Policy transfer using the ‘gold standard’: exploring policy tourism in practice

Policy transfer features prominently in the policy analysis literature, yet relatively little is known about how government officials seek to learn lessons from abroad in practice. This research, based on interviews with officials in government institutes in South Korea who were involved in a series of study visits to the United Kingdom, addresses this knowledge gap using Evans and Davies’ policy transfer network model and the recently developed notion of ‘policy tourism’. We conclude that policy tourism rarely leads directly to policy change but is a valuable part of ongoing processes of policy learning.