Internationalized Policy Environments and Policy Network Analysis

The days when policy researchers could count upon domestic politics and society to contribute sufficient data for a satisfactory analysis are now a memory. Whether policy researchers are prepared to enter another analytical universe or not, the accelerating flow of ideas, information, goods and money across national borders has affected the nature of policy problems, reshaped the attempts to engage these problems and thus reoriented the way in which explanations of policy-making can be productively pursued. The big questions that animate policy studies may not have changed, but the available data and the concepts needed to analyze them have been shifting. This paper will seek to connect these emerging global dynamics to long recognized drivers of policy-making and present a conceptual framework that can help in understanding the resulting interactions. Enhancing the linkage between theoretical frameworks that have informed international relations and public policy concepts promises a better understanding of policy-making in a volatile universe. This paper will consider the value of applying a network perspective on understanding global influences through four stages of consideration. Initially it will examine the concept of globalization and briefly assess the implications that it raises for studying policy-making. Next, the paper will turn to the literature on policy communities and policy networks to highlight tools that can be used in assessing global influences on policy subsystems. Then, it will consider the concept of policy paradigms and contemplate the role that ideational influences play in modulating global impacts on policy. Finally, a fourfold typology of internationalized policy environments will be presented, in order to illuminate how particular configurations of policy communities and networks can refract the global influences on governance. In conclusion, the dynamic role of policy community mediators in trying to steer subsystem responses to global forces will briefly be considered.

Transnational policy networks appear to be an attractive common subject for both Comparative Politics and International Relations, if we are interested into the consequences of globalisation on public policy-making capacities. This paper focuses on the confrontation between approaches which propose these networks as a new (global) governance instrument and a more critical analytical perspective. Departing from a theoretical model which analyses transnational policy networks as inter-organisational resource exchanges, empirical illustrations focus on international organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, since these organisations play a core role within most transnational (or: global) policy networks. The article concludes that transnational policy networks are only relevant under very specific empirical conditions, depending on their embeddedness in different institutional and structural contexts. Furthermore, transnational policy networks raise important questions of democratic legitimacy and accountability.

International Review of Administrative Sciences, 2015

The G20 is an evolving international institution. Aided by both advances in information technology and support from home governments, a number of knowledge actors and networks seek to influence global economic governance with policy analysis and advice. This article assesses the international G20 think tank network called Think20 and the policy advocacy of private research institutes (such the Lowy Institute in Australia and the Centre for International Governance and Innovation in Canada) which are in the orbit of the G20 policy community. Think20 assists the global economic governance processes of the G20 by developing ‘coordinative discourses’ for policy development and implementation. Points for practitioners Ideas matter but ideas that imply major policy reform and innovation need to be made to matter if they are to direct government action. Networks provide one mechanism to broadcast and disseminate ‘communicative discourses’ to many different publics – local as well as global...

2017

I n recent years, the failures and insufficiencies of traditional multilateralism have become ever more obvious: Governments and international organizations alone are no longer able to address ever more complex global policy issues. The corporate sector and civil society 1 are significant players in almost all global policy domains. Their active engagement is a critical if not imperative component in delivering policy outcomes that are timely, effective and legitimate. Creative institutional innovations are needed that connect governments, international organizations, civil society, and the corporate sector in order to better address the growing number of global public policy challenges. In this article, we argue that global public policy networks are one promising answer to the growing organizational vacuum at the global level. In these trisectoral networks, states, international organizations, civil society actors and the private sector are collaborating to achieve what none of the single actors is able to achieve on its own. With no early guarantee of success, many of them started as innovative »experiments« responding to an ever more complex global policy environment and in particular the inability of governmental or intergovernmental structures to manage the consequences of increased socio-economic integration and rapid technological change. Trisectoral networks are coalitions of and for change -they are both a result of a changing external environment and they help to shape it. Networks have emerged in vastly different areas ranging from the development and provision of vaccines, the construction of dams to the establishment of environmental standards. How and why do global public policy networks develop? What makes them work? What are their capabilities and limitations? What roles do and should states and international organizations play in these networks. * This article presents some results of the UN Vision Project on Global Public Policy Networks. The project commissioned a series of case studies on networks from various issue areas, and analyzed the role of the United Nations in these trisectoral networks. A complete report of the research project, entitled »Critical Choices: The United Nations, networks, and the future of global governance« (hereinafter: Reinicke / Deng et al., forthcoming) will be published in spring 2000. More information on the project and the case studies can be accessed at www.globalpublicpolicy.net. We gratefully acknowledge funding by the U.N. Foundation, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Hoechst Foundation. For further information see also Reinicke, 1999a; 1999b; 1998; 1997; Benner / Reinicke, 1999; Reinicke/ Witte, forthcoming; Reinicke / Witte 1999. 1. For the purposes of this article, the term »civil society« includes NGOs, churches, the media, professional groups, as well as the public at large.

