When Ideas Transfer

Panel Chairs:

Yves Surel, University of Paris II,yves.surel@aliceadsl.fr 

Laurie Boussaguet, Université Versailles St Quentin

Abstract:

The main purpose of this panel is to analyze the processes by which ideas transfer in public policies. Since Peter Hall's seminal book, The Political Power of Economic Ideas, a growing amount of research has shown that changes in public policies are often the result of the influence progressively gained by scientific ideas in the public arena. One of the main examples here, often cited, is the so-called "tournant néo-libéral" which occurred in the 1980's, when new policy paradigms, inspired by the monetarist turn in economics, determined important shifts in macroeconomic policies as well as in social policies.

In a slightly different way, Bruno Jobert was also able to show that different types of discourses or ideas are relevant in the study of policy changes. With the distinction made between three forums (scientific, policy, political), he demonstrated that several forms of discourses concur, overlap or mix, when actors try to define new orientations in public policies.

The problem here is linked to the fact that these analyses often underline the coexistence of different ideas or discourses, but rarely focus on the interactions or exchanges between these ideas or discourses. Some questions seem then relevant for our panel: How scientific ideas actually penetrate the decision-making processes? Are these same ideas modified by these shifts from one arena to another? Is there a differentiation of the relevant forums in the policy process, determined by the globalization, the European integration, and/or by the emergence of new kinds of actors and ideas and discourses (for example, the emergence of "profanes" - lay people - in the policy process)? The panel is then conceived as an occasion to confront empirically grounded analyses as well as more theoretical discussions on the role of ideas in public policy analysis.