At other times, expert advisors and their institutes act
as policy entrepreneurs within tighter networks such as an epistemic community.
By contrast, (transnational) policy networks are multi-actor entities that oscillate
around a common or shared policy problem. These networks are comprised of various
10 D. STONE ET AL.

actors from civil society, governments, government agencies, industry, industry groups,
and the professions. Their activities cover the gamut of the policy process – agenda
setting, policy formulation, negotiation, rule-making, coordination, implementation,
and evaluation – and are now seen to operate at global and regional levels often with
the participation of an international organisation or multilateral body.
Networks are a vehicle for knowledge diffusion and policy transfer, a social technol-
ogy to broadcast and accelerate global norms, best practice and policy models – which
some call ‘fast policy’ (Peck & Theodore, 2015). But networks have also become a locus
for policy transfer (Nay, 2012). When observed as a transnational structure, policy
networks can unite transfer agents sharing a similar cause and connecting a vast
number of heterogeneous people, with different political culture backgrounds and
policy interests, enabling the translation and legitimation of policies. Where conven-
tional approaches treated policy models spreading geographically, a transnational net-
work approach is multi-scalar (local to global) and multi-stakeholder (soft and hard
actors). The network itself becomes a site for policy design and innovation rather than
simply a mechanism for ‘sending’ pre-formed policy ideals and instruments.

Transferring power
Individuals, organisations and networks transfer the intellectual matter that underpins
policies. They leverage their intellectual authority or professional expertise to reinforce
certain policy paradigms or to legitimate some normative standards as ‘best practice’, as
well as to establish those examples that the government should not follow. The politics
of knowledge is never far away.
Advocates of policy transfer may be ignored or patronised at will by governments.
Some bureaucracies lack the capacity to absorb effectively either global or local knowl-
edge (Maxwell, 2005). Moreover, experts disagree. Rarely is there a single body of
thinking, data or literature that is consensually recognised and accepted without
demur as the rationale for policy change. To the contrary, there are struggles between
different modes of ‘knowledge’ or what are often described as ‘discourses’, ‘worldviews’
and ‘regimes of truth’ (Jacobsen, 2007). Finally, while summits and transnational
public–private partnerships may have a multi-stakeholder character and often appear
‘inclusionary’, many of these new institutional developments for the spread of ideas and
policy models ‘also encourage cooptation, non-transparency and normative homoge-
neity’ (Pouliot & Thérien, 2018, p. 9) and the exclusion of dissenting perspectives or
radical positions.
Technical cooperation, overseas training and the role of international consultants in
institutional development can be a ‘one-way transaction’ from aid organisations or
developed countries to recipient countries. Advocacy of ‘best practice’ does not con-
front deep-rooted asymmetries of power that may undermine policy transfer in devel-
oping and transition countries. Such ‘lessons’ and ‘best practice’ represent codified,
formal and technical knowledge to be found in the reports, evaluations and websites of
governments and international organisations. This codified knowledge can over-ride
tacit and practical knowledge that is generated in local settings. Traditional, ‘grass-roots
’ and practitioner knowledge rooted in communal understandings or local practices
does not always dovetail with the technocratic order of governance emanating from
 POLICY AND SOCIETY 11

development agencies of donor governments or international organisations, as the next

section elaborates.
In our view, what all this points to is a more serious analysis of the nature of
networks, and not just the key organisations that comprise them. Within the conven-
tional approaches, it is the large and prominent international organisations such as the
World Bank and the OECD that dominate the discussion and which has possibly
encouraged the study of single organisations (even while framing them as networked
organisations). Much less work has been done at the network level (though that is
beginning, see Paterson, Hoffman, Betsill, & Bernstein, 2014). As noted above, networks
have different topographical characteristics (some are flatter, some are more hierarch-
ical with key nodes); they have different types of members; they may be formed and
evolve in contrast to and in conflict with other networks; their transfer and diffusion
mechanisms and practices will differ. And again, we need to be aware of how network
dynamics differ in developing contexts. We would expect, for example, distinct net-
works around policy issues that are relevant to developing countries to be active and
vibrant channels of diffusion, but possibly unconnected to similar networks in the
global North (for example, bus transportation policy networks versus mass transit).
On the other hand, in some cases, we might see networks organised around shared but
often latent or unarticulated interests – such as ‘mountain communities’ or other kinds
of subaltern groups such as those involved in the spread of harm reduction approaches
that Tom Baker et al. discuss in this Special Issue.

