International Organizations as complex agents in policy transfer processes
Résumé
This chapter investigates IOs as agents of the international diffusion of policy models and instruments. What impact do IOs have on phenomena that pre-existed them, such as policy borrowing and lending, institutional and governmental mimicry, peer learning and socialization? Different strands of the literature on the subject (policy transfers studies, international relations, sociology of expertise) are first examined to evidence the roles played by IOs in policy transfers, associated with a variety of modes of action: intergovernmental monitoring, multilateral learning and global framing. Critical approaches to the phenomena are then retraced to analyze the standardization and disconnect from local contexts that are facilitated by the intervention of IOs in policy transfers. Lastly, the concept of ‘transnational sectoral spaces’ is introduced to situate IOs in the contexts of their action. The outlines of a polycentric space are traced, at odds with the idea of a linear domination of IOs over states and territories.