ABSTRACT

Notions of social change are often divided into local versus international. But what actually happens at the national level—where policies are ultimately made and implemented—when policy-making is interdependent worldwide? How do policy-makers take into account the prior choices of other countries? Far more research is needed on the process of interdependent decision-making in the world polity.

National Policy-Making: domestication of global trends offers a unique set of hybrid cases that straddle these disciplinary and conceptual divides. The volume brings together well-researched case studies of policy-making from across the world that speak to practical issues but also challenge current theories of global influence in local policies. Distancing itself from approaches that conceive narrowly of policy transfer as a "one-way street" from powerful nations to weaker ones, this book argues instead for an understanding of national decision-making processes that emphasize cross-national comparisons and domestic field battles around the introduction of worldwide models.

The case studies in this collection show how national policies appear to be synchronized globally yet are developed with distinct "national" flavors. Presenting new theoretical ideas and empirical cases, this book is aimed globally at scholars of political science, international relations, comparative public policy, and sociology.

part |88 pages

Cross-national comparisons

chapter |19 pages

Interdependent decision-making in practice

Justification of new legislation in six nation-states 1

chapter |17 pages

Unholy alliances

Competitiveness as a domestic power strategy

chapter |19 pages

Global trends in European regional development

EU Cohesion Policy and the case of region-building in Poland 1

chapter |16 pages

The role of PISA publicity in forming national education policy

The case of Finnish curriculum reform

part |86 pages

Domestic field battles and naturalization

chapter |16 pages

The local politics of domesticating global models

The struggle over central bank independence in Israel 1

chapter |18 pages

Global “diffusion,” banal nationalism, and the politics of policy legitimation

A genealogical study of “zest for living” in Japanese education policy discourse

chapter |17 pages

Converging national with stakeholder interests

Establishing a national bioethics committee in Finland

chapter |16 pages

Cleansing our hands of the “dirty war”

The Colombian domestication of human rights