New directions in the study of policy transfer

摘要

First, if any individual points have been well made by previous writers, let us try to follow them up; then from the colleetion of constitutions we must examine what sort of thing preserves and what sort of thing destroys cities and particular constitutions, and for what reasons some are well administered and others are not (Aristotle, 384 to 322 BCE, Nicomachean Ethics, X, 1181b).rnThere is nothing new about the concept of policy transfer or its application. As early as 315BC, Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics advised fellow citizens of the rationality of engaging in lesson-drawing from positive and negative experiences in the development of great city states. Yet although policy transfer has been habitual practice since the dawn of civilization, it has become increasingly common to observe that there has been an upsurge in the scope and intensity of policy transfer activity as a consequence of changes to the field of action in public policy-making (see Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, Common 2001, Evans and Cerny 2004). It is claimed that this is largely the function of the world of public policy becoming smaller due to dramatic changes in global political and economic institutional structures and to nation states themselves as an outcome or response to various processes of globalization.