The Crisis of Global Environmental Governance: …, 2008

International relations literature has frequently called attention to international policy networks and their influence on policy-making. Other literature has pointed to networks such as epistemic communities, knowledge networks, and advocacy coalitions within different fields and dimensions of global social policy. In this paper, we assess and compare the role of different kinds of networks in global social policy with a particular focus on their contributions to basic social needs.

International Review of Administrative Sciences, , 2015

The G20 is an evolving international institution. Aided by both advances in information technology and support from home governments, a number of knowledge actors and networks seek to influence global economic governance with policy analysis and advice. This paper assesses the international G20 think tank network called Think20 and the policy advocacy of private research institutes (such the Lowy Institute in Australia and the Centre for International Governance and Innovation in Canada) which are in the orbit of the G20 policy community. Think20 assists the global economic governance processes of the G20 by developing ‘coordinative discourses’ for policy development and implementation.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019

The globalization process creates new framework of multilevel policy-making, implies new actors, such as public and private actors and redefines the concept of public policy within an international and international policy regimes. Therefore, a difference in the policy process under globalization would appear to be that "policy transfer" and the global policy networks are on the increase. In this sense, on the one hand the paper describes and analysis the concept and process of policymaking develop under globalization driving forces in order to reveal the policy-making changes imposed by internal and external context, and on the other hand assets the importance of global public policy networks for solving global problems through global policies. From a methodological standpoint, and taking into consideration the theoretical framework, the study adopts a review conceptual approach to advance its arguments.

James Meadowcroft, Oluf Langhelle and Audun Ruud (eds.), Governance, Democracy and Sustainable Development: Moving Beyond the Impasse?, pp. 221-248., 2012

The American Political Science Review, 1993

Although network thinking will have considerable impact on future social theory building in general, this chapter is certainly not the place for a general "philosophical" discussion. Based on the assumption that the network perspective will be, indeed, also fruitful for political analysis, we will focus our discussion on the specific use of network concepts in policy analysis. We will try to show that an important advantage of the network concept in this discipline is that it helps us to understand not only formal institutional arrangements but also highly complex informal relationships in the policy process. From a network point of view. modern political decision making cannot adequately be understood by the exclusive focus on formal politico-institutional anangements. Policies are formulated to an increasing degree in informal political infrastructures outside conventional channels such as legislative, executive and administrative organizations. Contemporary policy processes emerge from complex actor constellations and resource interdependencies, and decisions are often made in a highly decentralized and informal manner. example, the policy sector (Benson 1982), the policy domain (Laumann/ Knoke 1987), the policy topic's organization set (see for this concept Olsen 1982), the policy (actor) system (see, for instance, Sabatier 1987), the policy community (Jordan/ Richardson 1983, Mdny 1989), the policy game, the policy arena and also the policy regime. The network concept and all these other policy concepts are variations of a basic theme: the idea of public policies which are not explained by the intentions of one or two central actors, but which are generated within multiple actor-sets in which the individual actors are interrelated in a more or less systematic way. However, each of the different policy concepts emphasizes a special aspect: for example, the institutional structures in decision making processes are highlighted by the arena and regime perspective; the conflictual nature of policy processes, again, is emphasized by the game perspective. The arena concept, in contrast, concentrates on conflict and institutional integration, and the community, system and sector perspec-9 For a more detailed overview of British works with the network concept see also the recent article of Rhodes (1990). l0 Other examples in the application of the network concept in policy making are Zijlstra (1918179:359-389); Rainey/ Milward (1983: 133-146); Trasher/ Dunkerley (1982: 349' 382); Trasher (1983: 375-391). For an overview see also Windhoff-Hdritier (1985: 85-2t2). Cltapter 2 Butt, R. S./ M. J. Minor, 1982: Applied Nenuork Analysis-A Methodological Introduction Beverly Hills/ London: Sage. Callon, Michel, 1986: The Sociology of an Actor-Network: The Case of the Electric Vehicle. In: M. Callon/ H. Law/ A. Rip, Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology. Sociology of Science in the Real World. Houndmills: Macmillan, 19-34.