What can we learn about policy innovation?

2018 ◽  
pp. 91-122
Keyword(s):  
Policy Transfer ◽  
School To Work ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Youth Employment ◽  
Policy Entrepreneurs ◽  
Policy Governance ◽  
Mutual Learning ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Youth At Risk ◽  
Local Partnerships

This chapter focuses on the institutional structures and processes that facilitate or hinder policy learning and innovation with respect to effective measures for school-to-work (STW) transitions. The salience of youth employment problems in many European countries has brought the need to develop effective measures of STW transitions to the top of the EU agenda. Indeed, it has generated EU initiatives for integrated policies addressing youth at risk and has accelerated mutual learning, policy transfer, and experimentation within and across countries. Experimentation with proactive youth employment measures is facilitated by a mode of policy governance that supports (regional/local) partnerships and networks of public services, professional bodies and education/training providers, employers, youth associations, and other stakeholders. As such, policy entrepreneurs play a significant role in promoting policy learning and transfer.

Evaluating Cross-Country Policy Learning in Public Administration: The Case of Qatar-Singapore Partnership in Regional Training Centre for Public Administration (RTCPA)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Evren Tok ◽  
Duygu Sever
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Training Center ◽  
Training Centre ◽  
Cross Country

This study investigates the case of Qatar Singapore Regional Training Center for Public Administration.As a tool for this process of policy transfer, the article further evaluates the case of Singapore- Qatar Asia-Middle East Dialogue (AMED) Regional Training Centre for Public Administration (RTCPA) in Doha, Qatar, as a mechanism to foster this policy transferThe study suggests that this evaluation would be a fruitful example in revealing the strengths and weakness of such initiatives and can offer a scheme for insights regarding effective tools of policy learning.

scholarly journals Basic Income in Our Time: Improving Political Prospects Through Policy Learning?

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
JURGEN DE WISPELAERE
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Project ◽  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
The Future

AbstractFollowing the success of a recent Swiss Citizens’ Initiative to grant each citizen an unconditional income guarantee and the Finnish Government's plans to conduct the first national pilot project, the idea of a basic income as a citizens’ right has gained much prominence in the policy debate. This article reviews a number of policy developments on the ground through the lens of the policy transfer literature. In the absence of a fully developed basic income in place, proponents must rely on partially implemented schemes or proposals that differ in crucial respects from the basic income ideal. This paper outlines three sets of empirical cases and analyses what (if any) lessons we can draw from them regarding the future of basic income schemes.

Manoeuvring within a Fragmented Bureaucracy: Policy Entrepreneurship in China's Local Healthcare Reform

2018 ◽  
Vol 236 ◽  
pp. 1088-1110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Jingwei He
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Reform ◽  
Policy Entrepreneurs ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
Policy Entrepreneurship ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
Interactional Patterns ◽  
Local Healthcare

AbstractPolicy entrepreneurs play a pivotal role in policy changes in both electoral democracies and authoritarian systems. By investigating the case of healthcare reform in Sanming City, this article illustrates how the fragmented bureaucracy in China enables and constrains local policy entrepreneurs, and how entrepreneurial manoeuvring succeeds in realigning the old institutional structures while attacking the vested interests. Both structural conditions and individual attributes are of critical importance to the success of policy entrepreneurship. Four factors and their dynamic interactions are central to local policy entrepreneurship: behavioural traits, political capital, network position and institutional framework. This study furthers theoretical discussion on policy entrepreneurship by elucidating the fluidity of interactional patterns between agent and structure in authoritarian China. The malleability of rigid institutions can be considerably increased by the active manoeuvring of entrepreneurial agents.

Compulsory Arbitration and the Australasian Model of State Development: Policy Transfer, Learning, and Innovation

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Goldfinch ◽  
Philippa Mein Smith
Keyword(s):  
Development Policy ◽  
Political System ◽  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Policy Success ◽  
Compulsory Arbitration ◽  
New Information ◽  
Systems Learning

Policymakers transfer knowledge about policies, ideas, and institutions between political systems, learning from one another in a process of policy learning; lesson drawing; diffusion; or policy transfer. As Dolowitz and Marsh observe: “While terminology and focus often vary … studies are concerned with the process by which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions, and ideas in one political system (past or present) are used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements, institutions and ideas in another political system.” The literature on policy transfer has mainly addressed how policymakers glean potential lessons and use those experiences to devise reforms. It asks questions about why policy transfer occurs; who was involved; what was transferred; from where; the extent of the transfer; and how the process of transfer is “related to policy ‘success’ or ‘failure.’” Greener distinguishes this from policy learning, where policymakers make deliberate adjustments in response to experience or new information, and learning is evident when policy changes as a result of this process. Some scholars see policy transfer as a subset of policy learning, since these are often part of the same procedure. Oliver and Pemberton advance a model, for example, of how ideas are absorbed through learning, in which bureaucratic battles ensue to institutionalize a new policy, and reformers' success in securing support can be critical in determining the extent of policy learning and transfer.

scholarly journals From Policy Transfer to Mutual Learning?

