Aplicaciones de la química supramolecular

Though some of the assumptions embedded in the policy transfer concept are still under discussion, several authors have proceeded further by developing theoretical frameworks and models intended to guide their analyzes and to support decision-makers involved in transfer processes.

A first framework was proposed by Dolowitz and Marsh in 1996 (p.344) and improved in 2000 (p.8). In its final version, their model consisted of a series of questions both describing and structuring the policy transfer process in all its main dimensions. The seven questions to be answered were:

• Why do actors engage in policy transfer?

• Who are the key actors involved in the policy transfers process?

• What is transferred?

• From where are lessons drawn?

• What are the different degrees of transfer?

• What restricts or facilitates the policy transfer process?

• How is the process of policy transfer related to policy “success” or policy

“failure”?

The authors justified their approach as a suitable way to understand better the transfer process, viewed as a key element of the analysis with irrelevance of considering policy transfer the dependent (a process that has to be explained) or the independent variable (an explanatory variable of policy change).

Page (2000, pp.3-7) referred to this kind of framework as “the very basic questions of who, what, why, where and how policy transfer takes place” and enriched it with some relevant considerations:

• Who – Agents of policy transfer (continuum from individuals to organizations)

• What – Variable, several categorizations exist

• When – The concept of policy transfer says little about the time period. Transfer is not necessarily based on a single act.

• Why – The question includes several dimensions: coercive/voluntary transfer; the circumstances under which a country borrows from another; the type of objective pursued by the transfer; the exporter country selection.

• How - The question is only valid if the importer can exert choice. The process can be diffuse and multifaceted, perhaps even unconscious on the part of those involved. Which are the preconditions that foster the transfer of innovations?

How is demand for transfer induced?

Page also remarked that the full series of questions can be seen both from a descriptive viewpoint (like a framework intended to describe transfer as a mean to highlight the policy-making process) or a normative viewpoint (like a framework intended to set the conditions that should drive the policy transfer process in a particular country).

Though recognizing that the prime object of this framework is to improve knowledge about decision-making processes, Page (2000, p.2) insisted in the practical implications of correctly understanding the process. In its own words, the theoretical framework should help to define “which ways of transferring policies and practices are better or worse than others”.

Other scholars selected another approach to the problem, preferring to narrow the policy transfer concept through the adoption of some simplifying assumptions and gain in its operationalization. We could say that by doing so they focused on policy transfer as a dependent variable that needed to be explained in some of its dimensions (and not all).

Evans and Davies (1999, p.361) built their framework on the Rose’s definition which saw transfer as “an action-oriented intentional activity that takes place within a multi-organizational setting” – that takes place consciously and results in policy action. In doing so, they explicitly renounced to other dimensions of policy transfer as those related to the general diffusion of knowledge, its application to intra-organizational situations or its temporal dimension. Rooted in this conceptualization, the authors developed their framework, which identified three levels in the nature of policy transfer:

the global / transnational / international level; the macro-state level and the interorganizational level.

On the one hand, they focused on the impact that structural processes external to the transfer process could have upon the context, strategies, intentions and actions of the agents directly involved in it. They relied on the structuration theory developed by Wendt³⁷ and proposed to describe the action of external processes on agents through changes in exogenous and endogenous structures (Fig. 38). On the other hand, they analyzed the transfer processes at the interorganizational level employing the notion of

37 Wendt describes social systems as the interaction and mutual determination between “structures” (i.e.

sets of internally related elements which occupy a position within a social organization - practices, technologies, ideologies, territories, etc.) and “agents” (Wendt, 1987, quoted in Evans and Davies, 1999, p.370).

policy transfer networks³⁸ as the mean to connect different levels of spatiality. They proposed twelve stages on the policy transfer process, all of which could be understood in the light of the development of policy transfer networks (Fig. 39).

