Fraternal foreign policy transfer? Evaluating the case of Australian Labor and British Labour

ABSTRACT

The literature on policy transfer and policy diffusion is vast, but analysis of how this operates in the domain of foreign policy is limited. Is there evidence that policy-related knowledge and ideas in the foreign policy realm are transferred between jurisdictions? This article addresses this question in the context of the relationship between two fraternal social democratic parties – the British Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party. It focuses on the period between 2006 and 2010, which covers Kevin Rudd’s assumption of the Labor leadership and his first term as Prime Minister and the transition from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown in June 2007. Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministership was terminated in a party room coup in June 2010 while Gordon Brown led the British Labour Party to electoral defeat one month earlier. The article investigates three prominent areas of foreign policy – regional engagement, climate change, and aid and international development – to evaluate the extent of policy transfer and diffusion between the Rudd and Brown Governments. Using the ‘degrees of transfer’ framework outlined by Dolowitz and Marsh, it finds that emulation, policy combinations, and inspiration all featured but that there was scant evidence of complete transfer.     

How does policy advice of the international monetary fund differ along the income of advised countries?

ABSTRACT

The policy advice literature has paid little attention to the role of international organizations in policy advisory systems. This article offers a systematic analysis of policy advice provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the framework of the IMF’s regular Article IV consultations. The article argues that the content of IMF advice differs according to the income of the advised countries. Content analyses of the Article IV consultation reports of 18 countries show correlations between the gross national income (GNI) of the advised countries and the function of advice in the policy cycle, the specificity of advice, the recommended policy instruments and the targeted policy issues. Results show that the IMF rather points to policy problems, advices on policy goals and focuses on improving implementation when advising lower income countries. When advising higher income countries, the IMF’s advice focuses on means and specific policy tools.     

Haste makes waste: Political entrepreneur’s rent-seeking choices in anti-corruption campaign

This paper provides firm-level empirical evidence of the policy effects of China’s anticorruption campaign on SOE (state-owned enterprise) entrepreneur behaviour and corporate governance. While conflicts between corruption monitoring and performance of SOEs do exist, the 2012 anticorruption movement has profoundly changed Chinese political entrepreneurs’ power choice and accountability for SOE corporate governance. Specifically, this paper shows that the anticorruption measures have effectively reduced the sum of perks but aroused excessive asset extraction. When perk consumption has been seriously curtailed by the anticorruption rules, SOE executives’ reversed expectation precipitates their opportunistic activities in SOE’s tangible asset management and undermines SOE’s long-term corporate value.     

The impact of India’s food security policy on domestic and international rice market

Food security policy making in India is at crossroads. India has emerged as a leading rice exporter. The Government of India has introduced the National Food Security Act which requires 33.6 million tons of rice per year for its public food distribution system. In this study, we modeled India’s rice market and analyzed policy implications of the long-term impact of India’s food security act on domestic and international rice market. We developed a structural economic demand and supply model for India’s rice market and further added subsidy equations to trace the consequence of National Food Security Act on domestic rice consumption and on the international market. We specifically focus on three different scenarios: subsidy as price effect, subsidy as inelastic income effect, and subsidy as elastic income effect under the broader framework of National Food Security Act. We found that at the end of the projection period (2024–2025), as a result of rice subsidy program, the consumption of rice increases significantly in the case of price effect while the inelastic income effect has no or less impact on production, consumption, and export of rice. Hence, the policy implication of our study is that if the objective of the National Food Security Act is to increase consumption then it needs to be implemented as price effect.     

The analytic foundation of international economic modeling at the OECD

This article describes the OECD Secretariat's international linkage model, INTERLINK, built to assist various tasks, including the production of baseline international projections, the establishment and maintenance of international consistency of these projections, and the production of alternative projections and policy scenarios. It is thus concerned with the theory of the method of international forecasting and policy analysis, rather than the theory of forecasting itself. The article is divided into sections, which discuss the reasons for international economic modeling at OECD, the main tasks performed by the model, the technical requirements that it needs to satisfy, its present structure, and the experience with it.     