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (01) ◽  
pp. 99-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Constantine ◽  
Alex Shankland
Keyword(s):  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Mutual Learning

Policy Learning and Policy Failure

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Meso Level ◽  
Policy Failure ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
Opportunities For Learning ◽  
Policy Failures

First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this updated volume explores policy failures and the valuable opportunities for learning that they offer. The book begins with an overview of policy learning and policy failure. The links between the two appear obvious, yet there are very few studies that address how one can learn from failure, learn to limit failure, and fail to learn. The book attempts to bring the two together. In doing so, it explores how dysfunctional forms of policy learning impact policy failure at the meso-level. The book expands on this by demonstrating how different learning processes generated by actors at the meso-level mediate the extent to which policy transfer is a success or failure. It re-assesses some of the literature on policy transfer and policy diffusion, in light of ideas as to what constitutes failure, partial failure, or limited success. This is followed by an examination of situations in which the incentives of partisanship can encourage a government to actively seek to exacerbate an existing policy failure rather than to repair it. The book studies the connections between repeated assessments of policy failure and subsequent opportunities for system-wide policy learning and reform. Finally, it introduces the idea of ‘policy myopia’ as a pressing source of failure in policy making and explores the possibility of developing policies that learn to help mitigate its impacts.

Learning in Organizations and Public Policy

2001 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE J. BUSENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Focusing Events ◽  
New Information ◽  
Shape Learning ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Over Time

This study builds a conceptual framework to guide empirical studies of learning in public policy. Learning in public policy is defined here as a process in which individuals apply new information and ideas to policy decisions. This topic is examined by adapting relevant concepts from studies of organizational learning to the context of public policy. Recent work in the organizational learning literature focuses on institutional structures, procedures, and customs (learning arrangements) that act to promote individual learning. Further work in the policy literature suggests that focusing events (incidents that focus public and political attention on a policy issue) can also shape learning in public policy. Combining insights from these two literatures, this study proposes that both learning arrangements and focusing events can play observable roles in shaping policy change over time. These concepts are developed and examined in the context of hazardous systems.

scholarly journals Towards understanding of policy transfer and policy learning in adult education in the context of United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 174549992110612
Author(s):  
Natasha Kersh ◽  
Andrea Laczik
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Adult Education ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Vocational Education And Training ◽  
The Uk ◽  
And Training ◽  
Country Specific ◽  
Policies And Practices

Over the past decade, adult education and Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the UK context have been strongly affected by the implications of unstable political, social and economic situations, specifically in relation to social and economic inclusion of vulnerable young adults. This paper argues, that the development of policy transfer and policy learning in adult education has been characterised by its multidimensional nature and has been influenced by the implications of contemporary global challenges, country-specific priorities and the European agenda on inclusion. The notion of policy learning in adult education highlights the complex interdependencies between policies and practices. We will endeavour to consider how the complex interplays between country-specific priorities, global discourses and the European agenda on active citizenship (AC) contribute to national policies and practices for social inclusion of young adults in the UK context. Selected case studies will demonstrate the ways this policy agenda transfers into specific programmes for vulnerable young adults.

scholarly journals Mutual Learning and Policy Transfer in Integrated Water Resources Management: A Research Agenda

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Fritsch ◽  
David Benson
Keyword(s):  
Water Resources ◽  
Water Resources Management ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Integrated Water Resources Management ◽  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Resources Management ◽  
Mutual Learning

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has become a global paradigm for the governance of surface, coastal and groundwater. International bodies such as the European Union, the Global Water Partnership, and the United Nations have taken the lead to promote IWRM principles, while countries worldwide have undertaken reforms to implement these principles and to restructure their domestic or regional water governance arrangements. However, the international transfer of IWRM principles raises a number of theoretical, empirical and normative questions related to its causes, processes and outcomes. These questions will be explored in our Special Issue ‘Governing IWRM: Mutual Learning and Policy Transfer’. This editorial briefly introduces IWRM and links this governance paradigm to theoretical and empirical scholarship on policy transfer. We then summarise the aims and objectives of this Special Issue, provide an overview of the articles brought together here and offer avenues for future research.

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