Book

The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy

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Abstract

The diffusion of markets and democracy around the world was a defining feature of the late twentieth century. Many social scientists view this economic and political liberalization as the product of independent choices by national governments. This book argues that policy and political changes were influenced heavily by prior actions of external actors: not just other governments, but international organizations and communities of experts. Drawing together insights from economics, sociology, political science, and international relations, the contributors focus on four mechanisms by which markets and democracy have diffused through interdependent decision making: coercion and the impact of powerful countries and international actors; economic competition for markets and investment; learning from experiences of other countries; and emulation among countries. These mechanisms are tested empirically using sophisticated quantitative techniques in areas as diverse as capital account and investment policy, human rights and democratization, and government downsizing, privatization, and taxation.
... Studies are grosso modo characterized by quantitative analysis, with large-N, where understanding the causal mechanisms of diffusion is a core characteristic (see Chapter 3 by Johanna Kuhlmann in this volume), often tending to emphasize structural explanations (Marsh and Sharman, 2009). 4 Policy diffusion scholarship is popular in American political science (see Brooks, 2004;Karch, 2006;Linos, 2013;Simmons et al., 2010;Sugiyama, 2012;Weyland, 2006), with important exponents in Europe as well (Francesco, 2013;Gilardi, 2016;Levi-Faur and Jordana, 2005). ...
... Some of these are abstract, such as ideas, ideologies, principles, discourses, paradigms and so on, while others are more concrete, such as policy models and designs, laws and constitutions, administrative arrangements, forms of government, policy instruments, institutions, etc. To mention just a few examples, scholars have dedicated their research to understand transfer, diffusion, and circulation of the following objects: democratic institutions and participatory democracy (Huntington, 1993;Porto de Oliveira, 2017;Simmons et al., 2010), regulatory agencies (Levi-Faur and Jordana, 2005), pensions (Brooks, 2005), migration policies (Braz, 2018;Channac, 2006;Infantino, 2019), social policies (Kuhlmann et al., 2020;Weyland, 2006), conditional cash transfers (Howlett et al., 2018;Leisering, 2019; Morais de Sá e Silva, 2017;Osorio Gonnet, 2019), transport policies (Ardila, 2020;Mejía-Dugand et al., 2013;Montero, 2017;Wood, 2015b), disaster reduction (Soremi, 2019), rule of law (Dezalay and Garth, 2002), evidence-based health agencies (Hassenteufel et al., 2017), microfinance (Oikawa Cordeiro, 2019), harm reduction (Baker et al., 2020), and administrative capacities (Hadjiisky, 2017), amongst other "objects". An important feature of policy transfer dynamics is that, as will be discussed later, public policies are not transplanted, and don't necessarily displace, as a monolithic block, but instead different policy instruments and components, coming from different origins, are combined and translated to meet the demands in the context and expectations of transfer agents. ...
... There are distinct types of forces that can influence policy transfers, both fostering the movement of adoption, but also constraining it. The main mechanisms identified in the literature are (1) coercion, when there is an external imposition for adopting a policy, (2) social construction, which is related to the socialization and legitimization of a policy, (3) learning, when governments draw lessons from others, and (4) competition, which refers to situations in which competing governments adopt policies to benefit themselves (Graham et al., 2013;Simmons et al., 2010). However, there are also other forces playing a role in the transfer processes, such as international induction from international organizations, the circulation of individuals, or capacity-building (Porto de Oliveira, 2017). ...
... The constraints that IFIs place on policy space are most direct in the case of lending conditionalitiesparticularly since the onset of "structural adjustment" programs which sought to promote market liberalization in the developing world (Simmons, Dobbin, and Garrett 2008;Babb and Kentikelenis 2021). ...
... In bolstering the legitimacy of such policies, it helps that these organizations are sta ed by highly trained o cials-often holding graduate degrees from elite universities-who write in uential reports on development strategies (Wade 1996), and who develop a host of indicators to measure development performance (Broome, Homolar, and Kranke 2017;Broome and Quirk 2015;Doshi, Kelley, and Simmons 2019) and generate economic forecasts (Kentikelenis and Stubbs 2021). In turn, these reports, policy papers, forecasts, and indicators shape the range of policy options that countries-especially those with more limited resources-consider legitimate, and that global capital markets come to expect as appropriate (Simmons, Dobbin, and Garrett 2008). ...
... Technical assistance provides a case in point: many IFIs provide such support to countries and -in the case of the IMF and World Bank-this is a major component of their operations, even though it remains at the discretion of the countries to implement this technical advice. The fact that such assistance is a "soft" output of IFIs, compared to the coercive pressures of lending and conditionalities, should not diminish its ability to still be a powerful vehicle for the di usion of policies and "best practices" around the world (Simmons, Dobbin, and Garrett 2008 Finally, knowledge on the independent role of IFI sta is also severely limited-are they just line bureaucrats strictly following organizational policies and guidelines or do they have independent agency? ...