The International Political Significance of Chinese and US Foreign Aid: As Seen in United Nations General Assembly Voting

The effect of China’s rapid development on Sino-US relations and the existing international order is an important theoretical issue in current international relations research. We use empirical research methods to explore whether and how China has influenced the results of US “vote-buying” in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) through foreign aid. We find that through the mechanisms of foreign policy preferences, vulnerability and credibility, Chinese foreign aid has decreased US manipulation of UNGA voting. However, this is not a subjective strategic choice on China’s part but the objective result of Chinese economic development. Taking the game of Sino-US foreign aid in international politics as the entry point and squarely facing the structural contradictions and competition that exist between China and the US will help us understand not only the problems and obstacles China will encounter on its future developmental path, but also the necessity and difficulty of risk control in Sino-US relations.     

美国核政策调整与国际核不扩散机制的前景

国际核不扩散机制是美国防止核扩散,限制对手核力量以实现自身利益的重要手段,是美国维系其主导的世界核秩序的重要干预变量;而核不扩散机制的内在运行逻辑,也使得美国核政策成为决定该机制发展方向的最主要变量。因此,奥巴马政府核政策的调整,势必对核不扩散机制的维持和发展产生深刻影响。中国是现行核不扩散机制的重要参与方,美国核政策的调整必将通过国际核不扩散机制这一干预变量给中国造成直接或间接影响。     

Putting experts in their place: Achieving policy impact as an outsider-academic in civil service reforms in Slovakia

This paper studies two processes of civil service reform in Slovakia during the period of 2014–2015 in order to reflect on the involvement of an ‘outsider-academic’ and her strategies to achieve policy impact. The context of such involvement are multi-level processes permeated by political interests and poor on evidence, which favour strategic interests, bargaining and political pressure and contestation (the mode of ‘powering’) and a mode of legal-based ‘puzzling’ as opposed to a conceptual, intellectual search for solutions friendly towards outside academics—and achieving only incremental results. We theorise on the success of these strategies (including helping serendipity, throwing ideas to see what sticks, mobilising allies, anchoring a non-binding concept, and finding and developing long-term connections) and sketch analogies and differences between the position of an outsider-academic and a policy entrepreneur. We rely on auto-ethnographic data and documentation of the work of the committees involved and their outputs.     

Using the 'Looking After Children' dimensions to collect aggregate data on well-being

The Department of Health has funded the development of a set of schedules for collating information on and monitoring the progress of children looked after by local authorities. An additional aspiration underlying official encouragement of the use of these ‘Looking After Children’ (LAC) materials was that they would provide aggregate data to feed into national and local policy and planning. Progress on this aim has been slow, in part because instruments designed to aid practice in individual cases have not adapted easily to the hoped for dual role, and in part because completion rates have been patchy and often poor. This paper describes an action research project designed to use the children's reviewing system to collect aggregate data on the LAC dimensions of well‐being. It comments on the viability of this method of aggregate data collection as well as locating the information on a cohort of 96 children in the context of other studies, and debates about whether the state can be a ‘good parent’.     

Explaining Different Paths in Social Health Insurance Countries – Health System Change and Cross‐border Lesson‐drawing between Germany,Austria and the Netherlands

The issues of ‘policy diffusion’ or ‘policy transfer’ and ‘mutual learning’ have become important topics in comparative research on social policy and health systems. In current debates on explaining reform in ‘Bismarckian’ social (health) insurance systems, however, these issues have been neglected. In particular, the role of ‘negative lesson‐drawing’ in the sense of avoiding mistakes of others has not often been considered. This article compares health system change in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, three countries with health systems of the social insurance type. In contrast to the existing literature, our analysis stresses that these countries have taken different reform paths since the 1990s. By applying a most similar systems design, we analyze how far cross‐border lesson‐drawing has contributed to health system divergence in the three countries. The empirical basis of the analysis is semi‐structured qualitative expert interviews, a method appropriate for tracing processes of lesson‐drawing. We argue that in order to fully understand the diverging reform trajectories, we need to take into account how political decision‐makers refer to (negative) experiences of other countries. Generally, national driving forces for health system change were at the heart of many crucial reforms during the period studied. Nevertheless, we claim that it was the German bad practice role model that kept the reform paths of Austria and Germany apart in the Austrian health reform discussion between 2000 and 2005.     

