Transnational Policy Transfer and the emerging use of Social Network Analysis: supplementing the researcher’s toolkit
Policy transfer is increasingly recognised as a process that occurs through networks of organisations and actors (Pal & Spence, 2020), but challenges persist in recognising and applying appropriate methodological tools to unpack and scrutinise this process (Stone, 2020). This paper addresses thi...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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OpenEdition
2024-04-01
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| Series: | International Review of Public Policy |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/irpp/4104 |
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| Summary: | Policy transfer is increasingly recognised as a process that occurs through networks of organisations and actors (Pal & Spence, 2020), but challenges persist in recognising and applying appropriate methodological tools to unpack and scrutinise this process (Stone, 2020). This paper addresses this challenge by examining the usefulness of Social Network Analysis (SNA) for policy transfer research, which is a methodology that focuses attention on networks as the central structure of social systems and foregrounds relationships between actors as the primary unit of analysis. The paper reviews the literature where SNA is applied to critique and analyse transnational policy transfer processes. The main finding demonstrates that SNA can serve as both the principal methodological framework for researching transnational policy transfer, as well as being a supplementary method. As a result, this paper argues that SNA uncovers overlooked aspects of transnational policy transfer research, making it an important component of the toolkit for policy transfer researchers. |
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| ISSN: | 2679-3873 2706-6274 |