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Having sizeable lending capacity and unparalleled epistemic power, international financial institutions (IFIs) are the world’s most powerful international organizations. One class of IFIs is primarily focused on lending for development projects, and commands portfolios of hundreds of millions of dollars that can transform infrastructure and social services in low- and middle-income countries. Another class is geared toward providing financial assistance to countries in economic crisis and has an active role in shaping their policy environments. Through these activities, IFIs alter the development trajectories of borrowing countries, for better or for worse. This article reviews these debates. We first map IFI forms and functions and examine their governance structures. Subsequently, we examine two of the leading controversies surrounding IFI activities: the problematic impact of these activities on social and environmental outcomes; and the charge that they impinge on developing countries’ policy sovereignty. We conclude by outlining fruitful directions for future research.
... While existing research has already established that countries select into IMF participation-a form of bias that the methods above attempt to parse out-what is less apparent is whether countries also select into conditions (Vreeland 2006). No academic consensus exists concerning whether conditions are requested by countries (Caraway et al. 2012;Rickard and Caraway 2014;Vreeland 2006), or imposed by IMF staff on unwilling borrowers (Chang 2007;Grabel 2011;Simmons et al. 2008;Stiglitz 2002). For proponents of the former argument, certain conditions may be sought by governments to gain leverage over domestic opposition to policy change (Vreeland 2006). ...
... For proponents of the former argument, certain conditions may be sought by governments to gain leverage over domestic opposition to policy change (Vreeland 2006). The latter line of argument perceives conditionality as a coercive instrument at the disposal of the IMF, used to compel countries into implementing reforms they may not otherwise wish to undertake (Simmons et al. 2008). Where there is agreement is that the circumstances of countries receiving more IMF conditions are systematically different from those receiving fewer conditions. ...
Chapter
The dominant policy response to economic crises over the past four decades has been the introduction of austerity. How has this mix of budget cuts and reforms to downsize the role of the state evolved over time? What affect has it had on social policies and on people’s lives? This book examines the activities of the world’s leading advocate of austerity: the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This international organization lends to countries facing economic trouble in exchange for the implementation of far-reaching austerity measures. Drawing on new data, the authors reveal that although the precise content of IMF-mandated austerity has changed considerably over time, the organization continues to place a high burden of reform on countries in crisis. These reforms then decrease the availability of important social services, and contribute to rises in income inequality and declines in population health. These findings form the first systematic assessment of how austerity has impacted people’s lives and livelihoods around the world. Will such policy mistakes be avoided in the postpandemic world? The early evidence presented in this book do not raise grounds for optimism. Public expenditure projections reveal that in 2023, 86 out of 189 countries—mostly middle-income ones—face contractions in government spending compared to their 2010s average, thereby exposing a cumulative total of 2.3 billion people to the socioeconomic consequences of budget cuts.
... Politika yayılması kuramcılarına göre günümüzdeki bağımlılık ilişkisinin yoğunlaşmasından dolayı, hükümetler birbirlerinden bağımsız aktörler gibi kararlar alamazlar (Simmons, Dobbin ve Garrett, 2008). İletişimin hızlanarak arttığı bir dönemde toplumlar arası etkileşim de artış göstermektedir. ...
Article
Türkiye’de kuruluş yıllarından beri kamu yönetimi ve ekonomi politikalarının belirlenmesinde merkezi planlamacı gelenek 1990’ların ortasından itibariyle terk edilmeye başlanmıştır. Bunun yerine yeni kamu işletmeciliği uyumlu Anglo-Sakson gelenekte yerleşmeye başlamış olan stratejik planlama modeli 2000’li yılların ortalarından itibaren kullanılmaya başlanmıştır. Bir işletme planı olarak geliştirilen bu planın önce ABD ve Birleşik Krallıkta bir kamu politikası aracı olarak kullanılmaya başlaması, ardından Türkiye’ye sirayet etme sürecinde etkili olan faktörler ve koşullar politika transferi analizi çerçevesinden incelenmiştir. Stratejik planın Anglo-Sakson gelenek içinde yayılması ve Türkiye’ye aktarılması difüzyon ve politika transferi yaklaşımlarıyla ele alınarak hangisi ile açıklanmasının daha uygun olduğu tartışılmıştır. Planın Türkiye’de kurumlarda hangi amaçla ve politika bağlamında kullanılmaya başladığı, amaç ile sonuç arasında bir tutarlılık ve varsa başarısı, yoksa başarısızlığın nedenlerine açıklık getirilmek istenmektedir.
... Policy diffusion is theorised according to four main forces: coercion, competition, learning and emulation (Garrett, Dobbin & Simmons, 2008;Gilardi & Wasserfallen, 2019). Coercion occurs via the pressure from international organisations or powerful countries to adopt certain policies, whereas competition happens when countries enact policies to attract resources and investment over other competing countries. ...