Fig. 38: Conceptual diagram of the action of external processes as defined by Evans and Davies (1999)

Source: Evans and Davies, 1999, p. 372

Fig. 39: Conceptual diagram of the process of voluntary transfer as defined by Evans and Davies (1999)

Source: Evans and Davies, 1999, p. 377

38 Evans and Davies develop the concept of policy transfer network as a notion able to integrate previous literatures on policy networks, and epistemic communities (knowledge communities formed by experts sharing certain beliefs).

The framework resulting from the combination of both schemes understands transfer as a process happening in an interorganizational level that is framed by external processes happening at superior levels (global / transnational / international level and macro-state level). Therefore it provides a more structured basis for analyzing the interdependences and interactions arising between different levels at the occasion of policy transfer processes.

Lodge (2003, pp.160-162) proposes a framework based on an institutional perspective, which assumes that policy transfer do not constitute rational decision-making in terms of a complete evaluation of all possible policy options. Accordingly, the policy transfer process has to be conceived as “limited searches for templates that appear more legitimate, appropriate, or successful”³⁹. The selection and adoption of templates is conceived as dependent upon institutional mechanisms, as institutions are in relation with other policy environments (thus able to incorporate practices from other domains) and are able to provide legitimacy to the process.

Lodge applied this framework to the regulatory reforms in the railway domain in Britain and Germany in order to assess the impact of three different institutional factors in the process: the presence of coercive pressures, the organization of the political – administrative nexus and the impact of societal actors.

Mossberger and Wolman (2004, p.430) also adopted a restricted view of the policy transfer concept in order to enhance its practical consideration in day-to-day situations.

In fact, they suggested to assimilate cross-national policy transfer to a specific type of prospective policy evaluation⁴⁰. By doing so, they clearly placed the policy transfer concept in the sphere of policy-making. Once “brought down to earth” the concept, the authors focused their attention on the practical methodology that should be followed by decision-makers in order to succeed in a policy transfer process.

They first hypothesized a perfectly rational approach to policy transfer made of three distincted steps: 1) Awareness (an adequate information search in both scope and accuracy); 2) Assessment (with particular regard to the similarity of problems and goals between the policies examined, their performance in their original contexts and the differences in settings between the exporter and importer contexts); and 3) Application.

Then, they tested their approach against seventeen documented cases of policy transfer, noting the difficulties to match perfect rationality with the case studies in al the three steps. Finally, the authors admitted the impossibility of explaining real cases under a

39 The author notes as well that “policies are attractive not necessarily for performance reasons, but for their ideational content as policy instruments”.

40 Defined by the authors as the policy-makers’ attempts to assess the effect of a policy or program before it is put in place (Mossberger and Wolman, 2004, p.430).

perfectly rational approach, and suggested the use of several “rationally-bounded techniques”, such as directed search strategies for the first phase or heuristics for decision-making.

Even more practical approaches to policy transfer have been developed in order to provide guidance to policy-makers. Some of them are briefly referred next.

The Centre for Management and Policy Studies of the United Kingdom (CMPS) launched a project in 2000 intended to develop a methodology (a “toolkit”) to learn about and apply successful policies from abroad, as a way to improve the effectiveness of domestic policy-making. They ended up by describing policy transfer as a two-phase process, the first concerned with learning about another country’s policies or programs, and the second with learning from another country’s policies or programs (Fig. 40). The whole transfer process could happen at any stage of the policy-making process, depending on the problem to be addressed.

Fig. 40: Conceptual diagram of the policy transfer process as defined by the CMPS (2002)

Source: Wyatt and Grimmeisen, 2002, p.2

The toolkit developed a five-step framework for policy transfer: 1) Scanning (surveying developments in a range of countries); 2) Selecting (one or more examples for detailed study); 3) Understanding (mapping the key elements of the chosen example); 4) Assessing (assess the relevance of the example to a different policy environment); 5) Recommending (recommend on the basis of the evidence: modify the policy or reject it if necessary) (Wyatt and Grimmeisen, 2002, pp.2-5).

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) has devoted particular attention to the sharing of information and knowledge on innovation in government. Within this focus, it has promoted discussion among experts on the approaches and methodologies for the transfer of best practices in governance and public

administration.

