Institutional Choice and Policy Transfer: Reforming British and German Railway Regulation

In: Governance: an international journal of policy and administration and institutions, Band 16, Heft 2, S. 159-178

Abstract

The notions of "policy learning" & "policy transfer" have become increasingly influential in the public-policy literature. By utilizing a comparative analysis of regulatory change in the railways in GB & Germany, it is argued that an institutional approach adds to the understanding of "learning" & "transfer" processes, as well as explaining which institutions mattered as GB & Germany adopted distinctively different regulatory regimes. The institutional approach points to the constraints involved in the selection of regulatory design ideas &, by assessing three institutional factors that structure relationships between the policy domain & its environments, suggests that in the case of railway privatization in GB & Germany in the 1990s, it was the structure of the political-administrative nexus that centrally shaped why particular policy options were selected while others were neglected. 76 References. Adapted from the source document.