... Mainstream policy diffusion literature today identifies four main diffusion mechanisms: coercion, competition, learning, and emulation Simmons et al., 2008b;Shipan & Volden, 2008). Heinze (2011) adds one more: socialization, or how interaction leads to the development and internalization of normative ideas (ibid.). ...
... 4. Other theoretical strands of international relations, such as sociological and rational institutionalism, can derive theses similar to those discussed in the main text, supporting their generality. 5. Our study does not address pathways for ideational change, including rational Bayesian updating and sociological emulation (Blyth, 2013;Simmons et al., 2008). White et al. (2022) empirically ascertain such pathways on vocational skills, using citation analysis. ...
Article
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Institutional proliferation in the global financial order raises concerns about a failure of coordination between global and regional organizations and the resulting confusion and conflict. One area of concern is macroeconomic surveillance, which is crucial for the detection of financial crises as a task subject to institutional overlaps. The existing literature does not provide systematic evidence on the extent and determinants of such coordination. To fill this lacuna, we compare the International Monetary Fund and the ASEAN Plus Three Macroeconomic Research Office, a surveillance agency in East Asia, using their country reports as outcomes of their surveillance of East Asian countries. We conduct dictionary-based text analyses to assess the usage patterns of key terms concerning particular economic ideas. The results demonstrate substantial similarities between the country reports as well as some residual differences. These findings suggest that they engage in informal coordination based on focal-point effects through the use of general and regional economic ideas for multifaceted surveillance. They further suggest that informality permits them to exercise discretion in deciding policy categories for aligned and autonomous actions, thereby providing an efficient solution to an autonomy–coordination dilemma. Through these discussions, our study suggests important implications for researchers and member governments.
... 2 The literature distinguishes between different mechanisms of Europeanization; however, these have different relevance in different geographical and policy areas (cf. Bulmer & Padgett, 2005;Garrett et al., 2008). Given the concentration of our research on the policy implementation phase at the regional level, social learning and coercion mechanisms appear to be the most relevant. ...
Article
Europeanization affects policies in much of Europe, but has uneven impacts in different regions. The aim of this paper is to causally explain how and why actors reacted to the European Union (EU) policy. We tested the presence of social learning and coercion mechanisms and how their operation was conditioned by policy capacities (contextual factors). Europeanization is traced through integrated territorial investment (ITI) implementation, a new EU Cohesion Policy tool. The Ostrava Metropolitan Region case study in Czechia revealed that national-level actors had responded dominantly to ITI by social learning and local actors with coercion.
... During the first decade of the 21st century, scholars sought to bridge this gap in the literature by detailing the causal mechanisms responsible for the diffusion of public policies. Concomitantly, the cross-country diffusion of national level policies also became a matter of interest to researchers, specifically looking at the diffusion of economic policies (Elkins, Guzman, & Simmons, 2006;Gilardi, 2010;Meseguer, 2009;Simmons, Dobbin, & Garrett, 2008;Simmons & Elkins, 2004), and, more recently, renewable energy policies (Baldwin, Carley, & Nicholson-Crotty, 2019). ...
Article
Prior empirical studies of the Open Government Partnership have failed to take into account possible diffusion mechanisms contributing to the expansion in the number of countries joining the partnership since its beginning in 2010. Notwithstanding the increase in the study of open government policies over the past decade across multiple levels of government, the factors influencing the decision to join multilateral initiatives like the Open Government Partnership are still under-researched. Using data from 175 countries and covering a period that goes from the year prior to the establishment of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) until the year when the latest current members have joined the partnership (2010–2018), this article examines the diffusion mechanisms affecting a country's decision to participate in the OGP. Based on binary response logit regression models, this study analyses the effects of key diffusion variables while controlling for the countries' internal determinants of participation. The findings indicate that diffusion of the OGP takes place through regional proximity, common cultural and system of government traits, and membership in international organization. While democratic countries are more likely to join, autocracies also join conditional on other countries in the same group joining. This suggests further research is needed to uncover the way countries with different regime traits design and implement transparency and open government policies under the banner of this multilateral initiative.
... States adhere to global norms and democratic scripts "in order to be regarded as legitimate members of world society" (Krücken and Drori, 2009, 15). By adopting democratic models, countries seek to secure their role and status in the international state-system (Simmons et al., 2008). ...
