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What Is Policy Convergence and What Causes It?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Colin J. Bennett
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Type
Review Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , April 1991 , pp. 215 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 Kerr, Clark, The Future of Industrial Societies: Convergence or Continuing Diversity? (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See, for example, Inkeles, Alex, ‘Convergence and Divergence in Industrial Societies’, in Attir, Mustafa O., Holzner, Burkart and Suda, Zdenek, eds, Directions of Change: Modernization Theory, Research and Realities (Moulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Kerr, Clark, Dunlop, John T., Marbison, Frederick and Myers, C. A., Industrialism and Industrial Man (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin Books, 1973)Google Scholar; and Kerr, , The Future of Industrial Societies.Google Scholar

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15 The obvious exceptions are the three editions by Heidenheimer, Arnold, Heclo, Hugh and Adams, Carolyn T., Comparative Public Policy: The Politics of Social Choice in Europe and America (New York: St Martin's Press, 1975, 1983, 1990).Google Scholar

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17 This article stems from previous empirical work in the area of information and communications policy. Prior research has demonstrated a high degree of convergence in the legal remedies established to protect personal data in automated information systems – the policy is normally subsumed under the appellation of ‘data protection’ or ‘information privacy’. The examination of the determinants of this convergence exposed a number of deficiencies in the way that convergence had been conceptualized and explained in previous work. See Bennett, Colin J., ‘Different Processes, One Result: The Convergence of Data Protection Policy in Europe and the United States’, Governance, 1 (1988), 415–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Regulating the Computer: The Politics of Personal Data Protection in Europe and the United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, forthcoming).

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30 Leichter, , A Comparative Approach to Policy Analysis, p. 272.Google Scholar Similar evidence of Germany's pioneering role in welfare policy is provided in Heclo, Hugh, Modern Social Politics in Britain and Sweden (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and Kuhnle, Stein, ‘The Growth of Social Insurance Programs in Scandinavia: Outside Influences and Internal Forces’, in Flora, Peter and Heidenheimer, Arnold, eds, The Development of Welfare Slates in Europe and America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1981).Google Scholar

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43 An enormous literature could be cited. Probably the two pioneering works are: Mitrany, David, A Working Peace System (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1943)Google Scholar; and Haas, Ernst B., Beyond the Nation-State (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964).Google Scholar A useful literature review of different theories of European integration is provided in Taylor, Paul, The Limits of European Integration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

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63 Although there is now a burgeoning literature which applies state-centred approaches to many cases, the central theoretical works remain Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich and Skocpol, Theda, eds, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nordlinger, Eric A., On the Autonomy of the Democratic State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).Google Scholar Useful reviews are found in: Krasner, Stephen D., ‘Approaches to the State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics’, Comparative Politics, 16 (1984), 223–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Almond, Gabriel A., ‘The Return to the State’, American Political Science Review, 82 (1988), 853–901.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64 Nordlinger, , On the Autonomy of the Democratic State, p. 28.Google Scholar

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67 Skocpol too concludes that ‘the value of Nordlinger's book lies … in the researchable hypotheses about variations in state autonomy that one might derive from the typologies it offers’ (Skocpol, , ‘Bringing the State Back In’, p. 31).Google Scholar