Policy Transfer and Learning in Public Policy and Management

International Contexts, Content and Development

Peter Carroll, Richard Common

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415691819
• eBook ISBN: 9781135012281
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

A typical image of the making and administration of policy suggests that it takes place on an incremental basis, involving public servants, their ministers and, to a more limited extent, a variety of interest groups. Yet, much policy making is based on similar policy developed in other jurisdictions and in the major international organizations such as the WTO and the OECD. In other words, significant aspects of nationally developed policies are copied from elsewhere in what is described as a process of policy transfer and learning.

Hence, studies of policy transfer have pointed to a distinct limitation in most existing theoretical and empirical explanations as to how policy is made and implemented through their neglect of the role of policy transfer and learning. Moreover, policy transfer is not only a concern of academics, but a growing concern for governments. The latter are concerned to improve the performance of their policy and several have placed a greater, more systematic focus on policy transfer as a means to increasing performance.

This book presents a variety of cases from differing national and international contexts that enable a valuable, comparative analysis that is absent from most literature currently available and that suggest a number of exciting research directions with implications for policy making, transference and implementation in the future.

Part I

Degrees of transfer and their determinants

1 When policy diffusion does not lead to policy transfer

Explaining resistance to international learning in public management reform

Richard Common

Despite assumptions around the ‘inevitability’ of policy convergence based on increased international policy transfer activity in recent years, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that international trends such as New Public Management (NPM) and its off-shoots and public governance have found little traction in many parts of the world. Although it is clear there is greater receptivity by diverse policy making elites to international trends, direct or simple policy transfer in public administration is still a rare occurrence. Even where powerful policy transfer mechanisms are at work through international agencies and consultancy activity, policies are usually adapted to suit local political, economic and social contexts. While instances of simple or direct policy transfer are unlikely, this chapter does assume that rational decision makers seek to learn about innovations and reform solutions from abroad and implement them in their own country with varying degrees of modification.

To explain resistance to international policy learning, this chapter uses both institutional and cultural theory. It uses the framework followed by the field of international management in relation to assessing the transfer of management practices within multi-national corporations (MNCs) which require an analysis of the institutional and cultural contexts of host countries when considering the transfer of managerial approaches and techniques. Although the application of the same approach to explaining policy transfer is useful, the chapter suggests that an assessment of political culture is also necessary due to the complexity of the processes that shape policy learning within government.

The overall purpose of the chapter is to demonstrate that despite the abundance of opportunities available for policy learning, together with a desire among both policy makers and practitioners to learn from the ‘best’ international practice, the individual contexts of countries provide considerable obstacles to policy transfer. The chapter examines the potential for policy transfer in two disparate settings: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Georgia. It first considers the appeal of international policy transfer before examining the role of cultural and institutional influences to explain policy transfer. In employing frameworks from the field of international management, the chapter attempts a synthesis with the policy analysis literature to generate a more powerful explanatory model. The result of this synthesis is a greater understanding of the role of political culture in diverting policy learning processes.

The desirability of international policy transfer

While acknowledging that states are on different reform trajectories (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004), it is clear that many governments remain immune to international trends in public management. Yet, the international diffusion of public policy is quickening all the time. Governments across the world have access to information and learning opportunities hitherto unknown. The processes that have facilitated this are well documented and are probably yet to reach saturation point. Moreover, international consultancies have enormous incentives to diffuse policy knowledge even further; the boundaries of reform minded countries are being pushed back – beyond eastern Europe to central Asia, for instance. Despite the availability of knowledge about public sector reform, and the higher incidences of exposure to it – through specially commissioned courses, development programmes, international forums and so forth – within certain contexts, the impact appears to be minimal in many countries. The value of a policy transfer perspective is that it helps to explain policy change and under what circumstances transfer is more likely to occur (Marsh and Sharman 2009: 278).

Although ‘fertile’ conditions for policy transfer from leading ‘reform’ OECD countries, international organizations or agents of transfer appear to exist, resistance to change is remarkable. The content of the policy and programmes ‘learnt’ by potential agents of transfer often appears to result in ‘non-transfer’. For instance, the internationalization of performance management and budgeting appears to consist of a shared set of objectives, rather than a set of identifiable tools or techniques. Thus, it is difficult to assess if transfer has occurred if there is no empirical verification of a ‘hard’ programme adaptation from one country (or international institution) to another country. Moreover, if we consider the international adoption of accrual budgeting, then we find only Australia, New Zealand and the UK with full accrual budgets (Schick 2007: 131) and even within this small group, the approach is not uniform. Yet, although it is debateable how ‘international’ the trend towards performance budgeting actually is, the implementation of performance management or performance-related reforms has occurred in some form or other in most OECD countries. Furthermore, the persuasiveness of performance approaches has ramifications far beyond the OECD. However, frameworks for performance management continue to have intuitive appeal for policy makers. The OECD, for instance, does not explicitly provide a model of performance management. Even where countries have adopted similar reform packages, the diversity of approaches taken reflects the level of adaptation to their own institutional and cultural contexts (OECD 2008).

