Policy Studies
ISSN: 0144-2872 (Print) 1470-1006 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cpos20
Policy transfer, contagion effects and intra-party reform Anika Gauja To cite this article: Anika Gauja (2016) Policy transfer, contagion effects and intra-party reform, Policy Studies, 37:5, 471-485, DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2016.1188913 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2016.1188913
Published online: 22 Jun 2016.
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Date: 29 January 2017, At: 18:23
POLICY STUDIES, 2016 VOL. 37, NO. 5, 471–485 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2016.1188913
Policy transfer, contagion effects and intra-party reform Anika Gauja Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia ABSTRACT
ARTICLE HISTORY
This article examines the extent to which the Australian Labor Party (ALP) engaged in a process of policy transfer, learning from the UK Labour Party, when it reformed its federal leadership selection process in 2013. Bringing together insights from both the public policy and party organisations literature, the article develops an empirical framework for identifying instances of policy transfer (or contagion effects) that consists of three criteria: intention, motivation and implementation, which can examined through various types of empirical data (including interviews, documentary, and network analysis). Applying this framework to the ALP reforms, the article concludes that while it is possible to see evidence of a general shift to a similar, more inclusive selection process, policy transfer is more difficult to substantiate. There were clear differences in the specifics of how the process would work, and a temporal disjoint between when actors sought information about UK practices and when the reforms actually occurred.
Received 24 November 2015 Accepted 11 April 2016 KEYWORDS
Policy transfer; party reform; social democracy; Australia; UK
The UK Labour Party is often regarded as a source of inspiration to social democratic parties worldwide. While this influence is usually examined through policy shifts (see, for example, Scott 2000; Johnson and Tonkiss 2002; Pierson and Castles 2002; O’Reilly 2007), it also extends to organisational innovation (see, for example, Dolowitz, Greenwold, and Marsh 1999). The Australian Labor Party (ALP) has had a long tradition of sending its office holders, organisers and activists abroad to observe UK general elections and Labour conferences, facilitating exchanges and creating greater links in areas such as campaigning practices and policy development. Through a case study of the 2013 ALP leadership reforms,1 this article systematically analyses the extent to which policy transfer (or perhaps more appropriately, organisational transfer) can be said to have occurred between these two parties in shaping the trajectory of ALP reform in the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd era. The article brings together some of the analytical claims regarding policy transfer, contagion, convergence and diffusion that are made by both public policy and party scholars. By synthesising these literatures, it is hoped that scholars of political parties might be introduced to a broader range of analytical tools to examine institutional lesson-learning, and that the policy transfer literature might also benefit from some of the empirical CONTACT Anika Gauja
[email protected]
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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strategies, observations and concerns of those studying party change. As Dolowitz and Marsh (2000, 7) argue, while studies of policy transfer are becoming increasingly common to many disciplines within the social sciences, few ‘identify the process directly … they describe the transfer of ideas or policies between countries but do not analyse and explain the processes involved’ (see also Marsh and Sharman 2009, 269). In responding to this challenge, the article develops an empirical strategy for identifying organisational transfer between parties, consisting of three conditions: intention, motivation and implementation. Organisational transfer might be said to have occurred in circumstances where a party intends to amend its organisational structure, it is motivated to seek out the practices used by other parties and what is finally implemented resembles the practices of those other parties. As the article shows, these conditions can be established using a variety of data sources, including interviews, documentary analysis and through network analysis. Applying this framework to the ALP reforms, the article concludes that is possible to see evidence of a general shift to a similar, more inclusive selection process indicating that some degree of inspiration or emulation has taken place. However, organisational transfer is more difficult to discern owing to the fact that there was a temporal disjoint between when actors within the ALP were motivated by the practices of UK Labour and when the reforms actually occurred. Implementation was also substantially different – for example, the two leadership selection processes differed in terms of who could vote and how a party leader could be removed.