The development context: a fresh lens on transfer

Flows and dynamics of policy exchange among Northern states have been a fertile
ground for advancing hypotheses, concepts and theories for understanding the circula-
tion of knowledge among countries with a degree of homogeneity. Development
cooperation is also an important site for policy transfer/diffusion, but it deals with
heterogeneous countries, with different power relations, resources and social capital. If
‘Aid Policy’ is often about sending funds or supplies to developing countries, there is
also a significant part that is about sharing policy knowledge, as well as inducing the
adoption of models and best-practices.
Until recently it was common that international organisations, such as the World
Bank, and donors insisted on the adoption of Northern models in Southern countries.
It was believed that these models that were self-evidently successful in overcoming
social problems in the North would have the same result in the South. Modernisation
theory and ‘transition-ology’ both implied a linear directionality to development.
However, the differences of political culture, institutional design, state capacity, econ-
omy and social environment between these countries often led to inappropriate,
incomplete and inadequate transfers. In the past few years, especially after the Fourth
High Level Forum on Aid and Effectiveness promoted by the Committee of
Cooperation and Development of the OECD in Busan in 2011 (Mawdsley, 2017),
there was a turn towards the South in development cooperation. The way these
countries provide development cooperation is often through offering technical assis-
tance, rather than direct funding, owing to their limited resources available for foreign
aid. The idea of ‘mutual learning’ in development cooperation is also an important
12 D. STONE ET AL.

component for countries like China (Constantine & Shankland, 2017). Moreover,
practices of triangular cooperation, which can involve development cooperation
among countries from the South, with mediation and part funding from an interna-
tional organisation, have gained relevance as well. The changing nature of development
cooperation continues to be an important driver of South–South and South–North
policy transfers.
While there are some notable examples of policies developed in the South that
circulated internationally – such as the transport system of Curitiba (Brazil), developed
in 1974 (Mejía-Dugand, Hjelm, Baas, & Ríos, 2013) and the different actions for state
reforms, especially in the pension sector, conducted by Chile during the Pinochet Regime
in the 1980s (Dezalay & Garth, 2002; Weyland, 2006) – this cannot be compared in terms
of quantity, intensity and legitimacy to Global North policy transfers to the rest of the
world. The case of Chile is particularly illustrative of a dynamic where the role of
individuals in the diffusion of the model has been an important feature. The circulation
of national elites to the United States – where they undertook PhDs at the University of
Chicago, with Milton Friedman – and back to their home country – where they achieved
high-level state positions – was crucial to ‘import’ ideas and implement them in the State
(Dezalay & Garth, 2002). Chile became a laboratory of neo-liberal reforms, not only
throughout Latin America but to the world. These Chilean policy ambassadors – the so-
called ‘Chicago-Boys’ – were the ‘prime movers in the diffusion of pension privatisation
in Latin America’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s, being hired as consultants in several
countries and evincing a sort of ‘missionary zeal’ (Weyland, 2006, p. 86). Even the United
States during Bush’s administration ‘proposed using the Chilean model as the basis for
a reshaping of Social Security, calling the system here “a great example” and saying the
United States could “take some lessons from Chile”’ (Rohter, 2006). However, as arresting
an example that this is of policies circulating in the South and to a certain extent to the
North, this particular type of circulation and mutual emulation was rare. Indeed, some
suggest that it was actually the World Bank that propelled the worldwide dissemination of
the Chilean experience (Orenstein, 2005).
In the past 20 years, not only did ‘best practices’ developed in the South start to flow
internationally but policy transfer also became a foreign policy instrument to strengthen
relations among countries. This is the case with multiple projects that Brazil launched
with Latin American and sub-Saharan African countries (Porto de Oliveira, Osorio,
Montero, Leite, forthcoming). Brazil established an arrangement for development
cooperation, involving different national agencies (sectorial Ministries, public banks,
national funds, public research institutes) and international organisations (Pomeroy,
Suyama, & Waisbich, Forthcoming). From the perspective of international organisa-
tions, the practice of scanning and copying successful models in the South and adapting
them to be implemented on a larger scale also increased. Moreover, the so-called
‘aidland’, by Mosse (2011) has its own way of operation, as well as actors. Individual
advocates, or ‘policy ambassadors’ from the South, increased their access to this world,
both inside international organisations and via their own national governmental agen-
cies of bilateral development cooperation promoting similar models across regions, as
in Latin America, Africa and Asia. For example, Cecilia Osorio Gonnet (2018, p. 172)
traced the different experts and bureaucrats who worked with the design and imple-
mentation of Conditional Cash Transfers programs in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and
 POLICY AND SOCIETY 13