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Энэхүү боть нь эдгээр хүнд хэцүү цаг үеийн ардчилсан тэмцлийн янз бүрийн талыг нь шинжлэн судлав. Үүний эхний хэсэгт нь Хүйтэн дайны дараах ардчилагдах үйл явцын хамгийн бага судлагдсан хэсэг болох Монгол улс дахь ардчилагдах үйл явцыг судлав. Хоёрдугаар хэсэгт дэлхийн бусад улс орнуудад өрнөсөн ардчилсан тэмцлийг хамарсан дүн шинжилгээг өргөжүүлж, ялангуяа олборлох салбараас эдийн засгийн хувьд хамааралтай байдаг Монгол болон бусад улс орнуудын хувьд гол асуудал болоод байгаа байгалийн баялгийн засаглалыг авч үзлээ. Энэхүү номыг бүтээхэд хувь нэмэр оруулагчдыг олон өөр улс орнууд, салбарууд, мэргэжлийн үе шатуудын хүрээнд олж сонгосон билээ. Тэд олон янзын алсын харааны өнцгөөс ардчиллын дутуу судлагдсан талуудыг тодорхой болгохын тулд, маш харилцан бие биенээ нөхсөн байдлаар, өөр өөр арга барил, аргачлалуудыг ашиглан ажилласан байна.
... O foco dos estudos sobre difusão de políticas está na análise de "porquê" e "como" os políticos tomam decisões de forma interdependente (Dobbin, Simmons e Garrett, 2007;Gilardi, 2014). A maioria dos argumentos que a literatura propõe para responder a essas perguntas pode ser incluída numa das três classes amplas de mecanismos (Simmons, Dobbin e Garrett, 2008;Gilardi, 2012;Graham, Shipan e Volden, 2013;Wasserfallen, 2018b): ...
Thesis
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This thesis analyses the institutionalization process of evaluation in the Portuguese development cooperation, between 1994 (the year in which the evaluation was integrated in the cooperation agency) and 2012 (the year in which IPAD merged with the Camões Institute). The key research question is: how the institutionalization of evaluation took place in the Portuguese development cooperation? To answer this question, a literature review and a desk analysis have been conducted. A survey and several semi-structured interviews with Portuguese cooperation actors have also been carried out. Based on the policy transfer theory, it starts from the hypothesis of an incomplete transfer, driven by external actors. Although there is a broad research on evaluation use, there is a research gap regarding the Portuguese reality. There is also no research based on policy transfer theory. This research seeks to contribute to fill these gaps, developing a model that identifies the factors that influence the institutionalization of evaluation in the Portuguese development cooperation. The results show that, despite the internal and, above all, the external determinants, the nature of the policy, the organizational/institutional context and the evaluation system adopted had an influence on the institutionalisation of the evaluation, in particular its use in the decision-making process. The results of this research are a contribution to the understanding of the institutionalization of evaluation in development cooperation organizations and a basis for future research. The conclusions can provide evidence to the cooperation professionals, guide the evaluation practice and promote its use in the decision-making process.
... 895) of emulation. They become institutionalized in rules or principles of right action such that they become "taken for granted" (Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998, p. 892;Simmons et al., 2008). ...
Article
A growing number of academic studies and policy reports have identified a set of core skills considered crucial in the twenty-first century economy. This article critically examines the evidence base underpinning that ideational consensus among international organizations (IOs) and global management consulting firms (GMCFs). We collected 234 skills reports produced over the past decade by major IOs (European Commission, ILO, OECD, UNESCO, and World Bank) and GMCFs (BCG, Deloitte, Ernest and Young, KPMG, McKinsey, and PWC). We then extracted bibliographic references from each report and used the analytic technique of citation analysis to examine how the consensus around these core skills was generated in order to uncover the authoritative sources of knowledge and the pattern of ideational policy diffusion observed. Our analysis reveals substantial gaps in the evidence base used. Evidence drew largely on a few academic economists, along with strong use of grey literature, and high rates of self-citation. Given these characteristics, the consensus around twenty-first century skills appears less epistemic in nature and more like an ideational echo chamber, which raises concerns about the extent to which policymakers should rely on this evidence.
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The COVID-19 pandemic did not only imply a spread of a virus, it also set in motion a series of global measures and discourses that likewise diffused worldwide. This article explores the global dissemination of knowledge and cross-national comparisons in the context of a global pandemic. We approach the question by analysing coverage of COVID-19 in newspapers published in Australia, Russia, Singapore, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The analysis reveals that the concept of the world uniting against a common enemy, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, was absent from media coverage. Instead, the prevalent discourse centered around competition between states. However, this article argues that this does not imply that the world is divided into distinct cultures with divergent views or understandings of reality. Rather, we argue that the pandemic led to the formation of a discursive field consisting of the reference points that constitute sensible and legitimate ways to discuss potential policies.
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The article examines the methodological possibilities of theories of institutional borrowing (in particular, import and transplantation of institutions) in the field of studying innovations in electoral governance. Limitations are identified for applying the diffusion of innovation theory and theory of policy diffusion to study the spreading of state institutions. A limitation in the use of particular theories is their fundamental focus on considering processes in the private sector, denial of the agency of state, denial of state interests, and methodological dependence on the theory of rational choice. The contribution of Russian institutionalism to the theory of transplantation of institutions and its adaptation to the study of state policy on borrowing institutions is revealed. The article formulates proposals for supplementing theories of institutional borrowing in terms of governmental decisions to ensure the adaptation of institutions. The possibilities of particular concepts within the theories of institutional borrowing for interpreting and explaining the processes of international spread of electoral innovations are determined.