The appeal of performance management is based on a simple premise: that public sector organizations can be steered towards efficiency and effectiveness. It is this simple premise that has international appeal. For example, in an assessment of performance budgeting in Slovenia, Aristovnik and Seljak (2009) argue that the emphasis is on results rather than outcomes because of explicit concerns about the control of public expenditure. Therefore, efficiency provided the basis for the interpretation of performance, which overrode concerns for effectiveness. The Slovenian government was also required to follow the recommendation of international organizations, including the EU, which partly explains some of the problems identified in the analysis, which were associated with a lack of institutional ‘fit’. Although this is a wider problem and common to most countries implementing performance management, Aristovnik and Seljak (2009: 13) also note the difficulty of implementing performance budgeting in central policy ministries (Finance, Foreign Affairs) rather than line ministries (responsible for public service delivery). Thus, despite its apparent advantages, policy learning is not a straightforward process. In the case of Slovenia, the influence of the EU is, arguably, a form of ‘coercive’ policy transfer, where there is pressure on adopters to conform (Dolowitz and Marsh 1996). However, if we assume governments are engaged in voluntary policy learning activity, before the adoption of any international reform programme or policy, certain contextual conditions are required.

The institutional approach

The lack of ‘pure’ policy transfer highlights the imperfections of rational choice in selecting alternatives in public administration. As Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004: 33) point out, policy transfer results in change and change comes at a price. Systems of public administration consist of historically embedded institutions within a particular political, social and economic context. Institutions not only shape policy choices but also the implementation of public policy. If we accept that path dependency shapes policy choices, or that policy making is the outcome of historical institutional arrangements, then policy learning and transfer is shaped by institutional routines and behaviour. This applies equally to the international learning and transfer of management practice, hence the international management literature also stresses the importance of assessing the context of individual countries in order to assess the transferability of management policies, practices and innovations, usually from the perspective of MNCs (for example, Dowling et al. 1999; Fatehi 2008; Hendry and Pettigrew 1992; Tayeb 2005, etc.). International institutions are also an important consideration here, for example in the field of International HRM it is the International Labour Organization (ILO) that is able to influence and shape MNC behaviour to a certain extent (Tayeb 2005). Of course, the main concern when examining policy learning and transfer is the extent to which political and economic systems affect the content, direction and nature of policy transfer. For example, this aspect of policy transfer was explored in detail in relation to South-East Asia where it was found that a combination of institutional factors, such as economic competition, created the conditions for policy learning around NPM although there were various degrees of adoption (Common 2001).

Whitley (2002) argues that national institutions combine to produce what he terms ‘business systems’. Sorge (2004) builds upon Whitley's work to provide a typology based in different institutional contexts. Space does not permit reproducing the typology in full but it ranges from the ‘fragmented’ systems of places like Hong Kong, dominated by small owner-controlled firms in adversarial competition to the ‘highly coordinated’ systems that are typified by extensive alliances and conglomerates with a high degree of employer-employee interdependence, such as in Japan. Such business systems are not static, and most national institutional frameworks have accepted internationalization. As Soskice (2000) explains, the liberalization of external markets and the evolution of information technology have facilitated change while governments have deregulated. However, legislative frameworks have also remained resilient, which will affect managerial adaptations.

If we return to public policy making, learning is also dependent on meeting certain institutional conditions. For example, Rist indicates:

• there needs ‘to be a positive correlation between the credibility of the source and the acceptance of the information’ (1994: 200) and that the ‘source appears credible, non-confrontational, and the benefits for the receiving organization are evident’ (1994: 201);
• within the organization, the internal receiver of the information must also appear credible – if the receiver is marginal to the organization or has little access to decision making then they will be ignored;
• informal contact will smooth the path for organizational learning – very often ‘formal reports’ will have little impact: ‘contact, trust and channels of communication all impacted upon the acceptance of the information’ (1994: 202).

In addition to Rist's analysis, other institutional explanations for policy diffusion are also on offer such as McAdam and Rucht's (1993) relational and non-relational approaches and Rogers' (1995) diffusion of innovations. Both these approaches examine the process whereby diffusion takes place and how the process is dependent on particular institutional arrangements.

The international management literature also analyses how political and economic systems, relationships between legislative and regulatory bodies, trade unions, employers associations, etc. influence management practice. Taken together, and when adding the cultural variable, the institutional context supports and reaffirms patterns of national distinctiveness which impacts upon the process of policy transfer, from diffusion through to implementation. Although institutional theorists (for instance, DiMaggio and Powell 1991) regard culture as an institutional component, the differentiation in the international management literature is in terms of ‘formal’ (institutional) and ‘informal’ (cultural) influences on management practice (Tayeb 2005: 45). To develop this debate further, the chapter now turns to the influence of culture.

The cultural approach

The basis of the cultural approach in the international management literature continues to be Hofstede's seminal work on cultural indices. Since the appearance of Hofstede's key publications in this respect, the analysis of cultural influences on organizations has continued to expand, although Hofstede's indices

Table 1.1 Major cultural attitudes and values which influence the soft aspects of organization

Attitude to power and authority

Tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty

Attitude to risk and risk taking

Individualism, self-orientation

Collectivism, group orientation

Acceptance of responsibility

Interpersonal trust

Attitude to other people's opinion

Attitude to sharing information and knowledge with others

Recognition of the rights of others to be consulted with

Preference for certain leadership behaviour

Preference for independence and autonomy

Self-confidence, self-reliance

Achievement orientation, ambition

Attitudes to conflict and harmony

Work ethic, honesty

Attitude to the nature of human beings

remain a bedrock for most comparisons in international management. For example, following Hofstede, Tayeb (2005: 25) suggests the following factors:

All of Hofstede's cultural dimensions are present in the above table, and despite extensive criticism of his work, it remains extremely durable (McSweeney 2002). However, cultural or sociological perspectiv...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge critical studies in public management
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Degrees of transfer and their determinants
• Part II New developments in transfer and learning
• Conclusion
• Index