Policy transfer during the COVID era

The close interconnectivity of political systems has long been the reality. Although states have never been entirely disconnected from one another, cultural, political, economic and technological ties were commonly thought to have rapidly increased as the twentieth century progressed and societal relations were increasingly described as an era of “globalisation”.

The recognition of this interconnectivity led to a growth of interest in policy transfer several decades ago. Policy transfer was commonly taken to be “a process in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions, etc. in one time and/or place is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements and institutions in another time and/or place” (Dolowitz and Marsh 1996, 344).

As the challenges facing societies evolve, however, there are opportunities for the theory and praxis of policy transfer to revisited. Policy transfer has often been a focus of analysis which has been advanced in Policy Studies (Evans 2009; Marsh and Evans 2012; Gauja 2016) and articles in this issue follow in this tradition – with some focussing on the particular challenge posed by COVID. The pandemic laid bare the extent of another axis global interconnectedness, one which had not been as widely considered: the epidemiological.

Policy transfer theory

The first two articles in this issue follow focus on policy transfer theory. Hulicka, Lucas, and Carson (2023) identify the impact that governance types can have on the transfer of policy. They develop a new adaptation of the policy transfer heuristic, which draws attention to different types of multilevel governance systems. They argue that their new adaption, “Policy Transfer Across Governance Systems” (PTAGS) helps to anticipate challenges and opportunities for potential transfer.

Next, Walker (2023) examines the impact of corruption and weak state institutions on policy transfer. His study explores the transfer of a regulatory system from Australia to South Africa. In a different context, the transferred regulatory system needed to undergo significant modification and redesign to achieve similar regulatory effects. Corruption and the strength of state institutions, therefore, matter when policies are transferred. Context matters.

Policy transfer and COVID

If being presented by common challenges is a cause of policy transfer, then the COVID-19 pandemic presented the perfect storm in which policy makers would be likely to be borrowing ideas, knowledge and policies across borders. Across a wide range of policy areas there was evidence of rapid policy learning as the pandemic spread across countries (James, Clark, and Asplund 2023; Lee, Hwang, and Moon 2020; Zaki and Wayenberg 2021). We might expect considerable convergence in policy responses to deal with the same epidemiological problem.

Zahariadis et al. (2023) explore why countries responded differently when facing the pandemic. They investigate the effects of policy styles by examining the responses in Greece and Sweden. They argue that political trust and policy styles played a critical role in creating divergent responses.

Peci, González, and Dussauge-Laguna (2023) examine the narratives that political leaders adopted towards the pandemic in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. Importantly, these narratives had significant effects on the design of policy responses because they often sidelined, leveraged, or limited the role of scientific expertise in policy responses. Political leadership is, therefore, another factor shaping policy transfer.

What worked? Shafi and Mallinson (2023) undertake quantitative analysis to map the effects of policy responses and COVID-19 outcomes across 160 countries. They found that income support and debt relief policies were associated with a reduction in the rate of COVID-19 deaths. Broad policy interventions were also associated with a short-term reduction in death rates.

One common policy adopted during the pandemic to prevent the spread of the disease was school closures. Giuliani (2023) evaluates the effectiveness of school closures as an anti-COVID policy in Italy – finding it to be an effective method in reducing the number of cases.

Digital Contact Tracing (DCT) tools were another mechanism that was commonly used by governments during the pandemic. Sideri and Prainsack (2023) argue that the use of these tools raised important governance questions about the use of data-driven tools to improve public health purposes in times of crisis. They are that greater public deliberation could have alleviated and even prevented some of the problems experienced with the use of DCTs.

Policy transfer, therefore, remains an important tool for policymakers to be able to share practices and policies to solve societal problems – and the articles in this issue hope to provide practical solutions. But the research also shows that there are multiple barriers to transferring and implementing policies in new settings. Policies cannot always be easily transferred from one society to another without some adaptation – and there are often deeply political and cultural barriers to transfer. Put another way, policy studies matter.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Toby S. James

Toby S. James is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of East Anglia, UK. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Policy Studies.