Review Article: What Is Policy Convergence and What Causes It?

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 21, Issue 2, 1991, Pages 215-233

  Bennett, Colin J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84959703191     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123400006116     Document Type: Review

References (67)

1. Clark Kerr, The Future of Industrial Societies: Convergence or Continuing Diversity? (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 3.
2. See, for example, Alex Inkeles, ‘Convergence and Divergence in Industrial Societies’, in Mustafa O. Attir, Burkart Holzner and Zdenek Suda, eds, Directions of Change: Modernization Theory, Research and Realities (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1981); Clark Kerr, John T. Dunlop, Frederick Marbison and C. A. Myers, Industrialism and Industrial Man (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin Books, 1973); and Kerr, The Future of Industrial Societies.
3. Jan Tinbergen, The Theory of the Optimum Regime (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1959).
4. John K. Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1971).
5. Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (Glencoe, Ill: The Free Press, 1960); Robert E. Lane, ‘The Decline of Politics and Ideology in a Knowledgeable Society’, American Sociological Review, 31 (1966), 649–662.
6. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1964); Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977).
7. See Kerr, The Future of Industrial Societies.
8. Walt Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).
9. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, 1973).
10. Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, Political Power USA/USSR (New York: Viking Press, 1964).
11. Phillips Cutright, ‘Political Structure, Economic Development, and National Social Security Programs’, American Journal of Sociology, 70(1965), 537-50; Frederic L. Pryor, Public Expenditures in Communist and Capitalist Nations (Homewood, 111.: Irwin, 1968); Harold L. Wilensky, The Welfare State and Equality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).
12. Wilensky, The Welfare State and Equality, p. 27.
13. For empirical evidence which counters Wilensky's argument, see Frank Castles and Robert D. McKinlay, ‘Does Politics Matter? An Analysis of the Public Welfare Commitment in Advanced Democratic States’, European Journal of Political Research, 7 (1979), 169–186.
14. Anthony King, ‘What Do Elections Decide?’ in David Butler, Howard R. Penniman and Austin Ranney, eds, Democracy at the Polls: A Comparative Study of Competitive National Elections (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1981), pp. 293–324, especially at p. 316.
15. The obvious exceptions are the three editions by Arnold Heidenheimer, Hugh Heclo and Carolyn T. Adams, Comparative Public Policy: The Politics of Social Choice in Europe and America (New York: St Martin's Press, 1975, 1983, 1990).
16. See Eliot J. Feldman, ‘Comparative Public Policy: Field or Method?’, Comparative Politics, 10(1978), 287–305.
17. This article stems from previous empirical work in the area of information and communications policy. Prior research has demonstrated a high degree of convergence in the legal remedies established to protect personal data in automated information systems - the policy is normally subsumed under the appellation of ‘data protection’ or ‘information privacy’. The examination of the determinants of this convergence exposed a number of deficiencies in the way that convergence had been conceptualized and explained in previous work. See Colin J. Bennett, ‘Different Processes, One Result: The Convergence of Data Protection Policy in Europe and the United States’, Governance, 1 (1988), 415-41; and Regulating the Computer: The Politics of Personal Data Protection in Europe and the United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, forthcoming).
18. Ronald Brickman, Sheila Jasanoff and Thomas Ilgen, Controlling Chemicals: The Politics of Regulation in Europe and the United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 30.
19. Inkeles, ‘Convergence and Divergence in Industrial Societies’, pp. 13–14.
20. See, for example, Julia S. O'Connor, 'Convergence or Divergence?: Change in Welfare Effort in OECD countries 1960-1980', European Journal of Political Research, 16 (1988), 277–99.
21. Brickman et al., Controlling Chemicals, pp. 52–53.
22. Lawrence C. Mayer, Politics in Industrial Societies: A Comparative Perspective (New York: Wiley, 1977), p. 377.
23. Richard L. Siegel and Leonard B. Weinberg, Comparing Public Policies: United States, Soviet Union and Europe (Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1977), p. 79.
24. Howard M. Leichter, ‘Comparative Public Policy: Problems and Prospects’, Policy Studies Journal, 5 (1977), 583–596, p. 588.
25. Charles W. Anderson, ‘Comparative Policy Analysis: The Design of Measures’, Comparative Politics, 4(1971), 117–31, p. 130.
26. Robert Eyestone, 'Confusion, Diffusion and Innovation', American Political Science Review, 71 (1977), 441–53, p. 441.
27. David Collier and Richard E. Messick, 'Prerequisites versus Diffusion: Testing Alternative Explanations of Social Security Adoption', American Political Science Review, 69 (1975), 1299–1315, p. 1299.
28. Howard M. Leichter, A Comparative Approach to Policy Analysis: Health Care Policy in Four Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 67.
29. Harold L. Wilensky, Gregory M. Leubbert, Susan Reed Hahn and Adrienne M. Jamieson, ‘Comparative Social Policy: Theories, Methods, Findings’, in Meinolf Dierkes, Hans N. Weiler and Ariane Berthoin Antal, eds, Comparative Policy Research: Learning from Experience (Aldershot: Gower, 1987), p. 389.
30. Leichter, A Comparative Approach to Policy Analysis, p. 272. Similar evidence of Germany's pioneering role in welfare policy is provided in Hugh Heclo, Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974); and Stein Kuhnle, ‘The Growth of Social Insurance Programs in Scandinavia: Outside Influences and Internal Forces’, in Peter Flora and Arnold Heidenheimer, eds, The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1981).