Preprint
We utilize a fundamentally different model of trading costs to look at the effect of the opening of the Hong Kong Shanghai Connect that links the stock exchanges in the two cities, arguably the biggest event in international business and finance since Christopher Columbus set sail for India. We design a novel methodology that compensates for the lack of data on trading costs in China. We estimate trading costs across similar positions on the dual listed set of securities in Hong Kong and China, hoping to provide useful pieces of information to help scale 'The Great Wall of Chinese Securities Trading Costs'. We then compare actual and estimated trading costs on a sample of real orders across the Hong Kong securities in the dual listed pair to establish the accuracy of our measurements. The primary question we seek to address is 'Which market would be better to trade to gain exposure to the same (or similar) set of securities or sectors?' We find that trading costs on Shanghai, which might have been lower than Hong Kong, might have become higher leading up to the Connect. What remains to be seen is whether this increase in trading costs is a temporary equilibrium due to the frenzy to gain exposure to Chinese securities or whether this phenomenon will persist once the two markets start becoming more and more tightly coupled. It would be interesting to see if this pioneering policy will lead to securities exchanges across the globe linking up one another, creating a trade anything, anywhere and anytime marketplace. Looking beyond mere trading costs, such studies can be used to gather some evidence on what effect the mode of governance and other aspects of life in one country have on another country, once they start joining up their financial markets.
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Like other regions of the world, academic freedom is on the decline in Africa. While there are some generic factors accounting for this phenomenon worldwide, others are fundamentally unique to the African context. These are related principally to the subject matter of coloniality of higher education on the continent. This study addresses these matters by, among others, discussing the origins of the university in pre-modern Africa and the place of academic freedom in it. This development is followed by the emergence of university education in Europe through the application of the liberal script and which contributed to the sidelining and eventual general demise of higher education institutions with their roots in pre-modern Africa. The work contends that while one may trace the origins of the university/academic freedom to Africa, academic freedom as it stands today is shaped by the liberal script with hardly any reference to the root of higher education in Africa. Therefore, the meaning, understanding and application of academic freedom do not reflect the realities of higher education in Africa. This work proposes the adoption of a relative universalist approach, as opposed to the liberal approach, which is clothed with universality, but in reality, it is a reflection of a European idea of academic freedom. This approach is considered necessary to reflect the African reality of academic freedom which will help to identify effective advocacy tools to promote and protect academic freedom in Africa and thereby make academic freedom more meaningful for application in the region.
Article
In a period of rising threats to constitutional government within countries and among them, it is a crucial time to study the rule of law in transnational context. This article defines core concepts, analyzes the relation of national and international law and institutions from a rule-of-law perspective, and assesses the extent to which rule-of-law practices are shifting at the domestic and international levels in parallel. Part I explains our conceptualization of the rule of law, necessary for the orientation of empirical study and policy responses. Following Martin Krygier, we formulate a teleological conception of the rule of law in terms of goals and practices, which, in turn, calls for an assessment of institutional mechanisms to advance these goals, given varying social conditions and contexts. Part II sets forth the ways in which international law and institutions are important for rule-of-law ends, as well as their pathologies, since power also is exercised beyond the state in an interconnected world. Part III examines empirical indicators of the decline of the rule of law at the national and international levels. It notes factors that could explain such decline, and why such factors appear to be transnationally linked. Part IV discusses what might be done given these shifts in rule-of-law protections. We then conclude, noting the implications of viewing the rule of law in transnational context for conceptual theory, empirical study, and policy response.
Chapter
After a discussion of public policy studies on policy transfer and of sociological approaches to inter-relations among national political fields, I advance a historically and institutionally sensitive field-sociology of policy circulation that coherently integrates those insights and propose analyzing policy circulation through the concepts of informal empire social spaces, national policy fields, international policy strategies and international organizations as-fields. In the empirical moment, I refer to my studies on criminal justice policies in Argentina and Chile to show how those concepts allow dissecting the transnational dynamics of policymaking in the (Latin American) global periphery.