Building on the experience gained from a series of pilot transfers in Asia, Sing Chahl (2006, pp.124-130) identifies four steps in the transfer of innovations: 1) Matching demand with supply (the main actor is the intermediary); 2) Defining the scope of the transfer (the intermediary acts as a broker between the two parties); 3) Adapting the innovation to local conditions (the intermediary’s role is that of a facilitator); and 4) Actual implementation of the transfer and its evaluation (the intermediary is an evaluator). In view of the real cases examined, he strongly recommends the elaboration of a mission statement able to define the key elements of a transfer: information dissemination and exchange, roles and responsibilities of actors/stakeholders, recognition of the innovation as a matched solution to the problem, education and adaptation, implementation plan, transfer (including a pilot demonstration) and follow-up.

The European Commission has focused its attention on policy transfer and policy learning as “soft” instruments able to improve governance and reinforce the Community action in some fields where “hard” instruments like legislation are not available. These tools have been included in the Open Method of Coordination, a framework for encouraging cooperation and the exchange of best practice in policy-making across European institutions (EC, 2001b, pp.21-22).

Among the several research projects undertaken to define such a coordination framework, the PREVALET project sought to develop a model for undertaking policy learning and transfer at the regional level. The model was called “soft open method of coordination”, and distinguished two stages: the policy learning stage and the policy transfer stage. The whole process was broken down into the following steps (Federighi et al. 2007, pp.9-10):

• Policy learning

o Institutional motivation (definition of the reasons that cause governments to learn from others)

o Selection of the pathway for policy learning (definition of the type of relation to be established among institutional partners)

o Selection and analysis of measures (identification of the subjects to be studied in view of a possible transfer)

o Evaluation and adaptation of measures (evaluation of the policy measures from the viewpoint of transferring them to the destination country)

• Policy transfer

o Creation of institutional conditions for transfer (creation of the desire for change)

o Choice of the process for the transfer (activation of the decision-making process whereby transfer becomes possible)

o Decision-making process of the transfer

o Implementation of the transfer (introduction as an experimental procedure)

o Institutionalisation and follow-up (adoption of the innovation)

Similar schemes have also been developed in Europe to guide the increasing activity of policy learning and transfer across cities in the fields of housing, transport and urban development and renewal (Stead et al. 2008, p.62).

A good example of these initiatives in the field of transport is found in the METEOR project, an accompanying measure of the EC CIVITAS program for sustainability of European Cities⁴¹. The aim of the project was to monitor, evaluate and disseminate the results of transport policies implemented in the 19 cities participating in CIVITAS, with a special focus on the transferability of measures.

The project defined transferability as “the ability to transfer/adopt in a given city successful measures previously adopted elsewhere, and achieve comparable results”, and sought to identify the conditions for transferability of measures within the studied cities - i.e. the conditions of applicability or context variables required for achieving comparable results (Macário et al. 2004 quoted in Macário et al. 2006, p.3).

The project identified four stages in the transfer process: 1) Demonstration, where a best practice is identified in the originator city; 2) Transferability, where the compatibility of the best practice in the receptor city is appraised; 3) Assessment, where specific barriers to change and factors of success are identified; and 4) Implementation, where the good practice is implemented in the receptor city. Moreover, it proposed 10 steps for transferring the CIVITAS’ measures: 1) Diagnostic of the problems; 2) Characterization of the city; 3) Analysis of the city context and implications of problems identified; 4) Search for similar contexts; 5) Selecting examples of source urban contexts; 6) Identify measures with potential for transferring; 7) Packaging and dimensioning the measures for transferring; 8) Ex-ante assessment of measures to

41 The CIVITAS Initiative was first launched by DGTREN from 2002 to 2005. It included the participation of 19 European cities in testing and implementing measures to achieve the objective of cleaner and better transport. They implemented a total of 212 measures on sustainable transport that contributed to relevant improvements of transport in many of them.

transfer; 9) Identify need for adjustment; and 10) Implement measures and steer results (METEOR Consortium, 2006, pp.75-76).