Policy transfer and party organisational change Within the public policy literature, several related concepts – policy transfer, contagion and diffusion – have been used to describe the process by which ‘knowledge’ about policies, institutions and ideas in one political context are used in the development of policies, institutions and ideas in another (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, 5). Each is concerned with a series of general questions: to what extent is the process voluntary, which actors are involved, how much policy is transferred, and what explains variations in the level of transfer (Cairney 2009, 473). Broadly speaking, the concepts of policy convergence and diffusion tend to emphasise structural explanations to these questions, whereas policy transfer places a greater degree of emphasis on the agency of policy actors (Evans and Davies 1999, 368; Marsh and Sharman 2009). Political party scholars are also concerned with similar processes of transfer, but tend to look at this through the wider lens of party change. Change is approached in two ways, which essentially reflect the different methodological approaches and traditions within the sub-discipline. The first examines organisational change through detailed case studies of individual political parties (see, for example, Russell 2005; Bale 2012). This approach emphasises the complexity of change as a contested and contextually specific process involving a variety of different actors within, and outside, the party organisation. The second approach attempts to develop a generalisable – and arguably, more structural – account of change that travels across parties, and across party systems. This includes both studies of organisational change (see, for example, Harmel and Janda 1994; Harmel et al. 1995), as well as the extensive literature on the evolution of party models or ‘ideal types’
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(see, for example, Duverger’s (1954) ‘mass party’, Panebianco’s (1988) ‘electoral professional party’, or Katz and Mair’s (1995) ‘cartel party’). The focus of this second approach is in identifying the common factors (internal and external to the party) that account for change. The most common factors cited are external shocks (such as electoral setbacks and changes to the institutional environment, for example, the introduction of public funding or technological developments), a change in party leadership, and/or a change in the dominant faction within a party (Harmel and Janda 1994, 261–262). Unlike policy scholars, those researching parties do not talk of policy transfer, convergence or diffusion, but a number of studies do speak of ‘contagion effects’ (see, for example, Duverger 1954; Matland and Studlar 1996; Cross and Blais 2012; Gauja 2012; Kenny and Mackay 2014; Wauters 2014; Chiru et al. 2015). Contagion can be defined as ‘copying the behaviour of successful parties’ (Gauja 2012, 652).2 Within the sub-field of party organisational scholarship, ‘behaviour’ can refer to intra-party institutional arrangements, decision-making processes, electoral strategies and more broadly, ideological rhetoric. Thus the scope of what is being transferred is entirely consistent with definitions developed within the policy transfer literature (see, for example, Dolowitz and Marsh 1996, 344; Dolowitz, Greenwold, and Marsh 1999, 719; Evans and Davies 1999, 362; Marsh and Sharman 2009, 270–271). Like Evans’ (2009, 244) account of transfer, Gauja’s definition of contagion places intentionality at the centre of the concept. However, as a mid-level phenomenon (see Evans and Davies 1999, 363), contagion as both a catalyst and a process of change tends to be overlooked, or squeezed out, in the general and case-specific approaches to party scholarship mentioned above. In general accounts, contagion effects flow from leadership or factional change, as new personnel bring with them new ideas and practices (Harmel et al. 1995, 4). Specific accounts, by their very nature, are limited in identifying forces for change that originate beyond the party – unless the source of and inspiration for these changes in acknowledged by actors within the party. In the limited instances in which contagion is specifically mentioned in studies of party change, it tends to be conceptualised in terms of the competitive environment (Matland and Studlar 1996; Gauja 2012, 653–654). For example, in his study of why Belgian political parties have embraced primaries for the selection of the party leader, Wauters (2014, 64) argues that ‘parties that are operating in a competitive arena look at each other and tend to copy features of party organisation that prove to be successful’. The logic echoes what Richard Rose said about the nature of policy transfer more than two decades ago: ‘[i]f the lesson is positive, a policy that works in transferred, with suitable adaptations. If it is negative, observers learn what not to do from watching the mistakes of others’ (Rose 1991, 4). This feature of policy transfer, as McConnell (2010, 137) reminds us, goes to the motivations of the exercise as a means to bring success to the organisation – imbuing legitimacy through the symbolism of adopting something that has been ‘tried and tested’. Nonetheless, whilst success may certainly be a motivation for transfer, it does not guarantee the success of the transfer itself – or the outcome (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, 6).