Chapter
Within the stated purview of the United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), and related Multilateral Institutions (MLI) is the facilitation of sustainable development and economic growth, purportedly leading to reductions in global poverty and inequalities. These goals permeate supranational institutions of global governance; their centrality emphasised through agreements such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and propagated through instruments including Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP). This chapter argues, however, that these goals are inherently contradictory, bordering on nonsensical, and that the effect of IMF and WB policy towards the Third World is, contrary to stated aims, the perpetuation of vulnerability for some of the world’s most impoverished people, and the exacerbation of anthropogenic climate breakdown. Third World Debt is inexorably entwined with the colonial encounter, and subsequent centuries of extraction and exploitation legitimised through globalisation. When the IMF and WB mandate SAP in exchange for loans proffered in order to service this debt, Third World states embark upon extensive trade liberalisation, and the privatisation of natural resources and land. The subsequent extractive activity of Transnational Corporations (TNC) and foreign states serves to propagate the cycle of exploitation and environmental depredation, whilst enabling wealthier states to both materially gain from the activity, and offset their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement (PA). This activity is not only sanctioned, but encouraged through a neoliberal policy platform that prioritises economic growth and Western conceptions of development and sustainability above all else. Consequently, Third World peoples, rather than experiencing alleviation from the cycle of debt locked in since the colonial encounter, are rendered further impoverished, bereft, and dependent, severely impeding their ability to mitigate or adapt to the effects of climate breakdown.
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The mushrooming of trade agreements and their interlinkages with environmental governance calls for new research on the trade and environment interface. The more than 700 existing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) include ever more diverse and far-reaching environmental provisions. While missed opportunities remain and harmful provisions persist, numerous environmental provisions in PTAs entail promising potential. They promote the implementation of environmental treaties and cover numerous environmental issues. New concepts, data, and methods, including detailed content analysis across multiple institutions, are needed to explain these interlinkages and understand whether and how PTAs with environmental provisions can contribute to tackling global environmental challenges. Making use of the most extensive coding of environmental provisions in PTAs to date and combining quantitative data with qualitative analyses, this Element provides a comprehensive yet fine-grained picture of the drivers and effects of environmental provisions in PTAs. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
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Los estudios sobre difusión de políticas buscan responder por qué diversos países adoptan una misma política, cómo lo hacen y quiénes participan de ese proceso. Este artículo entrega una revisión de los principales componentes del modelo y de sus fortalezas y debilidades en el ámbito teórico y metodológico. Asimismo, se comentan algunos trabajos que abordan la difusión de políticas públicas y sociales en América Latina. Ello permite destacar sus principales contribuciones y los desafíos emergentes para continuar desarrollando y aplicando el modelo en la región.
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Parties to the Paris Agreement face mounting social pressure to raise their ambition, thereby reducing the gap between individual pledges and collective temperature goals. Although crucial for inciting positive change, especially given that the Paris Agreement lacks an enforcement mechanism, it is also important to consider social pressure’s potential negative unintended consequences. First, it might undermine the Paris Agreement’s celebrated flexibility, which allows countries to design their Nationally Determined Contributions according to domestic conditions and capabilities. Second, it might result in widespread noncompliance by inciting pledges that the countries concerned prove unwilling or even unable to fulfill. Should that happen, confidence in the Paris Agreement and its institutions might falter. Further research is therefore needed to identify the scope conditions for social pressure to work effectively in the domain of international climate policy.
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Given the wide reach of transnational crimes and the illegal flow of money, policing at an international level has become a new frontier for authorities who aim to control these threats. The United States has taken the center stage in this effort ever since the proclamation of the war on drugs and the continuing war on terror by promoting the ‘follow the money’ principle as a fundamental strategy to be adopted worldwide. In this paper, we will focus on US efforts to expand the anti-money laundering agenda and policies to Latin America, mobilizing the policy diffusion approach. By incorporating this thinking tool, we also aim to highlight the United States hegemonic position when establishing agendas and priorities internationally. Therefore, we will trace US official documents describing strategies, practices and policies aimed at promoting anti-money laundering policies in Latin American institutions through coercion, competition, learning and emulation mechanisms. By promoting training events and formulating evaluation mechanisms, the US has stimulated Latin American countries to elaborate their own law enforcement efforts inspired by these same paradigms.
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We look at the Bologna Process as a process of policy diffusion and regional convergence across Western Europe. We focus in particular on the issue of quality assurance in HE because it not only affects the core competence of national decision-making and is a hard case for the impact of soft governance through policy diffusion, but also remains under-researched in the literature. The Bologna Process created a multidimensional architecture of policy diffusion, as its contents need to be translated into subnational levels (e.g. in federal systems) and into individual institutions.First, we review the policy diffusion literature and point out current trends, before defining and exploring other concepts closely linked to diffusion research, which may also help to understand the Bologna Process. We then scope the literature on the Bologna Process and the EHEA and show how both bodies of literature (policy diffusion and Bologna Process research) increasingly relate to each other. Second, we explore how transnational communication can serve as a theoretical framework for examining cross-national vertical as well as horizontal HE policy diffusion in the absence of legally binding agreements. In the empirical section, we outline some basic features of the Bologna Process as a process of policy diffusion before focusing on quality assurance and its diffusion across different countries. To illustrate our arguments, we explore the cases of Germany, France, and Italy, three of the four founding countries of the Bologna Process if counting the 1998 Sorbonne declaration as a pre-condition for the ensuing Bologna Process and the EHEA. In view of the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance, which have further evolved over the past 15 years, we then show how the multidimensional architecture of HE systems across Europe has led to the transnational diffusion of new quality assurance policies into entirely different historical contexts.Our analysis shows that the foundations for quality assurance were set in the 1990s in all three countries, driven largely by domestic problem pressure and a shift towards New Public Management. The Bologna Process then provided the thrust for the further institutionalization and systematization of all three systems. It appears that international policy promotion initially served as the main diffusion mechanism, as the objectives of all systems were largely based on Bologna guidelines. Yet critical differences still exist in the institutional configurations of the systems, which can be explained by both pre-existing institutional peculiarities as well as “differential policy emulation” in the more recent phase. Specifically, we show that diffusion of a primarily bilateral nature is taking place between countries, trigging the transfer of policies and institutions which are not necessarily of Anglo-American inspiration.
