Accounting for Culture in Policy Transfer: A Blueprint for Research and Practice
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929920965352 |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| Author | Daniel Bertram |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920965352
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(1) 83 –100
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920965352
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Accounting for Culture in
Policy Transfer: A Blueprint
for Research and Practice
Daniel Bertram
Abstract
In recent years, the burgeoning literature on transnational dissemination of policies has
moved beyond orthodox models to incorporate the institutional context by means of social-
constructivist approaches. This article engages in a critical review of the status quo by arguing
for the importance of an overlooked key variable in policy transfer research: culture. Particularly,
it is contended that culture plays an under-acknowledged role in co-shaping transfer dynamics
both as a dependent and as an independent variable and consequently deserves a more thorough
embedment in mainstream research. To this end, operational recommendations for how future
studies can measure, incorporate, and isolate cultural factors are offered and a feasible research
agenda is proposed.
Keywords
culture, policy transfer, policy translation, institutional bricolage, cultural analysis
Accepted: 21 September 2020
An Overlooked Institutional Variable
Public policy can be a matter of life and death. Simon Harragin (2004) recounts the ter-
rible food crisis haunting Southern Sudan in 1998. When the famine hit, the UN and
international relief agencies started apportioning food supplies to what were perceived
to be the most vulnerable minorities while neglecting the increasingly dire situation
faced by the entirety of the local population. In a situation of limited resources, local
authorities began to undermine this strategy of targeted assistance by redirecting aid
distributions to kinship leaders for further redistribution in line with the existing kinship
welfare system, which privileged social hierarchy and family affiliation over individual
needs. The consequences jointly produced by an underestimation of the scale of hunger
and by ignorance of the sociocultural network and practices particular to the country’s
ethnic setup were nothing short of harrowing: “It is estimated that between 60,000 and
Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Daniel Bertram, Tilburg University, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
Email: dan.bertram@web.de
965352PSW0010.1177/1478929920965352Political Studies ReviewBertram
research-article2020
Article
84 Political Studies Review 20(1)
100,000 people died as a result of the emergency in 1998 that would not have died nor-
mally” (Harragin, 2004: 315).
When traveling abroad for work or leisure, we intuitively grasp and feel the impact of
cultural differences. In the age of globalization and transnational mobility of goods, per-
sons, and knowledge, such sensitivity has proven all the more pertinent in our daily lives.
The tragic example of Southern Sudan sorely illustrates the dangers of omitting the cul-
tural context in the formulation of public policy. Since the notional birth of cultural rela-
tivism, that is, the recognition that cultural practices cannot be understood by means of
externally imposed criteria, the study of cultural differences has assumed an increasingly
prominent role in the academic world (Boas, 1911). Among other disciplines, organiza-
tional, business, and management studies have stressed its importance and pioneered in
theorizing the contextual role of culture (Hofstede, 1980; Trompenaars, 1993). Yet, for
multiple reasons, this approach has been largely confined to a small number of disciplines
in the social sciences (e.g. see Bierbrauer, 1994, for the literature on legal culture).
Despite early seminal efforts by Wildavsky (1987) and with some laudable exceptions
(Daniell, 2014; Rao and Walton, 2004), policy studies remains one of the areas that have
struggled to recognize the role of culture as a contextual element worthy of consideration,
so much so that Iris Geva-May (2002a: 243) declared culture “the neglected variable in
the craft of policy analysis.” Undoubtedly, the past two decades have seen a mushroom-
ing of comparative policy analysis in general (Geva-May et al., 2018) and of policy trans-
fer research in particular, following empirical trends toward increasing transnational
diffusion (Minkman et al., 2018). Nevertheless, policy transfer researchers so far seem to
have shied away from developing a comprehensive theoretical and methodological
framework for studying the impact of culture on such processes beyond situational
accounts (Bertram et al., 2020; Harring et al., 2019; Jeong et al., 2012). This contribution
intends to challenge this cultural apathy by outlining a culture-sensitive approach to pol-
icy transfer analysis. In particular, it is argued that employing aspects of culture as inde-
pendent and dependent variables shaping the reception, translation, and incorporation of
policy transfer will contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics and ultimate
success of such processes. In order to guide future endeavors, some methodological rec-
ommendations concerning the conceptualization and measurement of cultural factors are
put forward. With a view to adequately capturing the conceptual and empirical richness
of the field, this article makes use of Geert Hofstede’s influential and figurative definition
of culture as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members
of one human group from another” (Hofstede, 1980: 13). Seeing culture as a sort of “men-
tal software” allows for a consideration of the manifold values, symbols, and patterns of
behavior commonly subsumed under the culture label. In addition, the metaphor usefully
visualizes the fluid and evolving nature of culture in line with social developments, just
like software is constantly updated to function in new operating systems. In contrast to
more detailed and focused formulations, Hofstede’s rather inclusive conceptualization
thus fits neatly with the explorative outlook of this study.
After clarifying and delineating the conceptual arena, I will revisit Geva-May’s claim
about the neglect of (cross-)cultural theory with a focus on the policy transfer literature,
from which I seek to derive a theoretical approach to account for cultural variables.
Building on this groundwork, the core of my argument highlights the importance of cul-
tural sensitivity in transfer and diffusion processes. The subsequent section, ‘Building a
Methodological Repertoire’, then lays out some of the most pertinent methodological
tasks faced by culture-sensitive scholars. Drawing on these insights, the conclusion
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