Establishing transfer or ‘contagion’: an empirical strategy Perhaps because it has been given relatively little attention in studies of party change, there is no systematic way within the field of party scholarship to accurately identify instances of
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contagion. Previous research has relied on two main methods. The first is to infer contagion effects by comparing the substance and timing of organisational change across political parties. If party X, for example, introduces open primaries for the selection of its leader and then party Y follows suit, then contagion could be argued to have occurred. However, this method fails to differentiate changes that are the result of contagion, from those driven by coincidence or convergence. The second, perhaps more reliable method of establishing contagion is to discover the motivations and sources of inspiration for parties in implementing organisational reforms (Gauja 2012; Seddone and Venturino 2013; Wauters 2014, 71). These might be sourced from interviews, official party documents (such as reviews), media releases and statements, and political biographies. A third methodology – which has not yet been utilised in party scholarship – is to track the movement of personnel from organisation to organisation, or in this instance, from party to party (see, for example, Vromen 2015), or through the development of policy networks or epistemic communities (see, for example, Evans and Davies 1999, 365, 374). Public policy scholars studying transfer and institutional learning tend to rely on a combination of the methods described above. Nonetheless, like party scholars, they give relatively little thought to articulating a clear methodology for establishing transfer and it tends only to be implicit in descriptive accounts of the transfer. Providing one of the few statements of what is required for inter-party policy transfer, Dolowitz, Greenwold, and Marsh (1999, 719) suggest that We cannot merely assume that because … the Labour Party adopts an electoral strategy closely resembling one used by the Democrats, that this necessarily involves policy transfer. We have to establish that … the Labour Party were searching for a policy, that ministers/ party leaders … visited the US to examine an electoral strategy, and that key elements of this were incorporated into UK practice.
Further indications suggested by Evans and Davies include the presence of an agent, which is ‘essential to the voluntary and coercive dimensions of policy transfer given our definition – action-oriented institutional learning’, an assessment of the ‘real extent of transfer’ through a detailed comparison of the subject policy against domestic and original settings, and finally an examination of the ‘views and interpretations of the recipient subject(s)’ (Evans and Davies 1999, 382). Bringing these perspectives together, policy transfer in intra-party organisational practices can be identified if three conditions are met:
(1) Intention – a party must be seeking to amend its organisational practices. Evidence for this may be sourced from a contextual analysis, for example, the presence of an external shock, electoral setback, a change of leader or a shift in the intra-party balance of power. (2) Motivation – party agents must looking to, or gathering information on, other parties’ practices. This might be evidenced by study tours, or established more generally by examining the views and perceptions of party agents through interviews or, for example, the analysis of party reviews. (3) Implementation – the policy/practices implemented must – in comparison to domestic, original and source settings – resemble the policy/practices of the party from
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which it was transferred. This can be achieved by an analysis of the new processes/ institutions that have been put in place. One of the most contentious issues in the policy transfer literature is distinguishing between transfer, diffusion and convergence. As representing different points on the structure-agency spectrum, Marsh and Sharman (2009) argue that the work on transfer tends to emphasise agency, and the work on diffusion gives primary consideration to structural factors. Evans distinguishes convergence from transfer as it may occur unintentionally due to harmonising forces or common processes (2009, 244; see also Evans and Davies 1999, 368). Yet Marsh and Sharman (2009, 270) also argue that the ‘relationship between structure and agency is dialectical, that it is interactive and iterative’. The first two stages of the framework described above – intention and motivation – seek to acknowledge this interplay. While agency is foremost in the account (party agents look to practices elsewhere in pushing for reforms), this is conditioned by their perceptions of the nature of the problem – that is, why reform is necessary in the first place.
