Internationalized Policy Environments and Policy Network Analysis (original) (raw)
The importance of horizontal coordinating governance arrangements in the internationalized policy domains that occur more frequently in the present globalizing era justi®es building further on middle-level theories that draw on the policy community/ policy network concepts. This reconceptualization, however, requires an explicit integration of policy paradigms and political ideas into policy community theory and careful attention to the dierential impact of varying governance patterns in internationalized policy domains. This article pursues these objectives beginning with a review of existing literature on policy communities and policy networks. Next, drawing on recent research on policy paradigms and political ideas, it suggests how policy community concepts might be adapted for the study of policy change. Four types of internationalized policy environments are then identi®ed and their implications for policy communities and policy networks are assessed. The article concludes by introducing the concept of policy community mediators and discussing how they might shape the relationships among multiple policy communities.
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
Related papers
Global Public Policy, Transnational Policy Communities and their Networks
Public policy has been a prisoner of the word “state.” Yet, the state is reconfigured by globalization. Through “global public–private partnerships” and “transnational executive networks,” new forms of authority are emerging through global and regional policy processes that coexist alongside nation-state policy processes. Accordingly, this article asks what is “global public policy”? The first part of the article identifies new public spaces where global policies occur. These spaces are multiple in character and variety and will be collectively referred to as the “global agora.” The second section adapts the conventional policy cycle heuristic by conceptually stretching it to the global and regional levels to reveal the higher degree of pluralization of actors and multiple-authority structures than is the case at national levels. The third section asks: who is involved in the delivery of global public policy? The focus is on transnational policy communities. The global agora is a public space of policymaking and administration, although it is one where authority is more diffuse, decision making is dispersed and sovereignty muddled. Trapped by methodological nationalism and an intellectual agoraphobia of globalization, public policy scholars have yet to examine fully global policy processes and new managerial modes of transnational public administration
Global public policy, transnational policy communities and the shaping of governance
2008
Public policy has been a prisoner of the word "state." Yet, the state is reconfigured by globalization. Through "global public-private partnerships" and "transnational executive networks," new forms of authority are emerging through global and regional policy processes that coexist alongside nation-state policy processes. Accordingly, this article asks what is "global public policy"? The first part of the article identifies new public spaces where global policies occur. These spaces are multiple in character and variety and will be collectively referred to as the "global agora." The second section adapts the conventional policy cycle heuristic by conceptually stretching it to the global and regional levels to reveal the higher degree of pluralization of actors and multiple-authority structures than is the case at national levels. The third section asks: who is involved in the delivery of global public policy? The focus is on transnational policy communities. The global agora is a public space of policymaking and administration, although it is one where authority is more diffuse, decision making is dispersed and sovereignty muddled. Trapped by methodological nationalism and an intellectual agoraphobia of globalization, public policy scholars have yet to examine fully global policy processes and new managerial modes of transnational public administration.
International Policy Networks and Basic Social Needs: Shaping Global Social Policy
International relations literature has frequently called attention to international policy networks and their influence on policy-making. Other literature has pointed to networks such as epistemic communities, knowledge networks, and advocacy coalitions within different fields and dimensions of global social policy. In this paper, we assess and compare the role of different kinds of networks in global social policy with a particular focus on their contributions to basic social needs.
International Dimensions and Dynamics of Policy-Making
The days when policy researchers could count upon domestic politics and society to contribute sufficient data for a satisfactory analysis are now a memory. Whether policy researchers are prepared to enter another analytical universe or not, the accelerating flow of ideas, information, goods and money across national borders has affected the nature of policy problems, reshaped the attempts to engage these problems and thus reoriented the way in which explanations of policy-making can be productively pursued. The big questions that animate policy studies may not have changed, but the available data and the concepts needed to analyze them have been shifting. This paper will seek to connect these emerging global dynamics to long recognized drivers of policy-making and present a conceptual framework that can help in understanding the resulting interactions. Enhancing the linkage between theoretical frameworks that have informed international relations and public policy concepts promises a better understanding of policy-making in a volatile universe. This paper will consider the value of applying a network perspective on understanding global influences through four stages of consideration. Initially it will examine the concept of globalization and briefly assess the implications that it raises for studying policy-making. Next, the paper will turn to the literature on policy communities and policy networks to highlight tools that can be used in assessing global influences on policy subsystems. Then, it will consider the concept of policy paradigms and contemplate the role that ideational influences play in modulating global impacts on policy. Finally, a fourfold typology of internationalized policy environments will be presented, in order to illuminate how particular configurations of policy communities and networks can refract the global influences on governance. In conclusion, the dynamic role of policy community mediators in trying to steer subsystem responses to global forces will briefly be considered.
Transnational policy networks appear to be an attractive common subject for both Comparative Politics and International Relations, if we are interested into the consequences of globalisation on public policy-making capacities. This paper focuses on the confrontation between approaches which propose these networks as a new (global) governance instrument and a more critical analytical perspective. Departing from a theoretical model which analyses transnational policy networks as inter-organisational resource exchanges, empirical illustrations focus on international organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, since these organisations play a core role within most transnational (or: global) policy networks. The article concludes that transnational policy networks are only relevant under very specific empirical conditions, depending on their embeddedness in different institutional and structural contexts. Furthermore, transnational policy networks raise important questions of democratic legitimacy and accountability.
The Group of 20 transnational policy community: governance networks, policy analysis and think tanks
International Review of Administrative Sciences, 2015
The G20 is an evolving international institution. Aided by both advances in information technology and support from home governments, a number of knowledge actors and networks seek to influence global economic governance with policy analysis and advice. This article assesses the international G20 think tank network called Think20 and the policy advocacy of private research institutes (such the Lowy Institute in Australia and the Centre for International Governance and Innovation in Canada) which are in the orbit of the G20 policy community. Think20 assists the global economic governance processes of the G20 by developing ‘coordinative discourses’ for policy development and implementation. Points for practitioners Ideas matter but ideas that imply major policy reform and innovation need to be made to matter if they are to direct government action. Networks provide one mechanism to broadcast and disseminate ‘communicative discourses’ to many different publics – local as well as global...
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.