EU–China and EU–Brazil policy transfer in regional policy

Abstract

The paper investigates the European Union (EU)-Brazil and EU-China regional policy dialogues, viewed as vectors of crossnational policy transfer. Regional policy is considered as having limited transfer potential due to its inward orientation, context specificity and complexity. Yet, knowledge exchange and voluntary policy transfer have taken place between the EU and Brazil and between the EU and China since the mid-2000s. The study investigates and compares actors, motivations, mechanisms of transfer, conditioning factors and types of outcomes, shedding a light on the underresearched phenomenon of international policy transfer in regional policy.

Fake or real EU Territorialicy? Debating the territorial universe of EU policies

“…At the same time, several authors recognise that EU cohesion policy operates in a variety of policy sectors covering not only the economic but also other policy spheres, including social, territorial accessibility and environmental aspects (Capello & Perucca, 2019;Berkowitz et al, 2020). As a main implementation vehicle for the EU's strategic goals and respective agendas (Dąbrowski, Musiałkowska & Polverari, 2018), EU cohesion policy has served as a direct response to economic recession periods (Crescenzi & Giua, 2020). Broad remarks such as these could reflect a low level of territorialicy of EU cohesion policy.…”

Introduction: drawing lessons from international policy-transfer initiatives in regional and urban development and spatial planning

“…In the Turkish case, Ertugal (2018, in this issue) demonstrates how the concept of regional policy evolved across time in three clearly identifiable stages, as a consequence of a shift of focus from the EU to the OECD. In the case of EUChina dialogue, the process of transfer started with a focus on regional policy and then has shifted to sustainable urbanization, illustrating the unexpected course that policy transfer may take (Dąbrowski et al, 2018, in this issue).…”

“…Crucially, the policy-transfer strategy should include a risk-management strategy, outlining how current challenges and potential future pitfalls would be dealt with. Further, while policy transfer, when it occurs, can relate to specific, narrow issues of policy implementation (as shown in the Brazil-EU example discussed by Dąbrowski et al, 2018, in this issue), policy-transfer strategies should be systemic rather than ad hoc, i.e., linked to a vision about the long-term goals and direction of travel for the given policy. And because goals can shift over time, a feedback loop should be built into the process to ensure that as goals evolve policy-transfer efforts continue to be relevant, granting resilience to the process.…”

Spatial-temporal Evolution and Determinants of the Belt and Road Initiative: A Maximum Entropy Gravity Model Approach

“…Frequent trade and exchanges between East Asia and Europe confirm that Eurasia cooperation has brought prospects for development in different regions and commodity types. The heterogeneity of resources endowment, geographical location, history, culture, customs and habits of BRI countries determines the differences of their development characteristics (Rodemann and Templar, 2014;Dąbrowski et al, 2018;Liao et al, 2018). Therefore, spatial interaction in BRI requires more detailed analysis of connectivity strength and its determinants at regional scale (Clinch and O'Neill, 2009).…”