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This paper examines the drivers and barriers of urban sustainability policy transfer through a case study in Turkey. We show that increased opportunities for collaboration between the international and local actors, when local demand exists, can encourage municipalities to espouse sustainability discourse and in turn implement sustainable infrastructure projects, breaking institutional inertia. However, we argue these bottom-up attempts have limited transformative impact unless the central government enacts the necessary legislation and regulation to provide local governments with the authority and tools to pursue urban sustainability. These findings provide an important perspective into forces driving the localization of sustainable development goals.
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The dynamics between international organisations’ activity of scriptwriting universalised models and theorising the local effects of such models has been a little studied aspect of world society research. In this paper, we seek to bridge this gap in the existing research. We examine one prominent IO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and its flagship reports, and how the policy proposals promoted therein have changed from the 1960s to the 2010s. Our analysis reveals that from the 1990s onwards the themes addressed proliferate and the language becomes more abstract, while references to other countries’ policies also increase. In parallel, the actual policy proposals aimed at the countries evaluated expand and become more detailed, containing explicit links to national contexts and conditions. We suggest that these changes in the issuing of policy recommendations reflect strategic decisions by the OECD to facilitate the domestication of its reform ideas.
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Global Financial Networked Governance provides a careful analysis of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the standard-setters under its umbrella to show how such government networks harness the power of public reputation to herd their members into compliance. The FSB’s track record in coordinating global financial regulatory reform is uneven. Some items on its agenda have seen the rapid evolution of globally coordinated regulatory standards and their implementation by all member states, sometimes even ahead of the stipulated timelines. In contrast, other initiatives have stalled at different stages of the policymaking process, global coordination is lacking, deadlines have been missed, and it is currently unclear when the post-crisis financial reform project will come to completion, if ever. In this book, the author asks the question: why has the FSB succeeded in some areas of its global financial regulatory coordination work and not in others? The book traces the global policymaking process in three major issue areas: banking regulation (Basel III), over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, and ending too-big-to-fail. Through a combination of careful process tracing and rigorous testing against alternative explanations, it challenges the existing literature by revealing that the institutional pathway of policymaking is the main predictor of FSB progress. It shows that government networks on their own have succeeded in implementing globally coherent safety standards. In contrast, legislation and legislators in key G20 countries have limited the power and effectiveness of the FSB. The author analyzes the causes and effects of this phenomenon and suggests a novel institutional solution to the effectiveness-legitimacy dilemma that global governance forums face, combining the advantages of functional specialization and electoral accountability. This book will be of great interest to graduate students; academics working at the intersection of economics, political science, and international law; students of the FSB in particular; and policymakers in global economic governance.
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The Power of Human Rights (published in 1999) was an innovative and influential contribution to the study of international human rights. At its center was a 'spiral model' of human rights change which described the various socialization processes through which international norms were internalized into the domestic practices of various authoritarian states during the Cold War years. The Persistent Power of Human Rights builds on these insights, extending its reach and analysis. It updates our understanding of the various causal mechanisms and conditions which produce behavioural compliance, and expands the range of rights-violating actors examined to include democratic and authoritarian Great Powers, corporations, guerrilla groups, and private actors. Using a unique blend of quantitative and qualitative research and theory, this book yields not only important new academic insights but also a host of useful lessons for policy-makers and practitioners.
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The Power of Human Rights (published in 1999) was an innovative and influential contribution to the study of international human rights. At its center was a 'spiral model' of human rights change which described the various socialization processes through which international norms were internalized into the domestic practices of various authoritarian states during the Cold War years. The Persistent Power of Human Rights builds on these insights, extending its reach and analysis. It updates our understanding of the various causal mechanisms and conditions which produce behavioural compliance, and expands the range of rights-violating actors examined to include democratic and authoritarian Great Powers, corporations, guerrilla groups, and private actors. Using a unique blend of quantitative and qualitative research and theory, this book yields not only important new academic insights but also a host of useful lessons for policy-makers and practitioners.
