Elite, exclusive and elusive: transgovernmental policy networks and iterative policy transfer in the Anglosphere

ABSTRACT

The prominent corridor of bilateral policy transfer between Australia and the UK is underpinned by a long-standing cultural and political proximity. While ad hoc cases of transfer have in recent years been the subject to concerted attention from transfer theorists, much less attention has been given to the rise of multilateral, or transgovernmental, policy networks based on similar cultural and political amity amongst the ‘Anglosphere’ group of states including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US. Populated by policy elites and regularly interacting, these networks represent potentially important modes of policy transfer yet little is known about how they operate, with what purposes or what outcomes. This article therefore sets out research findings that offer an insight into 23 identified networks, suggesting that understanding the emergence of these networks are crucial to explaining any bilateral transfer between Anglosphere states in general, and specifically Australia and the UK. The article contends that a consideration of these networks provides insight into (i) the substantive landscape of Anglosphere policy learning and collaboration, (ii) the attendant dynamics of collaborative policy networks as elite, elusive and exclusive and (iii) iterative policy transfers.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy transfer
• transgovernmentalism
• policy networks
• transnationalism
• policy learning
• Anglosphere
• UK
• Australia

Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the constructive advice and feedback from two anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of this paper, and the thoughtful critique offered by Rob Manwaring and participants of the workshop, ‘Policy Transfer: From Blair-Brown to Rudd-Gillard’ at the Institute for Governance and Public Administration at the University of Canberra in February 2015.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Tim Legrand is Lecturer in the National Security College, Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.

Notes

1. Though see Manwaring (2015) for alternative account of non-transfer between Australia and the UK.

2. A network is defined where: (i) there is an ongoing relationship between members; between (ii) more than two member states.

3. Information on the networks was gleaned from a set of 10 ‘Chatham House’ interviews conducted with Australian, Canadian, UK and US policy officials between 2012 and 2015. These interviewees were selected on the basis that they had participated in one or more of the identified networks as support staff or as one of the ‘elite’ participants in the transgovernmental networks identified in Table 1.

4. That is, according to Mossberger and Wolman, policy transfer analysis should

provide information and guidelines to policy makers on how they should engage in policy transfer as prospective policy evaluation […] as a means of improving their ability to predict the effect of a policy before it is put in place. (2003, 430; see also, David Dolowitz’s A Policy-Makers Guide to Policy Transfer (2003))

5. For the purposes of this overview, I will concentrate on the updated (2004) model, but also draw from 1999 article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Institute of Public Administration Australia/University of Canberra Public Administration Research Trust Fund.