Understanding the transfer of policy failure: Bricolage, experimentalism and translation

Abstract

This article re-assesses some of the literature on policy transfer and policy diffusion in light of ideas as to what constitutes failure, partial failure or limited success. First, the article looks at imperfect, incomplete or uninformed transfer processes as one locus of policy failures. Second, it addresses the concept of ‘negative lesson-drawing’ as well as the role of interlocutors who complicate policy transfer processes between A and B. Third, the idea of ‘transfer’ as a neat linear transmission of an intact policy approach or tool is criticised by drawing attention to the extensiveness of hybridity, synthesis, adaptation and ‘localisation’. Finally, the article concludes that policy ‘translation’ is a better conceptual framework for comprehending and valorising the learning and policy innovations that come with the trial and error inherent in policy-making. This entails an abandonment of perceptions of one-way linear processes of country ‘A’ sending policy to ‘B’ that characterises many policy transfer approaches to a stronger analytical focus on importing countries that translate policies.