The project concluded that the most important driver for succeeding in a transferability process is the ability to adequately replicate the context, namely physical, cultural and institutional conditions. It also suggested the convenience of clustering different measures in order to improve their acceptability in the recipient city.

A part from European initiatives, it is also possible to find national and regional initiatives in the field of transport policy transfer. One interesting example is the study

“Transferability of Best Practice in Transport Policy Delivery”, commissioned by the Scottish Executive to identify best practices among a number of European regions and cities and assess its potential implementation in Scotland (Colin Buchanan and Partners, 2003).

The methodology adopted to assess the effectiveness of best practices if transferred to Scotland sought to identify success factors in the original practices and the ideal pre-conditions accompanying them. Then, it compared these prepre-conditions with the Scottish case, deriving appropriate conclusions on the transferability of the practices. This methodology allowed to identify some key barriers to transfers, mainly the financial costs, the organizational cost of setting up new organizations and transferring powers to them or the need of legislative changes. The study also suggested the convenience of implementing tests in small parts of the territory.

4.3.4.2 Conclusions on the analytical framework and models

The review of the frameworks proposed by the literature undertaken in the previous section allows to obtain some preliminary conclusions that could be relevant for the definition of a policy transfer framework.

Though not extensive, the review provides examples for each level of detail, ranging from purely theoretical frameworks deduced from the conceptualization of transfer to frameworks induced from a number of practical cases. Thus, they are not likely to provide a unique and consistent lesson but various lessons that can be useful at different stages of the framework-building process.

Highly conceptual frameworks, like the ones proposed by Dolowitz and Marsh and Page seem to be oriended to further develop the notion of policy transfer through the provision of some theoretical specifications. Most of the conclusions that can be drawn from them are similar to the points already noted when discussing the development of the concept, as they regard the nature of the key issues that should be defined when building a framework (e.g. actors, object, source, coercion, rationality, etc.)

The frameworks proposed by Evans and Davies and Lodge are more precise in their

determinations and provide interesting refinements that should be taken into consideration when defining aspects such as rationality, coercion or preconditions in a policy transfer framework.

The multi-level approach to transfer suggested by Evans and Davies represents a valuable structure for the analysis of the successive influence of external and internal processes through the international, national and domestic levels. This influence can be understood in terms of coercion (as it limits the range of action of the actors involved at each level), but also in terms of bounded rationality (as the external influences may limit the range of knowledge available to the actors involved) or preconditions (as these ranges may be very dissimilar in importer and exporter jurisdictions).

The institutional approach suggested by Lodge fits well in such a scheme, as the limitations framing the search for templates to transfer are to be found in the transversal role of institutions,which are able to exert their influence through different levels or policy domains.

When we move into more experimental frameworks, arising from theoretical propositions but then tested against a number of cases, the lessons regard the contents that should be included in the framework. The examination of the samples seem to suggest three issues common to many of them, if not to all.

The first issue regards the open refusal of comprehensive rationality, which finds support on the evidence of the strong requirements embedded in this assumption (e.g.

searching and assessing all the potential policies to transfer, conducting a complete assessment and identification of the potential implementation difficulties, etc.) and on the evidence of the heavy dependency of transfer on the more general political situation and decision-making process. This coincidence in the negative evaluation of the perfect rationality hypothesis seems to discard it for consideration in a policy transfer framework.

The second issue concerns the identification of the main stages of the policy transfer process. Although the frameworks examined suggest a different number of steps, it is possible to find three phases or stages common to all of them: an information phase, an evaluation/adaptation phase and finally a decision/implementation phase. As in the previous case, this coincidence seems to suggest that the proposition of a new framework should at least include these three stages.

The third issue is related to the process of constructing a model as a mean to work with different policies in terms of comparison between them, identification of preconditions, prospective assessment of their success or adaptation. This model is based on a set of synthesis and mapping procedures that are usually applied at the end of the information phase. When defining a new framework, this construction of a model should be kept

actively in mind, with a particular attention to two aspects: its capacity to enhance the focus on the main issues to be addressed and the risk of over-simplification, that could jeopardize the whole process.