Labour parties,ideas transfer and ideological positioning: Australia and Britain compared

ABSTRACT

As part of this special issue examining policy transfer between the Labour parties in Australia and Britain, this paper seeks to explore the relationship between the two on ideological positioning. In the 1990s there was substantial ideas transfer from the Australian Hawke–Keating government to Blair ‘New Labour’ in Britain, as both parties made a lunge towards the economic centre. This paper analyses how the inheritors of that shift, the Rudd/Gillard government in Australia and the Miliband and Corbyn leaderships in Britain, are seeking to define the role and purpose of Labour parties in its wake. It examines the extent to which they are learning and borrowing from one another, and finds that a combination of divergent economic and political contexts have led to strikingly limited contemporary policy transfer.     

The contributions of welfare typologies to international social work practices

This paper is concerned with the link between studies of welfare typologies and studies of international social work. Its objective is to show how welfare typologies could be used to strengthen the role of international social work practices to support international exchange of ideas on welfare issues. To meet this objective, three analytical tasks are implemented. The first task is to show that professional imperialism could weaken the potential of international social work practices to promote international exchange of ideas on welfare issues. The second task is to discuss the importance of welfare typologies in supporting the development of international social work by challenging professional imperialism. The third task is to discuss a research project on a defamilization typology. This project provides empirical evidence of the contributions made by welfare typologies to international social work practices.     

Issues and Challenges in Performing Family Impact Analysis – Implications for Hong Kong

Family impact analysis (FIA) is informed by a growing vision of incorporating a family perspective into policy making. It is a skillful and technical exercise in examining past, present, or probable future consequences – both intended and unintended – of a policy on family well‐being. Originating in the USA in the 1970s, it has become state/provincial or federal policy in the USA, Canada (Alberta), Australia, and Hong Kong. The policy has had different degrees of success in these countries. This article reviewed the critical issues and challenges for implementing the policy and the countries’ different responses to the challenges. It also discussed the implications of these international experiences on Hong Kong's policy of FIA as the newest member of the ranks. Attention to the diversity of families in defining family, adequate training and support to policy staff, building of quality control mechanisms, and the development of grassroots and political support of FIA were recommended. The review also found that there was a dearth of evaluation research on the policy. Further studies are necessary to examine whether FIA is an effective means of affecting policy‐planning decisions. It is a shared obligation of all countries that voted for a policy on FIA.     

Distorted policy transfer? South Korea’s adaptation of UK social enterprise policy

This study draws upon communicative processes in policy transfer to consider the ways in which policy may be adapted to context or distorted. The theoretical framework is used to investigate exactly what the South Korean government borrowed from UK social enterprise policy. Despite claims that the UK was the source of both the general policy direction and the particular regulatory device, the Korean government did not learn about the specific contexts of the British policy, nor attempt two-way communication with domestic stakeholders. Rather, the UK policy was interpreted in accordance with the Korean government’s own ideas about how to utilize social enterprise. Historical legacies of top-down decision-making played an important role in this process, as did the state’s role as a regulator which mobilizes the private sector to achieve policy goals. The consequences have been negative for those organizations refused social enterprise status under the Ministry of Labor’s strict approval system, as well as for the original target population: the socially disadvantaged and vulnerable. It is suggested that the model advanced may help to illuminate the reasons why some borrowed policies differ considerably from the originals, and the use of policy transfer as a means of legitimization.     

The United States Agency for International Development and forest loss: A cross-national analysis of environmental aid

Among scholars of international development, there is a debate regarding the effectiveness of bilateral aid to improve the natural environment. Here we focus on evaluating whether United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) aid in the environmental sector reduces forest loss. Little empirical evidence exists on this question, partly because of the challenge of modeling such a relationship, given the problem of endogeneity whereby the same social, political, or economic processes that affect forest loss may also be correlated with a nation receiving aid from international donors. We contribute to this debate by utilizing a two-stage instrumental variable regression model to analyze cross-national data for a sample of 74 low and middle income nations. After controlling for potential endogeneity, we find that higher levels of USAID’s aid for environmental protection correspond with lower rates of forest loss. We also find that a forest’s proximity to infrastructure, agricultural and forestry exports, agricultural land area, and tropical climate are related to increased forest loss.     

