Policy transfer during the COVID era

The close interconnectivity of political systems has long been the reality. Although states have never been entirely disconnected from one another, cultural, political, economic and technological ties were commonly thought to have rapidly increased as the twentieth century progressed and societal relations were increasingly described as an era of “globalisation”. The recognition of this interconnectivity led to a growth of interest in policy transfer several decades ago. Policy transfer was commonly taken to be “a process in which knowledge about policies, administrative arrangements, institutions, etc. in one time and/or place is used in the development of policies, administrative arrangements and institutions in another time and/or place” (Dolowitz and Marsh 1996, 344). As the challenges facing societies evolve, however, there are opportunities for the theory and praxis of policy transfer to revisited. Policy transfer has often been a focus of analysis which has been advanced in Policy Studies (Evans 2009; Marsh and Evans 2012; Gauja 2016) and articles in this issue follow in this tradition – with some focussing on the particular challenge posed by COVID. The pandemic laid bare the extent of another axis global interconnectedness, one which had not been as widely considered: the epidemiological.