The pursuit of the public interest is the sine qua non of public officials in liberal democracies. This is no simple task: the modern state is beset by a burgeoning array of domestic-global political, social and economic influences. The task of the public servant, as much today as ever, is one of plotting safe passage of domestic policy agendas through the forbidding maelstroms whipped up by these uncertain forces. Yet it is recognised by public administration scholars that we are witnessing a gradual shift from the local to the global (Pierre 2013), and it is the global trends of that attract the focus of this book, and three in particular. First, we live in an interconnected world. There are, for example, few countries (if any) that can truly claim to have full control of its currency, or a food supply chain that is independent of overseas disruptions, or a labour market policy that is not impacted by migration flows or fluctuations in available foreign investment. Second, managing the complexity of the state is a matter of know-how, and never before have there been such prodigious quantities of information available for decision-makers. This is, of course, a product of todayâs digital era. An abundance of policy-relevant raw data is generated and assimilated by public and private information systems with automated data-capture and matching, producing unparalleled insights into societal and economic meta-trendsâthis is the age of so-called âbig dataâ. Information on the policy initiatives of other jurisdictions is also made accessible by the connectivity of the Internet. The enterprising policy official merely needs basic web literacy to get a schematic understanding of any given issue, yet this abundance of knowledge can also become a burden. As far back as 1957, Herbert Simon described how policy-makers, who were subject to a âbounded rationalityâ, make suboptimal decisions when faced with a surfeit of information. If this insight is accurate, then the abundance of data in the digital era puts modern government in real trouble. Third, it is recognised that there is a trend towards a gradual flattening of authorities, from hierarchical to horizontal decision-making. This is evident in several respects, not least in how government agencies form relationships with the private and non-government sectors. It is also evident within governments as agencies turn towards collaborations, perhaps urged forward by the zeitgeist of âjoined-up-governmentâ. Finally, horizontal relationships are also visible in the cross-border relationships forged with peers in partner governments.
It is in this context of local and global complexity that contemporary public policy scholars and policy practitioners are joined in a common ambition to understand the circumstances, inputs and outcomes associated with the processes by which policy ideas transfer from one jurisdiction to another. For the former, this interest has manifested in an expansive, and expanding, multidisciplinary policy transfer literature that spans geography, law, business studies, political science, international relations and public policy scholars. For the latter, it is clear that a series of connected trends have substantially expanded the opportunities and imperatives for government officials to learn from elsewhere: first, the ubiquitous access to shared information via the Internet has entailed fundamental changes in the way governments acquire, analyse and disseminate information; second, the devolution of decision-making autonomy has given individual policy officials greater licence to seek policy-relevant information from overseas counterparts; and third, the growth in transnational policy issues brings new policy challenges to the fore. Together these trends form the backdrop to the modern state and the imperatives of transnational cooperation and collaboration. In the background, though not explored here, is the cut-and-thrust of politics, what Ferdinand Mount described as the âinstantaneous, immediate, hot-and-strong breath of public opinionâ, in which policy-makers must march to an unforgiving rhythm set by a 24-hour print, television and online media in a climate that tolerates little failure yet demands immediate action on the emergent problems of the day.
Policy Transfer and the Public Interest
What drives policy officials to look overseas for new ideas? The lodestar of policy-making in modern liberal democracy is the unrelenting pursuit of the public interest. This is the imperative that all decisions, all state-based actions and allocations of resources should be directed towards serving the needs of the public, from whom all authority and legitimacy derive. This is captured in Ciceroâs maxim: Salus populi suprema lex esto, the health of the people should be the supreme law. Yet how are such interests divined? Jeremy Bentham stuck to a matter-of-fact view of this question: âThe interest of the community then is, what? â the sum of the interests of the several members who compose itâ. In Public Opinion, Walter Lippman, the grandfather of public administration, sets aside three chapters to reflect on âThe making of the Common Willâ, asking whether it is possible for the public to collectively generate a common purpose, given the âunmanageably complexâ and unique impressions individuals have of their environment: âHow are those things known as the Will of the People, or the National Purpose, or Public Opinion crystallize out of such fleeting and casual imagery?â (1997, p. 125). John Deweyâs The Public and Its Problems (1946) dedicates its opening chapter to âSearch for the Great Publicâ. There he argues that the pursuit of the public interest is one contingent on time and place: âIn no two ages or places is there the same public. Conditions make the consequences of associated action and the knowledge of them differentâ (p. 33). On both views, the complexity and contingency of the âpublic interestâ are manifest and underline the importance of learning, reflexive policy agents. Yet herein lies a fundamental challenge: How is that âhealthâ to be determined?
Dewey frames the problem bluntly: âWhat is the public? If there is a public, what are the obstacles in the way of its recognizing and articulating itself? Is the public a myth?â (1946, p. 123). Deweyâs puzzling is typical of a problem that continues to express itself as a challenge that requires us to first depict what or whom the âpublicâ is, and, second, as an epistemological problem of how we determining the ârealâ interests of that public. Not least, we might worry whether it is possible to achieve a meaningful understanding of âinterestsâ in aggregated formâi.e. once two or more âinterestsâ are combined, are not both transformed? This is not a trivial question: the corollary of a centred public interest is that the state must have mechanisms and means of determining what its citizens say is, or is not, in their interests and, to the best of its resources and administrative ability, it works towards those (van Deth and Newton 2016, p. 339). We use the term representative democracy to denote the relationship between the public and those who make decisions on their behalf: elections periodically install or reaffirm a government with a democratic mandate by approximating the expressed interests of the public through a plebiscite. Between elections, it is a trickier matter. And so it is imperative that a healthy democracy has an active mediaâa means for the public to talk to amongst one another (which is why the advent of social media has been transformative, or disruptive, depending on your viewpoint)âand arrives perhaps by way of negotiation or attrition at a series of more or less commonly held positions. It is also important that the public have a means to represent their interests in input to decision-making, via their local legislative representatives or by vehicles such as interest groups, protest movements and so on.
The public interest is in the foreground of policy transfer, because this is not a book just about how we understand the way policies are borrowed and adopted across jurisdictions; it is a book about the transparency of the decision-making process. The visibility of how decisions are made, by whom and for what purpose is critical to the function of legitimate and trusted democratic institutions. How policy officials operate beyond the state is therefore of importance to the legitimacy of decisions. It is also for this reason that to understand how those policy officials regard the provenance of new ideas is of vital importance. As we shall see below, international dynamics and processes have steadily intruded on the autonomy of all state, transforming the capacities and resources of the state and its officials. In so doing, a class of transnational policy challenges has reared-up, provoking multiple states to forge policy responses and widen the pool of available policy ideas for learning officials. Active in the background of learning processes are implicit assumptions of provincial validity: that is, a validity ascribed to ideas that originate from a priori privileged sources. Chapter 4 unpacks this in detail, but in short the claim pursued is that some sources of policy ideas are regarded more highly than others: Specifically, in the case of English-speaking countries, particularly those of comparable socio-economic status, the so-called Anglosphere states place a premium on lessons from their peers.
Globalisation and Interdependency
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent
A part of the main
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
John Donne: Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
The opening lines of John Donneâs often-quoted poem speak eloquently to the principal themes of this chapter: global society and interdependency. Alongside the public interest, these are two issues that are unavoidable in our present discussion. It is easy to overlook the interwoven strands of state administration, private enterprise and public action that contribute to the day-to-day functioning of life and livelihood of the state and society. In the modern world, each of these strands is neither isolated nor âentire of itselfâ. Rather, each is very much âa part of the mainâ in an internati...