Kazakhstan's implementation of international conventions on the protection of children's rights (juvenile responsibility)

The purpose of this article is to analyze international experience and legislation on the protection of children's rights, to assess the state of this issue in the national space of Kazakhstan, to conduct a comparative analysis and the level of implementation of the provisions of international conventions. To achieve the set goals and tasks, to ensure the reliability of the results and conclusions obtained, a system of methods of scientific cognition was used, which, in conjunction with general logical methods and techniques, made it possible to comprehensively and effectively investigate the administrative and legal support for the formation and implementation of state policy in the field of child protection. The formation of the international legal framework for the formation of a system for the protection of children's rights is studied. The level of Kazakhstan's accession to the implementation of international documents in the field of children's rights protection has been determined. The main directions of non-compliance with international regulations in Kazakhstan according to the conclusions of the UN (United Nations) committees are described. The level of priority of this direction of state policy for the government of the Republic of Kazakhstan and its normative regulation is assessed. The system of juvenile justice in the country and the situation of children in the Republic of Kazakhstan is analyzed according to the reports of the relevant authorities.     

“一带一路”视域下中国对巴基斯坦援助研究

巴基斯坦是中国对外援助的重点国家,中国对巴基斯坦援助涵盖了战略性援助、发展性援助和人道主义援助等类型,援助领域主要集中在经济基础设施方面.经过实证分析,中国援助带动了巴基斯坦国内生产总值、中国与巴基斯坦双边贸易额以及中国对巴基斯坦直接投资的增长,给巴基斯坦经济发展带来了切实的帮助,但这也容易让巴基斯坦形成对中国的“援助依赖”.巴基斯坦国内的不稳定因素和国际局势变化会影响中国对巴基斯坦的援助效果.共建“一带一路”之际,中国需适时调整对巴基斯坦的援助策略,努力打造更加紧密的中巴命运共同体,开辟合作共赢新征程,共享合作发展新成果.     

Human rights and the allocation of foreign aid: A cross-national analysis of the last years of the Cold War, 1980–1989

Studies of conflict behavior show that states act differently based on changes in the global system. However, studies of other types of foreign policy behavior, such as aid allocation, have neglected to focus on similar system effects. This study is among the first to look at the impact of the cold war system on the relationship between recipient human rights practices and foreign aid disbursements for eight major aid donors, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Through an analysis of aid allocations to a sample of 72 recipients from 1980 to 1989 (the only Cold War years for which reliable and valid human rights data are available) this paper reveals striking and unique findings. Contrary to previous studies, it appears that recipient human rights are a significant factor in whether or not a recipient gets any aid, the so-called gatekeeping stage, but are not a significant factor in how much aid a country receives in the level stage. This paper makes three major contributions to the field. It is the first direct test of the effect of the Cold War system on the relationship between recipient country human rights and aid. It also extends this analysis to donors other than the United States. Finally, the results serve as a baseline for assessing the relationship between human rights and aid during the post-Cold War period (1990–2001) and the so-called “age of terror” (2002 onwards).     

Research Review: The role of grandparents in intergenerational support for families with disabled children: a review of the literature

The family in late modernity faces demographic change. However, it is still apparent that intergenerational relationships and exchanges of resources are valued. There is a growing literature on the important role that grandparents play in their children’s families. In contrast, there is limited research exploring the support grandparents provide to families with disabled children. This is an important gap in our knowledge, as families with disabled children frequently face additional caring responsibilities and emotional demands. From the studies that do exist, it is clear that grandparents’ support to families with disabled children is generally valued. However, the literature remains partial: past studies are small‐scale, focused upon parents’ perceptions of support (especially mother’s), and frequently based upon North American data. Recognizing these limitations and the fact that grandparents themselves have support needs which require consideration, this paper identifies key areas where important issues remain unanswered and further research is required. It argues that research is needed to begin untangling the different support needs of parents, grandparents and other family members, and the different effects of grandparent support that different family members’ experience. Exploration of grandparents’ own support needs also indicates the need for wider policy and service consideration.