Policy Transfer and Norm Circulation brings together various fields in the humanities and social sciences to propose a renewed analysis of policy transfer and norm circulation, by offering cross-regional case studies and providing both a comprehensive and innovative understanding of policy transfer. The book introduces a constructive interdisciplinary dialogue and comparative approach, highlighting the partial and fragmented understanding of policy transfer and the questions and challenges in the study of policy transfer in three parts. Firstly, notions of transfer and circulation, including law, (political) economy, sociology and history; secondly, a focus on European studies and the transfer of norms, both within and outside the EU; and finally, an examination within a broader IR context. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European Union politics/studies, international relations, public policy, economics and law, as well as practitioners dealing with regional integration.

This important Handbook brings together preeminent international scholars, sharing their comparative and international perspectives on the topic. Their original contributions cover the key issues and questions around policy transfer, diffusion and circulation research. Altogether, chapters illuminate how rich and provocative the current debate on the interpretation of how public policies travels is and the vibrancy of the area’s research within the broad planet of public policy analysis.

This book analyses why the Ukrainian state established asylum laws and policies in the thirty years since 1991, even though the number of asylum seekers was very low. International and non-governmental organisations transferred international asylum norms to Ukraine. Various state and non-state actors participated in this process, translating, spreading, and resisting those norms. In many cases, legislative adoption was driven by domestic politicians’ pursuit of recognition by international organisations, such as the European Union and the Council of Europe, and by their desire to meet conditionality requirements. NGOs sought to influence administrative practices, alternating between confrontational and conciliatory, formal and informal approaches, and often relying on personal contacts. Actors used and shifted between scales in order to transfer norms or resist transfer. In the process, they produced, renegotiated, and confirmed those scales. For instance, NGOs resorting to the European Court of Human Rights to prevent refoulement placed the European scale above the national scale. This book offers a new multi-actor and multi-scalar analysis of policy transfer.

This book examines the European Union’s (EU’s) norm and policy diffusion in relation to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). By looking at the EU’ engagement with ASEAN in trade and non-traditional security, the book analyzes the drivers, processes, and effectiveness of the EU’s norm and policy diffusion in ASEAN and explains the EU’s foreign policy and power projection in the context of its relationship with ASEAN. In doing so, it helps to advance knowledge about the EU’ external relations and power projection in relation to regional political entities beyond its immediate borders and affords firsthand empirical material on how the EU’s power in global politics is impacted by external perceptions and responses in different policy fields. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of EU foreign policy, EU–SEAN relations, and ASEAN politics and more broadly to European Studies, Comparative Regionalism, Asian Studies, and International Relations

This book explores norm diffusion in non-Western contexts. It analyzes how norms transfer and what mechanisms or sources of leverage facilitate their diffusion. The individual chapters follow an interdisciplinary framework that analyzes social norms beyond the theoretical tradition of international relations, and focus on particular cases of diffusion—both successful and unsuccessful—across the non-Western world. In this way, the book challenges existing perspectives and advances critical norm research that diversifies the agency of norm entrepreneurs beyond processes of norm localization. It makes a twofold contribution—by deepening our theoretical understanding of norms and their dynamics and by broadening the geographical scope of norms research.

This book explains how transnational policy entrepreneurs have contributed to the transfer of the contested concept of ‘Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development’ (PCSD) in global policy. Tracing the processes by which the PCSD concept has been diffused in an international epistemic community linked to the EU and the OECD, the book offers new insights on international public administrations’ influence on global decision-making. It highlights the dynamic and multi-directional character of knowledge circulation in policy transfer. Drawing on case studies from France, the United Kingdom and Germany, the book contributes to current debates on sustainable development, revealing the role of actors and the logics behind ‘policy coherence’. Thus, it allows to understand the challenges involved in implementing SDG 17. Given its scope, the book will be of considerable interest to academic audiences and students of international relations and policy analysis, as well as practitioners and public officials whose work involves global sustainability policy.

This book examines knowledge and policy transfer from the perspectives of Brazil and China. It assesses how these two nations have emerged as providers of ideas and models that contribute to the global offer of public policies. With a variety of case studies in areas such as health, food security and infrastructure, the volume offers new insights into the distinct levels through which knowledge and policy transfers take place, including the local, regional, national and supranational. It develops a multidimensional framework of analysis that considers the agents, objects, and mechanisms for knowledge and policy transfer, as well as the structures and timings within which they operate. Unlike previous studies on policy transfer – which largely focus on North-North and North-South learning processes – this book offers an innovative approach to this area of study. By reflecting on the experiences of these two rising powers, it provides fresh insights on the future of knowledge and policy transfer as global power dynamics shift. This interdisciplinary study will appeal to students and scholars of policy transfer, development studies, international relations and public policy.