Mexico, and who began to work – in a later stage – at the World Bank, United Nations
Development Fund, Inter-American Development Bank and other agencies of the UN
system. Not only were these agents incorporated in the staff of international organisa-
tions but also a dense constellation of consultants from the South with a similar profile
were hired periodically by these institutions.
In addition, the Sustainable Development Goals created an important ‘market’ for
the development cooperation ‘industry’, creating opportunities for the advocacy of
policy designs from the South (Constantine & Shankland, 2017). Here again, the role
of the South and development cooperation is important, considering that, for example,
SDG #1 is No Poverty, and SDG #2 is Zero Hunger. The second goal, in particular,
carries the same name as the Brazilian policy to fight against hunger launched in 2003,
during Lula’s administration (see Osmany Porto de Oliveira in this issue) and is a clear
instance of transfer into global policy venues.
By analysing development cooperation and policy transfer together, new mechan-
isms operating within these processes can be seen. Policies need inevitably to be
translated to adapt to such contexts, informal cooperation is often displayed among
countries, and there can be different forms of resistance such as peasants fighting
against agricultural technology transfers. Power relations between countries and inter-
national organisations also influenced the adoption of models, producing unexpected
results. The role of the political will of the adopter is also crucial for a transfer to take
place, and changes in the executive can undermine a transfer project and its continuity.
Moreover, communities of ‘policy ambassadors’ can trigger diffusion of similar models
across regions.
These are just hints of what can be different in the development context with respect
to policy transfer: government structures will be different, donors and international
organisations often have the whip hand; and ‘aid’ is itself a specific type of policy
transfer with its own agencies, networks, and professional knowledge. There are also
unique circumstances around the credibility of knowledge in a development context,
credibility that goes beyond mere technical expertise. The articles in this Special Issue
(briefly described below) provide rich insights on these and other features of transfer
and development cooperation.

Cross-cutting themes and concepts

Power – in different guises – is a common theme among the articles of this issue.
That is (i) the power of individuals, (ii) the power of networks, (iii) ideational power
having a structuring effect upon policy agendas and practices or (iv) whether or not,
these modes of power are subsidiary to, or tools in the hands of, material interests.
With a mini-set of three papers on Brazil in this special issue, geo-strategic power
shifts shape policy transfer circuits. As a member of the BRICs, Brazil is a rapidly
rising power in the world. One that now has the power, capacity and authority to
spread its policy experiences not only to other parts of the so-called developing
world, but also with advocacy towards the multilateral institutions in order to shape
and reconfigure the policy paradigms that bodies like the Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO), World Bank and UN work with. This was both true of the
Lula period and the Bolsonaro one.
14 D. STONE ET AL.

The power of individuals as persuaders through advocacy or their consultant roles or

through official appointment is a crucial albeit quixotic feature in the circulation of
certain policy models. Diego Silva Ardila identifies the ‘policy mobiliser’ Enrique
Peñalosa in his study of the global spread of the Columbian model of Bus Rapid
Transit; Osmany Porto de Oliveira identifies ‘policy ambassadors’ while Tom Baker
and his co-authors provide an important corrective by looking at ‘non-elites’ who also
wield some power in their ability to create and broadcast alternative visions and ‘ways
of doing things’.
A further cross-cutting theme is the hybridity of global discourses, both in terms of
the actors and networks that contribute to them, and the content of the ideas them-
selves. The role of translation in policy transfer and ‘customisation’ of policy tools in
order to improve ‘fit’ with local conditions has been recognised for many years (see
inter alia, Graham, Shipan and Voldern, 2013; Stone, 2017). The articles in this Special
Issue remind us that we need to extend this concept of translation in several directions.
First, almost every article shows how different actors will bring different interpretations
(translations) into the process, well before anything has been transferred. Consequently,
an idea consists of hybrid mixes, amalgams, and alloys, or possibly even the unac-
knowledged co-existence of contradictory principles. Second, translation happens as
policies move, before they have even ‘landed’. The transfer scholarly community has
possibly placed too much emphasis on the consummated act of transfer, without paying
sufficient attention to the ideational foreplay that takes place in the venues discussed
above – summits, conferences, meetings, forums – as ideas circulate and move.
In the case of transportation policy, Diego Ardilla argues that the evolution of an
epistemic community paralleled first experimentation with a specific model in Bogotá
(Colombia) known as TRANSMILENIO spreading to a few key Latin American cities
and later to the rest of the world. The BRT epistemic community becomes more
networked internationally once the BRT idea was popularised through the complex
global interactions among renowned consultants, knowledge experts, think-tanks and
multilateral banks.
Rather than a tight issue-specific epistemic community, Carolina Milhorance notes
the role of a regional civil society network for food and nutrition security. With
patronage from the Brazilian government, this network helped broadcast Brazilian
experience throughout a range of NGOs and civil society bodies. Milhorance also
recasts policy transfer not only as a policy process but also as having a diplomatic
orientation. That is, Brazil was able to promote not only its experience with certain
policy tools and instruments into multilateral arenas but also its national standing and
foreign policy ambition to become an exemplar nation. For instance, in her article,
Beatriz Cordeiro examines the policy mobility of microcredit (or more broadly, micro-
finance), where Brazil was a pioneer in the field, actually pre-dating the Grameen Bank,
and carving a policy pathway that diverged from the putative international consensus
that subsequently developed on microcredit.
The diplomacy theme develops into a key conceptual category of ‘policy ambassa-
dors’ in the article by Osmany Porto de Oliveira focusing on the critical role of elite
individuals, who hold different forms of power, varying from a formalised political
authority, technical knowledge and practical experience. Through these policy ambas-
sadors, he discusses how Brazil moved from developing local policy innovations to
 POLICY AND SOCIETY 15

becoming an international reference point on social policies, recognised by the World

