Suchergebnisse

Policy transfer and its analogous term lesson drawing have received widespread and continuing attention in the public policy literature. To date, most theoretical and analytical approaches have centred on exploring the characteristics or mechanics of policy transfer, or promoting this concept as a normative project for improving policy-making. Surprisingly less attention has been given to systematically theorising the actual constraints on this process despite inherent and widely recorded difficulties with undertaking policy transfer in practice. This paper therefore reviews the policy transfer literature to draw out critical constraints, classifying them according to their position in the transfer process: demand-side constraints; programmatic constraints; contextual constraints; and, application constraints. One feature of the literature to date is how these constraints have primarily been related to 'hard' policy transfer, peer-to-peer between national governments. This paper therefore begins to examine how constraints for 'soft' policy transfer manifest themselves across the increasingly multi-levelled, collaborative and networked political landscape of contemporary governance; under the wire of national government control. Further development of this theoretical framework could aid the assessment of policies/lessons for potential transfer.

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) assumes coherence between cognate aspects of water governance at the river basin scale, for example water quality, energy production and agriculture objectives. But critics argue that IWRM is often less 'integrated' in practice, raising concerns over inter-sectoral coherence between implementing institutions. One increasingly significant aspect of IWRM is adaptation to climate change-related risks, including threats from flooding, which are particularly salient in England. Although multiple institutional mechanisms exist for flood risk management (FRM), their coherence remains a critical question for national adaptation. This paper therefore (1) maps the multi-level institutional frameworks determining both IWRM and FRM in England; (2) examines their interaction via various inter-institutional coordinating mechanisms; and (3) assesses the degree of coherence. The analysis suggests that cognate EU strategic objectives for flood risk assessment demonstrate relatively high vertical and horizontal coherence with river basin planning. However, there is less coherence with flood risk requirements for land-use planning and national flood protection objectives. Overall, this complex governance arrangement actually demonstrates de-coherence over time due to ongoing institutional fragmentation. Recommendations for increasing IWRM coherence in England or re-coherence based on greater spatial planning and coordination of water-use and land-use strategies are proposed.