31. Steven Kelman, Regulating America, Regulating Sweden: A Comparative Study of Occupational Safety and Health Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), p. 76.
32. George Hoberg, ‘Sleeping with an Elephant: The American Influence on Canadian Environmental Regulation’ (paper presented to the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 1990).
33. Jerold L. Waltman, Copying Other Nations' Policies: Two American Case Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1980), p. 17.
34. Anthony Lester and Geoffrey Bindman, Race and Law (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin Books, 1972), chap. 3.
35. See Richard Rose, Lesson-Drawing Across Time and Space (University: University of Alabama Press, forthcoming).
36. Richard Rose, ‘Comparative Policy Analysis: The Program Approach’, in Mattei Dogan, ed., Comparing Pluralist Democracies: Strains on Legitimacy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), p. 233.
37. See Hugh Heclo, ‘Issue Networks and the Executive Establishment’, in Anthony King, ed., The New American Political System (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1978); and Randall B. Ripley and Grace A. Franklin, Congress, the Bureaucracy, and Public Policy (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1987). The classic work in the international relations field on transnational networks is Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Power and Interdependence (Boston, Mass.: Little Brown, 1977).
38. Rose, ‘Comparative Policy Analysis’, p. 233.
39. Elliot J. Feldman and Jerome Milch, Technocracy versus Democracy: The Comparative Politics of International Airports (Boston, Mass.: Auburn, 1982), p. 58.
40. Donald Rowat, The Ombudsman Plan: The Worldwide Spread of an Idea, 2nd edn (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1985), pp. 131–134.
41. Donald Rowat, ed., Administrative Secrecy in Developed Countries (Toronto: McLelland and Steward, 1979); Bennett, ‘Different Processes, One Result’.
42. See Brickman et al., Controlling Chemicals.
43. An enormous literature could be cited. Probably the two pioneering works are: David Mitrany, A Working Peace System (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1943); and Ernst B. Haas, Beyond the Nation-State (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964). A useful literature review of different theories of European integration is provided in Paul Taylor, The Limits of European Integration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
44. Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 2.
45. See Susan Strange, ‘Cave! Hic Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis’, in Krasner, ed., International Regimes.
46. Brickman et al., Controlling Chemicals, p. 302.
47. Leon Hurwitz, ed., The Harmonization of European Public Policy: Regional Responses to Transnational Challenges (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983).
48. Commission of the European Communities, Completing the Internal Market (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the EC, 1985).
49. James N. Rosenau, ‘Toward the Study of National-International Linkages’, in James N. Rosenau, ed., Linkage Politics (New York: Free Press, 1969), p. 46.
50. Siegel and Weinberg, Comparing Public Policies, p. 67.
51. Bennett, 'Different Processes, One Result'.
52. Brickman et al., Controlling Chemicals, pp. 302–303.
53. Feldman and Milch, Technocracy versus Democracy, p. 59.
54. Jill Hills, Deregulating Telecoms: Competition and Control in the United States, Japan and Britain (London: Pinter, 1986), p. 2.
55. Kelman, Regulating America, Regulating Sweden, p. 82.
56. George Hoberg, Jr, ‘Technology, Political Structure and Social Regulation: A Cross-National Analysis’, Comparative Politics, 18 (1986), 357–376, p. 359.
57. David Vogel, National Styles of Regulation: Environmental Policy in Great Britain and the United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986).
58. Jerold L. Waltman and Donley T. Studlar, eds., Political Economy: Public Policies in the United States and Britain (Jackson, Miss.: University of Mississippi Press, 1987), p. 265.
59. John Goldthorpe, ‘The End of Convergence: Corporatist and Dualist Tendencies in Modern Western Societies’, in John Goldthorpe, ed., Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
60. M. Donald Hancock, ‘Comparative Public Policy: An Assessment’, in Ada W. Finifter, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 1983), 283–308, p. 301.
61. Bennett, 'Different Processes, One Result'; and 'Regulating the Computer: Comparing Policy Instruments in Europe and the United States', European Journal of Political Research, 16 (1988), 437–466.
62. Hoberg, ‘Technology, Political Structure and Social Regulation’, p. 357.
63. Although there is now a burgeoning literature which applies state-centred approaches to many cases, the central theoretical works remain Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, eds, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and Eric A. Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). Useful reviews are found in: Stephen D. Krasner, ‘Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics’, Comparative Politics, 16 (1984), 223-46; and Gabriel A. Almond, ‘The Return to the State’, American Political Science Review, 82 (1988), 853–901.
64. Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State, p. 28.
65. See Krasner, ‘Approaches to the State’, and Almond, ‘The Return to the State’.
66. Theda Skocpol, ‘Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research’, in Evans et al., Bringing the State Back In, pp. 3–37, at p. 21.
67. Skocpol too concludes that 'the value of Nordlinger's book lies… in the researchable hypotheses about variations in state autonomy that one might derive from the typologies it offers' (Skocpol, 'Bringing the State Back In', p. 31).