Bank and UN specialised agencies. The role of ‘policy ambassadors’ is a key element to
understanding the individual agency on the transnationalisation of public policies.
Using a historical institutionalist approach, Fabrizio De Francesco and Edoardo
Guaschino compare the public governance discourses of the World Bank and the
OECD, showing the evolution of those discourses, their differences and their simila-
rities. The patterns and adjustments over time in the two organisations represent
important paradigm shifts in global discourses on public governance, given their
prominence and influence. The OECD has had more flexibility as an international
knowledge institution, and more consistency over time, than the World Bank, which
has had to ‘prove’ the connection between institutions and growth in a way that the
OECD has not. While the World Bank would naturally be assumed to be the leader on
this issue in the global South, given its mandate for development and poverty reduction,
the OECD has made important inroads through its own networks and data generation
efforts. Not all Northern international organisations diffuse the same way, even when
they labour in the same vineyard – in this case, public governance.
Leslie A. Pal and Jennifer Spence trace the networking of anti-corruption norms and
the role of the OECD to illustrate a new method of studying global policy networks,
what they call ‘event-focused network analysis’. Networks are hard to ‘see’, though they
can be sketched in various ways. This method takes an organisation that is globally
prominent in the network around a policy issue, builds a database of ‘events’ (meetings,
conferences, etc.) and their participants over time, and then uses the tools of social
network analysis to trace the contours and characteristics of the network. This article
focuses on anti-corruption networks, something of interest to the global North (donors)
and the global South (usually afflicted most deeply), and for which the OECD has been
a leader since the 1970s and particularly since the 1997 OECD Convention on
Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions.
Tom Baker, Eugene McCann and Cristina Temenos do not focus on the Global
South and development context but do take a non-elite perspective. They address
‘every-day’ or ordinary actors involved in circulating policy knowledge concerning
‘harm reduction’ and drug policy. This is a ‘bottom-up’ view of transfer and circulation
from local government and NGOs at the ‘front-line’ of policy delivery and implementa-
tion with ‘on-the-ground’ knowledge from where they are circulated and experimented
with before ideas are moved ‘up’ to contest orthodox approaches in national govern-
ment and international organisations. This is a paper that reminds us that power
disparities are hard-wired not only into which policy ideas or models move but also
in the avenues and forums through which they circulate.
To conclude, this collection of articles extends and deepens the policy transfer literature
by seriously considering transfer dynamics through the lens of development cooperation
and international aid. Most of our intellectual tools in the field – acquired from conven-
tional approaches – continue to serve us well. Nevertheless, we also see a ‘normative bias
towards global norms and Western institutions’, and a tendency to see developing
countries or the ‘local’ as disruptive and non-compliant (Draude, 2017, p. 579). This
tendency has in many instances clouded analytical sight of the policy innovations initiated
within developing countries, and which have been successfully injected into international
institutions and the policy arenas of the Global North by Southern policy ambassadors and
16 D. STONE ET AL.

other political actors. The fast-changing world of development cooperation accelerates the
scope for policy transfer entrepreneurialism. These entrepreneurs and ambassadors are
more engaged and innovative than simply ‘translating’ global norms to their own context.
Instead, changing dynamics in ‘aid land’ and development cooperation places prospects
for agency, leadership and policy initiative as much in the circuitry of the Global South as
in the ideational spaces of the Global North.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Diane Stone is Dean School of Public Policy at the Central European University in Budapest and
Vienna. She is a Vice President of the International Public Policy Association and consultant
editor of the journal, ‘Policy and Politics’. Her most recent book is The Oxford Handbook of
Global Policy and Transnational Administration (with Kim Moloney, Oxford University Press
2019).
Osmany Porto de Oliveira is Assistant Professor at the Federal University of São Paulo, in Brazil.
He coordinates the Global Platform of International Public Policies. His most recent book is
International Policy Diffusion and Participatory Budgeting: Ambassadors of Participation,
International Institutions and Transnational Networks, Palgrave McMillan (2017).
Leslie A. Pal is Dean, College of Public Policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar.
His most recent book is Beyond Policy Analysis (with Graeme Auld and Alexandra Mallet,
Nelson, 2020).

ORCID
Diane Stone http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3783-3789
Osmany Porto de Oliveira http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7930-5784
Leslie A. Pal http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3906-6846

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