A multi-disciplinary approach to policy transfer research: geographies, assemblages, mobilities and mutations

This paper outlines an approach to the global circulation of policies/models. This ‘policy assemblage, mobilities and mutations’ approach has emerged in recent years, primarily through the work of geographers. It is both inspired by, and somewhat critical of, the policy transfer approach associated with work in political science. Our argument is that the focus of geographers on place, space and scale, coupled with an anthropological/sociological attention to ‘small p’ politics both within and beyond institutions of governance, offers a great deal to the analysis of how policy-making operates, how policies, policy models and policy knowledge/expertise circulate and how these mobilities shape places. In making this argument, we first briefly review the literatures in human geography and urban studies that lie behind the current interest in the mobilisation of policies. We then outline the key elements of the policy transfer approach that these geographers have drawn upon and critiqued. In the third and fourth sections we compare and contrast these elements with those of the burgeoning policy mobilities approach. We then turn to the example of the Business Improvement District policy, which has been moved from one country to another, one city to another, in the process becoming constructed as a ‘model’ of/for economic development. We conclude the paper by arguing for an on-going multi-disciplinary conversation about the global circulation of policies, one in which geographers are involved alongside those from other disciplines, such as anthropology, history, planning and sociology, as well as political science.