The Open Society Institute (OSI) is a private operating and grant-making foundation that serves as the hub of the Soros Foundations Network, a group of autonomous national foundations around the world. OSI is a mechanism for the international diffusion of expertise and 'best practices' to post-communist countries and other democratising nations. Focusing on the 'soft' ideational and normative policy transfer, the article highlights the engagement in governance that comes with OSI transnational policy partnerships.
Public policy has been a prisoner of the word "state." Yet, the state is reconfigured by globalization. Through "global public–private partnerships" and "transnational executive networks," new forms of authority are emerging through global and regional policy processes thatcoexistalongside nation‐state policy processes. Accordingly, this article asks what is "global public policy"? The first part of the article identifies new public spaces where global policies occur. These spaces are multiple in character and variety and will be collectively referred to as the "globalagora." Thesecond sectionadapts the conventional policy cycle heuristic by conceptually stretching it to the global and regional levels to reveal the higher degree of pluralization of actors and multiple‐authority structures than is the case at national levels. Thethird sectionasks: who is involved in the delivery of global public policy? The focus is on transnational policy communities. The global agora is a public space of policymaking and administration, although it is one where authority is more diffuse, decision making is dispersed and sovereignty muddled. Trapped by methodological nationalism and an intellectual agoraphobia of globalization, public policy scholars have yet to examine fully global policy processes and new managerial modes of transnational public administration.
The phrase 'think tank' has become ubiquitous – overworked and underspecified – in the political lexicon. It is entrenched in scholarly discussions of public policy as well as in the 'policy wonk' of journalists, lobbyists and spin‐doctors. This does not mean that there is an agreed definition of think tank or consensual understanding of their roles and functions. Nevertheless, the majority of organizations with this label undertake policy research of some kind. The idea of think tanks as a research communication 'bridge' presupposes that there are discernible boundaries between (social) science and policy. This paper will investigate some of these boundaries. The frontiers are not only organizational and legal; they also exist in how the 'public interest' is conceived by these bodies and their financiers. Moreover, the social interactions and exchanges involved in 'bridging', themselves muddy the conception of 'boundary', allowing for analysis to go beyond the dualism imposed in seeing science on one side of the bridge, and the state on the other, to address the complex relations between experts and public policy.
Just as there was a boom in the establishment of Master's of Business Administration programs over the past 30 or more years, today there is an equivalent boom in graduate programs in the field of public policy. This is so for the transition states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the former Soviet Union where the dynamics of globalization and "Europeanization" are apparent and the pressures for reform pronounced (Verheijen and Connaughton 2003, 843). Appointing personnel with the educational prerequisites necessary for managing reform and meeting the challenges of globalization has been problematic for both official actors such as national education ministries, international organizations, and bilateral development agencies, as well as for non-state actors such as the business sector, philanthropic foundations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The need for graduates who can function in international and cross-cultural contexts is prompting institutions to create new courses and professional degree programs (Mallea 1998, 16).
