Opposition “strategy mobility” – a dimension still missing in the critical policy mobility literature

ABSTRACT Critical policy mobility research has transformed the field of policy transfer and diffusion studies. Scholars from critical epistemological traditions in different disciplines such as geography, sociology, political economy and public policy have examined the politics of policy transfer for more than a decade. Apart from challenging the affirmative normative assumptions underlying traditional policy transfer research (“policy learning”), scholars have taken a wide variety of policy actors and agencies into account, considered South-South and South-North policy circulation and recognized the relevance of policy mutation and failure. While transnational actors involved in policy mobility and issues of global governance have moved higher on the agenda in the recent past, opposition forces and resistance to policy mobility organized across borders remain on the margins. A new focus on opposition “strategy mobility” is required to address actors and agencies that aim to roll back past policy mobility processes, or to prevent new efforts to promote policy transfers. Examples from diverse and highly contested policy areas like gender, climate mitigation and public health serve to illustrate the innovative potential of a new focus on strategy mobility to enhance the understanding of the contested character of policy mobility, and to yield a new perspective of global policy conflict studies.