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The Global Dynamics of Policy-Making in an Era of Complexity

Adebimpe Saheed Fagbemi, PhD, Abiodun Ghali ISSA Doctoral Candidate, Tope Omolola, Omorinbola Doctoral Candidate

Abstract

The days when policy researchers could count upon domestic politics and society to contribute sufficient data for a satisfactory analysis are now a memory. Whether policy researchers are prepared to enter another analytical universe or not, the accelerating flow of ideas, information, goods and money across national borders has affected the nature of policy problems, reshaped the attempts to engage these problems and thus reoriented the way in which explanations of policy- making can be productively pursued. The big questions that animate policy studies may not have changed, but the available data and the concepts needed to analyze them have been shifting. This paper will seek to connect these emerging global dynamics to long recognized drivers of policy- making and present a conceptual framework that can help in understanding the resulting interactions. Enhancing the linkage between theoretical frameworks that have informed international relations and public policy concepts promises a better understanding of policy- making in a volatile universe. This paper will consider the value of applying a network perspective on understanding global influences through four stages of consideration. Initially it will examine the concept of globalization and briefly assess the implications that it raises for studying policy- making. Next, the paper will turn to the literature on policy communities and policy networks to highlight tools that can be used in assessing global influences on policy subsystems. Then, it will consider the concept of policy paradigms and contemplate the role that ideational influences play in modulating global impacts on policy. Finally, a fourfold typology of internationalized policy environments will be presented, in order to illuminate how particular configurations of policy jpaswr communities and networks can refract the global influences on governance. In conclusion, the dynamic role of policy community mediators in trying to steer subsystem responses to global forces will briefly be considered.

Keywords

GlobalizationPolicyPublic PolicyPolicy MakingPolicy Environment

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