Abstract
Gauging the nature and extent of influence from ‘above the state’ decision-making processes on the nation state is at the centre of contemporary public policy debates. In recent years, public policy theorising has undergone a ‘turn’ to the transnational sphere and, increasingly, borrows from the toolbox of constructivism to better account for values, ideas and norms. The conceptual language of ‘global governance’ has gained currency with the growing recognition of the steady diffusion of decision-making processes that are directly or indirectly beholden to the determinations of a multitude of non-domestic interests, such as private enterprise, civil society groups, IGOs, neighbouring states and international standards committees. This is now described by Diane Stone as the global ‘agora’ (2015) in which the fates of publics around the world are increasingly determined not by locally-elected officials, but by ambiguous politicking and bargaining in international fora. Yet it remains poorly understood by those publics and, further, frequently by scholars too. Here, I offer a remedial exploration of policy transfer, developing a theoretical framework from the case study set out in later chapters.
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Legrand, T. (2021). Theorising the Architecture of Transgovernmental Policy Networks. In: The Architecture of Policy Transfer. Studies in the Political Economy of Public Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55821-5_3
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