Comparing UK labour and the ALP UK Labour and the ALP are often paired together in comparative research as ‘most similar systems’ (see, for example, Manwaring 2014), that is, they share many similarities in terms of organisational structure, ideology and the institutional, cultural and social contexts within which they operate. Each party was established as the political movement of the working class with an organisation built on the archetypal mass party model. Membership was drawn predominantly from a particular social class and although the parties’ bases have expanded, decision-making is still formally structured around a model of delegation – with the party’s annual conference at the apex. Unions have been institutionalised in the decision-making process in both parties since their creation, though over time union representation at conference has been reduced (see, for example, Schulman 2015). Membership of both parties has declined in recent decades. For the ALP, membership has eroded from a peak of 370,000 in 1939 (Ward 1991, 156) to 54,000 in 2015 (The Australian May 15, 2015). However, there has been an increase in party members in the last few years (Bracks, Faulkner, and Carr 2011). A similar trend is observed in UK Labour, with membership having declined from around 700,000 members in the 1960s to just under 190,000 in 2013 – with some increases in the last few years (MAPP 2015). The primary difference between the two parties is the federated nature of the ALP, comprising of distinct state and territory branches that exercise significant autonomy in their internal decision-making processes, including candidate selection (see Cross and Gauja 2014). Given their overarching organisational and ideological similarities, we would nonetheless expect the organisational similarity of both parties to facilitate a process of institutional learning (Dolowitz, Greenwold, and Marsh 1999). The focus of the article is therefore not so much on the conditions under which policy transfer is most likely to occur between these two parties, but whether the process of reform that has occurred can be described as policy transfer, according to the framework outlined above. The remainder of the article uses the 2013 ALP leadership reforms as a case study, concentrating on this single event to ‘highlight the complex decision-making processes that may be missed in broader discussions’ (see Cairney 2009, 472).
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Leadership selection: the process of change Between June 2010 and July 2013, the ALP experienced an unprecedented period of leadership instability. Kevin Rudd, who had won the federal election for the ALP in 2007, was removed by the parliamentary caucus and replaced by Julia Gillard. Although the method by which Rudd was removed was not without precedent (Paul Keating replaced Bob Hawke in similar circumstances in 1991), the decision was seen as motivated by factional interests and proved to be deeply unpopular with party members and the public. Immediately after her promotion to the leadership, Gillard announced that a general election would be held in August, allowing her leadership and government to be scrutinised by the public. The ALP managed a narrow victory but had to form minority government with the support of the Greens and Independents. During this time, Gillard’s leadership continued to suffer from the crisis of legitimacy that arose as a result of the way in which she first became prime minister. The party’s popularity declined, and in February 2012 Rudd resigned from the Cabinet and challenged Gillard for the leadership. He lost this vote 71–31. However, this did not resolve the leadership issue. In March 2013 former leader Simon Crean called for Rudd to once again contest the leadership. Gillard initiated a spill but Rudd backed down and she was re-elected unopposed. Polls continued to fall and on 23 June 2013 Rudd once again challenged for the position. This time Rudd was elected 57 votes to Gillard’s 45. One of the first policy announcements that Rudd made upon becoming leader again in June 2013 was to propose changes to the leadership selection process to allow the membership to vote for the party leader. Rudd made three main arguments for the change: that ‘Australians demand to know that the Prime Minister they elect is the Prime Minister they get’, to ‘give more power to the everyday members of the Labor Party’ and to ‘ensure that power will never again rest in the hands of a factional few’ (Rudd 2013a). These intentions reflect both the personal circumstances of Rudd’s dismissal from office in 2010 and the broader electoral damage caused by leadership instability within the party. Although reforms were not undertaken in the aftermath of an electoral defeat, they were certainly directed at avoiding one. This fear was not unfounded – an internal party report into the 2013 federal election campaign loss found that ‘the decline in Labor’s vote that began in late 2009 and culminated on 7 September 2013 