Abstract
This paper analyses the capacity of the South–South cooperation model (SSC) to facilitate policy transfer between countries, as opposed to North–South cooperation modalities. To this end, the nature and evolution of SSC, and especially its horizontality, and the changes in the policy transfer (PT) actors, are analysed with reference to what is being transferred. It is assumed that the nature of developed SSC models, and the inequality of positioning policies in the global policy market, affect the content of what is transferred and limit the capacities of SSC to transfer policy models between countries in the South. The empirical contrast is made through the analysis of the Programme EUROsociAL II, which has transferred knowledge for social cohesion policies in Latin America through horizontal and vertical models.
Résumé
Cet article analyse la capacité du modèle de coopération Sud-Sud à faciliter le transfert de politiques entre les pays, par opposition aux modalités de coopération Nord-Sud. À cette fin, la nature et l’évolution de la coopération Sud-Sud, et en particulier son caractère horizontal, et les changements au niveau des acteurs du transfert de politique (TP), sont analysés par rapport à ce qui est transféré. On suppose que la nature des modèles développés de coopération Sud-Sud et l’inégalité dans le positionnement des politiques sur le marché politique mondial affectent le contenu de ce qui est transféré et limitent les capacités de la coopération Sud-Sud à transférer des modèles politiques entre les pays du Sud. Le contraste empirique est fait par le biais de l’analyse du programme EUROsociAL II, qui a transféré des connaissances pour des politiques de cohésion sociale en Amérique latine à travers des modèles horizontaux et verticaux.
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Notes
According to AECID (2014), cooperation modalities are the general options available to donors for channelling and delivering aid funds.
In general, when referring to development studies, including those analysing development cooperation, reference is made both to the enormous production generated by international organisations or public think tanks, especially UN agencies or OECD, and to the analyses deployed from disciplines such as international relations or economics. For a brief review of this, see Malacalza (2020) or Andrews and Bawa (2014). For the specific field of SSC analyses, in addition to those generated in the Anglo-Saxon sphere, which focus primarily on the analysis of cases in Asia and Africa (Mawdsley 2012; Bry 2017, among others), those generated in the Ibero-American context and which focus mainly on the analysis of Latin American countries as new donors (Ayllón 2013; Surasky 2020; Santander 2011; Xalma and Rivero 2020, among others) are particularly useful for the purposes of this paper.
Although studies connecting the two approaches are rare, a good exception to this premise is offered by the studies on dissemination and transfer that are being carried out in Brazil, specifically through institutions such as CEBRAP and networks such as the Global Platform on International Public Policies (https://policydiffusion.com/about-gpipp).
According to the AECID (2014, p. 24) “Technical Cooperation can be defined as the set of activities financed by a donor country aimed at knowledge transfer for the strengthening of institutional and human resource capacities in the different areas of the partner country”. The Ibero-American Programme for South-South Cooperation defines horizontal cooperation as "cooperation established voluntarily by the provider country or countries and the requesting country, without imposing conditions and/or trade policies" (SEGIB 2014).
An analysis of the debate on the relationship between SSC and North–South cooperation and the challenge posed by the former to the latter goes beyond the scope of this paper. The differences between those who consider SSC as a real challenge to the structures of global development and those who distrust both the interests of Southern elites to accommodate those of the North, and the strategies of the North to co-opt these processes, also have an impact on the different conceptualisations of SSC (Gray and Gills 2016, p. 558). For analytical purposes, the countries not belonging to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) are considered as Southern donors, while those countries of the DAC form part of the Northern category; more operationally, for the analysis of the case, the Southern countries will be the Latin American ones, while the Northern ones will be the European ones. For a conceptual analysis, see SEGIB (2014) or Mawdsley (2012).
This study deals mainly with the processes of transfer, not diffusion, in the sense proposed by Porto and Pimenta (2017, p. 19).
It should be recalled, according to Pomeroy et al. (2020, p. 2445) that SSC is not the same as policy transfer according to south-south or horizontal schemes. In other words, policy transfer does not always involve international cooperation actors and is not always motivated by the logic of cooperation.
Under this Programme, an action, also called an accompanying path, is a set of technical cooperation activities aimed at supporting a given policy or policy reform process.
It was created within the framework of the Summit of the Heads of State and Government in Guadalajara.
A little later, the EU opted for triangular cooperation as a priority modality for its cooperation with Latin America, which is why the Adelante Programme was created, aimed precisely at supporting triangular cooperation initiatives with Latin America https://www.adelante-i.eu. In fact, in theory, all the actions that the programme itself defined as South-South would be included in the category of triangular cooperation, while the programme’s contribution is European (López and Paez 2016).
The examples in this area could be numerous: the Spanish Tax Agency, transferring policies to modernise the tax administration, or the CGPJ with policies to tackle gender violence, not only transferred the model but also generated incentives for their own cadres.
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Ramos-Rollón, M. Modalities of Cooperation and Policy Transfer: The Case of the European Programme for Social Cohesion in Latin America—EUROsociAL II. Eur J Dev Res 34, 806–827 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-021-00391-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-021-00391-3