Effective Policy Transfer – Opportunities and Challenges: Evidence from Economic and Social Policy Reforms in the Western Balkans Margo Thomas and Vesna Bojicic-Dzelilovic

Overarching questions: 1 What role does policy transfer play in public and social policy change and innovation? 2 What evidence do we have of effective (or ineffective) policy transfer (across policy areas or between geographic regions), and can we identify its key contingencies?

Why study policy transfer in the Western Balkans The Western Balkans= Former Yugoslavia- Slovenia + Albania [sometimes WB= South East Europe) Triple transition: post-conflict; post-socialist; nation/state building ‘living laboratory for policy transfer analysis’ (Evans & Barakat 2012)

Economic and social policy reforms in Bosnia- Herzegovina; Croatia; Serbia; FYR Macedonian focus The context and incentives for reforms the role of key policy actors in driving the policy agenda, policy learning and transfer among policy actors and their collective role in influencing the scope, timing, and outcomes or impacts of policy reforms.

Argument In the context of significant international involvement, although policy transfer is supply driven and motivated by political and economic expediency, state governments and policy makers are actively engaged in bargaining to determine the selection, scope and implementation of reforms.

Outline theoretical framework context for economic and social policy reforms in the WB cases findings some questions on the usefulness of the policy transfer analytics in post war, post- socialist transition context

Policy transfer in post socialist, post- war transitions/reconstruction Structural conditions (contextual realities of receiving countries) are of utmost significance a)Unpacking ‘structural conditions” to establish what aspects matter from the policy transfer perspective; b)Question actors and agency (identities, motives, roles) Because… war and state transformation determine what kinds of actors engage in policy making and shapes internal structural variables in the form of competing struggle among various interests (Stubbs 2007) Translation approach: the nature of the state and actors relations. (Clarks at all 2015, Stone 2012)

Western Balkans local conditions Proliferation of actors and mandates Unique forms of international engagement (OHR; Stability Pact) Weak state/weak civil society Nation/state formation in the context of politicised ethnicity Wide ranging reform agenda Inadequate knowledge base

Case studies Macedonia: regional development policy: EU initiated; alignment with the EU structural and cohesion funds BiH: reforms to set up macroeconomic institutions: OHR as the highest executive authority; economic sustainability of the country Croatia: regulatory reforms: USAID with World Bank & local experts working with IO or connected to them: improving competitiveness Serbia: IFC – led; attracting FDI

Findings Scope of policy transfer Extensive policy transfer but variable across policy areas and countries; dependent on timing, political expediency and perceived benefits in relation to short and medium costs. Reactive, supply driven policy agendas most strongly associated with the EU membership Coercive forms of policy transfer related to conditionality Prevalence of various forms of soft transfer

Actors/agency Most reforms are driven by external actors Clear evidence of local agency in determining which reforms are implemented and the scope of implementation despite weaknesses in the institutional structure Government and public actors are key local agents Policy coalitions are often fractured and local policy actors caught up in difficult negotiations with competing advocacy coalitions In some areas eg regulatory reform evidence of policy transfer networks

Internal capacity and availability of resources for implementation Political capacity as: legitimacy to propose policy authority to implement viability of policies Is the key but all 3 aspects defined by war legacy

Applying policy transfer analysis in post-socialist, post-war Western Balkans 1. Examining complex episodes of policy reforms, taking into account temporal and political shifts 2. Distinguishing between the transfer of new policies (i.e., those that have not been applied before in a receiving country) and old/existing policies 3. Measuring policy transfer success and outcomes