Accounting for Culture in Policy Transfer: A Blueprint for Research and Practice

In recent years, the burgeoning literature on transnational dissemination of policies has moved beyond orthodox models to incorporate the institutional context by means of social-constructivist approaches. This article engages in a critical review of the status quo by arguing for the importance of an overlooked key variable in policy transfer research: culture. Particularly, it is contended that culture plays an under-acknowledged role in co-shaping transfer dynamics both as a dependent and as an independent variable and consequently deserves a more thorough embedment in mainstream research. To this end, operational recommendations for how future studies can measure, incorporate, and isolate cultural factors are offered and a feasible research agenda is proposed.