ABSTRACT
Researchers in policy and public administration studies have started studying the movement of policy ideas from a translation perspective. Mukhtarov studies conventional approaches to the study of the travel of ideas in policy studies such as 'policy transfer', 'policy diffusion', 'lesson-drawing' and 'institutional isomorphism', and criticizes them for assuming perfect rationality of actors, the stability of governance scales and the immutability of policy ideas in their travel. Mukhtarov defines policy translation as the process of modification of policy ideas and creation of new meanings and designs in the process of the cross-jurisdictional travel of policy ideas. Instead, the translation perspective suggests that divergence is expected: policy translation characterized by fluid multi-actor processes of interpretation, mutation and assemblage is the constant reality. The concept opens up the content of policy, inviting the reader to study the processes of its making and remaking through language, through the practices of association and articulation.