Chapter
The Power of Human Rights (published in 1999) was an innovative and influential contribution to the study of international human rights. At its center was a 'spiral model' of human rights change which described the various socialization processes through which international norms were internalized into the domestic practices of various authoritarian states during the Cold War years. The Persistent Power of Human Rights builds on these insights, extending its reach and analysis. It updates our understanding of the various causal mechanisms and conditions which produce behavioural compliance, and expands the range of rights-violating actors examined to include democratic and authoritarian Great Powers, corporations, guerrilla groups, and private actors. Using a unique blend of quantitative and qualitative research and theory, this book yields not only important new academic insights but also a host of useful lessons for policy-makers and practitioners.
Chapter
The Power of Human Rights (published in 1999) was an innovative and influential contribution to the study of international human rights. At its center was a 'spiral model' of human rights change which described the various socialization processes through which international norms were internalized into the domestic practices of various authoritarian states during the Cold War years. The Persistent Power of Human Rights builds on these insights, extending its reach and analysis. It updates our understanding of the various causal mechanisms and conditions which produce behavioural compliance, and expands the range of rights-violating actors examined to include democratic and authoritarian Great Powers, corporations, guerrilla groups, and private actors. Using a unique blend of quantitative and qualitative research and theory, this book yields not only important new academic insights but also a host of useful lessons for policy-makers and practitioners.
Book
In a broadly comparative, historical and quantitative analysis, this study reveals the unity of European electorates and party systems. Investigating thirty countries in Western and Central-Eastern Europe over 150 years of electoral history, the author shows the existence of common alignments and parallel waves of electoral change across the continent. Europeanization appears through an array of indicators including cross-country deviation measures, uniform swings of votes, the correspondence between national arenas and European Parliament, as well as in the ideological convergence among parties of the same families. Based on a painstaking analysis of a large wealth of data, the study identifies the supra-national, domestic and diffusion factors at the origin of Europeanization. Building on previous work on the nationalization of politics, this new study makes the case for Europeanization in historical and electoral perspective, and points to the role of left-right in structuring the European party system along ideological rather than territorial lines. In the classical tradition of electoral and party literature, this book sheds a new light on Europe's democracy.
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Comparative policy analysis is at the heart of research that attempts to understand how policies travel. Most of the literature on policy transfer had been developed using the empirical background of policies migrating within the Global North or from there to developing countries. Studying policies that migrate within the Global South is relevant from a theoretical perspective, insofar as it allows us to identify new dynamics, agents and mechanisms involved in policy transfers. This article analyzes two Brazilian policies that have been diffused around the globe: The Family Allowance Program and the Food Purchase Program. This research explores how these policies have been internationalized and what conditions have facilitated this process. To explain this movement, we combine the study of individuals, domestic and international organizations, political structures and change. We argue that individuals have been fundamental to internationalizing Brazilian policies. They have benefitted from both national and international structures and organizations that have facilitated the diffusion of policies that they have promoted abroad. This study relies on field work carried out in Brazil, Chile and Italy. We use a process-tracing strategy to reconstruct the pathways of diffusion.
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This article illustrates an analytic eclectic value of structure, institution and agency (SIA) framework in comparative public policy. It engages and utilizes certain structural, institutional and agential perspectives from past literature to specify how elements of their causal properties coexist as part of a more complex argument. It argues that desired or preferred policy and/or institutional outcomes are most likely when multiple structural and institutional complementarities (from structures and institutions to agents) and multiple structural, institutional and agential enabling conditions accompany one another in motivating and empowering actors (from agents to structures and institutions) to engage in purposeful agential actions.
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Résumé Ce chapitre propose d’analyser le new public management (NPM) avec une interprétation complémentaire de celles qui l’assimilent à une déclinaison du référentiel de marché. En s’appuyant sur les apports du néo-institutionnalisme sociologique, les auteurs suggèrent que le développement du NPM peut être lu comme une entreprise de rationalisation et de bureaucratisation sous l’effet de la diffusion des techniques de gouvernement par la performance et de « l’agence » comme standard organisationnel. Les déclinaisons concrètes de cette entreprise sont discutées.
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Given the extraordinary politicization of culture in an era of globalization, it is surprising that Sesame Street has gained acceptance and legitimacy in more than fifty countries during the last five decades. Sesame Street’s ubiquity around the world presents us with the question I address in this article: how do partner organizations work together, on the ground, to locally adapt a hybrid cultural product? Using data from real-time interactions between NY staff and partners, I show how teams from different cultures who do not share collective representations are able to create them through transnational interaction by: (1) constructing value to align their interests (2) exchanging complex cultural knowledge to customize and build alliances together. The Sesame Street case, then, allows us to grapple with “culture in interaction” at the transnational level, shedding light on culture in transnational interaction.
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