GLOBAL PUBLIC POLICY AND TRANSNATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| Author | DIANE STONE,STELLA LADI |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12207 |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12207
GLOBAL PUBLIC POLICY AND TRANSNATIONAL
ADMINISTRATION
DIANE STONE AND STELLA LADI
There has been a proliferation of administrative practices and processes of policy-making and
policy delivery beyond but often overlapping with traditional nation state policy processes. New
formal and informal institutions and actors are behind these policy processes, often in coopera-
tion with national public administrations but sometimes quite independently from them. These
‘multi-stakeholder initiatives’, ‘global public–private partnerships’ and ‘global commissions’ are
creating or delivering global policies even though the geographic pattern of policy action can vary
considerably. Implementation may occur at (trans)national or local levels in differentregions more
or less contemporaneously, or also in problem contexts that are cross-border and co-jurisdictional,
hence our use of the term ‘transnational administration’. Traditional policy and public adminis-
tration studies have tended to undertake analysis of the capacity of public sector hierarchies to
globalize national policies rather than to investigate transnational policy-making above and beyond
the state. This article extends the ambit of public administration and policy studies into what has
traditionally been considered the realm of International Relations scholarship to identify and map
new modes of global (public) policy and transnational administration and prospects for ongoing
conceptualization.
INTRODUCTION
In this article we open the debate on, and examine signs of, global public policy and emer-
gent transnational administration. These processes need to be understood through the lens
of policy studies and public administration scholarship, and not only that of international
law and international relations. This article addresses the question of what would a change
in the lens signify for new ndings and insights regarding the changing face of public
administration and public policy processes globally?
First, adopting the terms ‘global public policy’ and ‘transnational administration’ forces
consideration of public problems extant beyond the state, where a vastly recongured
international civil service works alongside new transnational actors of administration. A
second contribution offered in this article and the symposium is a move from methodolog-
ical nationalism towards ‘methodological transnationalism’, where public administration
is not viewed simply as being the repository of states, or state actors operating internation-
ally, to recognize the interconnectedness of different hierarchical and network structures
of both a public and private nature at the transnational, international and/or global lev-
els. A third contribution is to highlight several theoretical frameworks from policy studies
and public administration that can be conceptually stretched as various ‘lenses’ of ‘global
public policy’ and ‘transnational administration’. Symposium contributors develop some
of these in greater detail, such as Deborah Alimi’s adaptation of the ‘multiple streams’
model or Sarah Wolff’s adoption of a policy design approach to address the instruments
of transnational administration.
We begin with a couple of working denitions as a starting point with which to frame
discussion.
Diane Stone is in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Stella Ladi is
in the School of Business and Management at Queen Mary University of London, UK.
Public Administration Vol.93, No. 4, 2015 (839–855)
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
840 DIANE STONE AND STELLA LADI
Global (Public) Policy (GPP) refers to a set of overlapping but disjointed processes of
public–private deliberation and cooperation among both ofcial state-based and interna-
tional organizations and non-state actors around establishing common norms and policy
agendas for securing the delivery of global public goods or ameliorating transnational
problems.
TransnationalAdministration (TA) refers to the regulation, management and implemen-
tation of global policies of a public nature by both private and public actors operating
beyond the boundaries and jurisdictions of the state, but often in areas beneath the global
level.
A point of commonality in the denitions of global (public) policy and transnational
(public) administration is that we place ‘public’ in parentheses. Traditionally, the rights
and responsibilities of ‘the public’ – as well as the citizen – have been associated with a
sovereign order. In the absence of a sovereign power at global, regional (notwithstanding
some supranational functions of the EU) and transnational levels, the notion of the public
is often lost from analytical sight. When we drop the ‘public’, it is also in recognition that
authority becomes more informal and privatized.
The study of public administration and policy has been bound by the concept of
sovereignty. ‘Westphalian sovereignty’ is based on the principle that one sovereign state
should not interfere in the domestic arrangements of another. By contrast, Stephen Kras-
ner’s (1999) notion of ‘interdependence sovereignty’ is the capacity and willingness of
public authorities to control or regulate ows of people, goods and capital in and out of a
country.‘Domestic sovereignty’ is the capacity of a state to choose and implement policies
within its territory. Clearly, globalization has constrained interdependence sovereignty
and challenged domestic sovereignty.
In this symposium of Public Administration – the oldest such journal of its kind – we
seek to challenge policy and public administration studies by arguing that an increasingly
important locus of policy power, decision-making processes and implementing author-
ity operates above and beyond the state and is executed by transnational policy actors.
Yet we see little analysis of global (public) policy and transnational administration. While
there are notable exceptions, in the main, public policy and public administration studies
have tended to undertake analysis of the capacity of public sector hierarchies to globalize
national policies, rather than to ask if there is transnational policy-making and administra-
tion above and beyond the state. The focus of much policy scholarship has been to address
the impact of extra-state dynamics upon domestic politics.
The following discussion is structured into two main parts. The rst part focuses on
some manifestations of global policy processes and transnational administration. The sec-
ond part assesses some of the conceptual tools in the arsenal of policy studies that could
be utilized for further analysis. In order to ‘ground’ our discussion, we have selected one
policy issue – gas aring – for illustration. First, gas aring can be described as a global
policy issue and a problem that is global, in the sense of being transplanetary in its effects.
Second, gas ares are also highly localized. Gas aring is a good example of GPP and TA:
the norm of pollution reduction, climate protection and poverty reduction is increasingly
global, although application of such norms may be specic to certain industries in specic
locales, where tackling it falls, as an administrative burden, upon relatively few national
administrations and expert communities. Launched at the World Summit on Sustainable
Development in August 2002, Global Gas Flaring Reduction (GGFR) is a public–private
partnership. While we cannot do full justice to the activities, and importance, of this global
Public Administration Vol.93, No. 4, 2015 (839–855)
© 2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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