Considerations of the Obstacles and Opportunities to Formalizing Cross-National Policy Transfer to the United States: A Case Study of the Transfer of Urban Environmental and Planning Policies from Germany

David P Dolowitz and Dale Medearis
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David P Dolowitz: Department of Politics, University of Liverpool, Roxby Building, Liverpool L69 7ZT, England
Dale Medearis: Northern Virginia Regional Commission, 108 East Walnut Street, Alexandria, VA 22301, USA

Environment and Planning C, 2009, vol. 27, issue 4, 684-697

Abstract: Not enough has been written about the import, adaptation, and application of urban environmental and planning policies from abroad into the United States. Even less has been written about the voluntary cross-national transfer and application of environmental policies by American subnational actors and institutions. It is our intent to begin redressing this by discussing the transfer of urban environmental and planning policies from Germany to the United States during the early part of the 21st century. This discussion is informed by data drawn from governmental reports and planning statements and over thirty-five interviews with US urban environmental and planning practitioners operating in Germany and the United States. What we discover is that, unlike more rational models of policy transfer, the voluntary importation of environmental and planning policies into the US is seldom a problem-focused, goal-oriented process. Rather, what we find is that a better depiction of the transfer and adoption process is of a relatively anarchic situation. This appears to occur due to a range of institutional and cultural filters that predispose American policy makers against gathering (and using) information and experiences from abroad. We find that this filtering process tends to encourage policy makers to discount (or reject outright) the usefulness of overseas models and that, when they do engage in this process, any information gathered appears to be based less upon well-researched and analyzed data than embedded ‘tacit’ knowledge.

Date: 2009
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