AT THE INTERFACE BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE – POLICY TRANSFER AND LESSON‐DRAWING
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
| Published date | 01 June 2006 |
| Author | MARK EVANS |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2006.00013.x |
Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 2, 2006 (479–515)
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
REVIEWS
AT THE INTERFACE BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE – POLICY
TRANSFER AND LESSON-DRAWING
Learning From Comparative Public Policy: a Practical Guide
Richard Rose
Routledge 2004, 147 pp., £16.99 (pb) ISBN: 0415317428
MARK EVANS
Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto un-
done should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.
Max Beerholm, British writer (1872 – 1956)
ARGUMENTS
Richard Rose ’ s Learning from Comparative Public Policy is an outstanding
contribution to the study of comparative public policy. It confronts, though
perhaps unwittingly, two of the central problems with much of the present
academic literature on public policy in general and lesson-drawing or vol-
untary policy transfer in particular. First, there is the relative absence of
enterprising prescription to help public organizations solve public policy
problems and, secondly, a stark failure to engage with practice, refl ected in
the reluctance to make social scientifi c enquiry relevant to practice. This has
made it all too easy for practitioners to dismiss social scientifi c enquiry as
‘ abstract ’ and ‘ impractical ’ at a time when academics should be helping to
set the public policy agenda. As the British Prime Minister Tony Blair puts
it, ‘ this government expects more of policymakers. More new ideas, more
willingness to question inherited ways of doing things, better use of evi-
dence and research in policy-making and better focus on policies that will
deliver long-term goals ’ (see Wyatt and Grimmeisen CMPS 2002). The inte-
gral relationship between evidence-based practice, rational lesson-drawing
and good policy-making has created a political space for comparative pub-
lic policy specialists to provide a unique contribution to public policy dis-
courses. Rose ’ s stimulating book provides a perfect example of the type of
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