Recipient of the JCPA and ICPA-Forum Award for Best Comparative Paper, The International Francophone Political Science Conference, Grenoble, 2009

Policy convergence is generally studied from the point of view of the state and explained in terms of policy transfer. However, policy convergence also takes place between countries. The sociology of reception of policy transfer argues for the need to consider convergence from the point of view of the local actors involved in the transfer. Based on a case study of public health policy in France and Denmark, this paper shows that while the local embeddedness of public policy does indeed limit convergence, it also allows for policy transfer and therefore convergence.