Policy Transfer through Time and the Search for Legitimacy in Developing Nations

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between policy transfer through time and the quest for political legitimacy in developing countries. It is concerned with instances where contemporary figures reach back a long way in history in the search for items that can be used to legitimate present or future political arrangements. The first part of the article broadly classifies the various ways in which time has been used, but acknowledges the relative neglect of the temporal dimension in policy transfer studies. However, in the process of the search for political legitimation in developing countries, there has been a regular use of policy transfer through time. This is explored in a detailed case study of President Hugo Ch avezs Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. From this case study, a four-stage sequence of policy transfer through time is constructed.

Successful policy transfer and public sector reform in developing countries

“…Initially these studies focused on coercive policy transfer as the predominant form in which international organisations and donors would demand public sector or policy reforms in exchange for continued support (Therkildsen, 2000;Street, 2004;McDonald, 2012). Recent studies suggest that voluntary policy transfer does indeed take place in developing countries (for example, Dussauge-Laguna, 2013;McCarthy and Turner, 2015;Minkman, Buuren and Bekkers, 2018). In the few successful cases of policy transfer, governments have been able to obtain control over the transfer process.…”

Water stewardship through innovative policy development: mobilization and transfer of the Yinka Dene Water Law

“…They conclude that the design, implementation, and delivery of interventions should include input from community members to be effective. Although discussing a Global South policy transfer context,McCarthy-Jones and Turner (2015) reinforce the importance of community engagement, and in their case, describe the use of a participatory democracy model by the Venezuelan government to build legitimacy into their policy processes.It's a tough question to answer because a lot of the communities are just for example with Moose Cree we brought it to them it's kind of a question of building enough capacity to start this project and to get funding for it. Because I mean I think that the policy I think was like 50 thousand dollars put together like there's some real you know actual roadblocks unless you have 50 thousand to you know start the process and then you need someone to go out and start classifying which you do need to have a body of traditional knowledge available So I feel like the principles behind it like the policy is transferable but then there's some nitty gritty details about how to like make it actually hit the ground and have meaning Which you know to take it's really a process not instantaneous and really it takes a lot of community involvement to determine what the different classes of waters are They've been embroiled in a pretty nasty battle with the proponent so there's a lot of resources that have just gone into that but I know it's still on their their agenda to do (Conversation 13) Similar to the factor between Nadleh Whut'en, Stellat'en and Saik'uz, a couple of participants expressed value in a standard approach to implementation.…”