occurred against a backdrop of persistent and ultimately debilitating leadership instability’ (Garrett and Dick 2014, 2). The importance of an impending electoral loss in this particular sequence of events is consistent with accounts of change in both the policy and parties literature that suggest reform does not occur simply of its own volition – dissatisfaction with the status quo is a necessary catalyst (Rose 1991; Harmel and Janda 1994). The idea of reforming the leadership selection process had been around within the ALP since 2011 when NSW State Secretary Sam Dastyari – after visiting the UK Labour Party at the time of Ed Miliband’s election – floated the idea publicly just before the National Conference (Snow and Davies 2011). Former campaign strategist Bruce Hawker and parliamentarian Chris Bowen also called for reform, citing the experiences of Canada’s NDP, the US Democratic Party and UK Labour as examples that the ALP could emulate (see Bowen 2013; Hawker 2013). If we adopt the conditions for policy transfer suggested by Dolowitz, Greenwold, and Marsh (1999), discussed previously, then it seems that these processes fell short of what might be seen as transfer. While ALP staffers, leaders and
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campaigners visited the UK Labour Party, and certainly pointed to it as a party to be emulated, it is not clear that at the time the visits occurred these policy makers were actually looking for a policy solution. Rather, the idea occurred to them retrospectively when the problem occurred. Unlike the UK Labour Party’s experience of learning from US Democratic Party campaign practices, no study team was sent to the UK and no report on leadership selection practices was written (see Dolowitz, Greenwold, and Marsh 1999, 721). However, if we adopt the more expansive approach taken by Evans and Davies (1999) and reflected in the three-stage framework, then awareness of the UK Labour experience and the suggestion that it could be used as a model for change might sufficiently demonstrate the motivations behind policy transfer. The reforms were officially adopted in a special meeting of the parliamentary party on 22 July 2013. The reform was carried on the voices and did not require a show of hands or a formal vote (The Australian July 23, 2013, 1). The timing of the reform announcement (less than three months out from a general election and years from the next party conference) was paramount in minimising dissent from caucus colleagues. At the ALP National Conference in July 2015 the leadership reforms were partially ratified, in that changes to the Constitution essentially preserved the power of the parliamentary party to make rules for the selection of the party leader. The requirement that a vote to select the party leader be split equally between members and parliamentarians was codified, but subject to the proviso that: ‘this clause applies when the rules of the FPLP [federal parliamentary Labor Party] require the election of the Leader of the FPLP to include a ballot of Party members other than members of the FPLP’ (ALP National Constitution, Party C, Clause 26). No debate was had over the proposed amendments. While the narrative Rudd constructed was entirely consistent with the ideals of intraparty democracy, the proposal did not flow from the grassroots, nor was there any consultation with the extra-parliamentary party in pushing the reforms through. This stands in contrast to the events that led to leadership selection reform in UK Labour in the late 1970s/early 1980s, which was largely orchestrated by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy movement in partnership with the trade unions (Bale and Webb 2014, 14). For the ALP, the power of the party leader was paramount in pushing the reforms through. The example illustrates the fact that whilst policy may be transferred, the process of policy development (or reform) can be very different.
The substance of the change Globally, the most common methods for selecting a parliamentary leader are through a convention of party delegates, or through a simple vote of the party membership (often called a one member, one vote process) (Pilet and Cross 2014). These two methods were not given serious consideration (at least in the public sphere) as the ALP quickly settled on a method similar to that used in UK Labour: the electoral college. While the basic model of leadership selection adopted by the ALP in 2013 was similar to that used by UK Labour at the time, several important differences remained. The Australian Labor college comprised of only two groups – the federal parliamentary party and the financial membership – who voted as individuals and whose votes were split equally. When the college system was first introduced in the UK Labour Party, it comprised of three groups: affiliated societies (unions and socialist societies) with a 40% share,
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Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) with a 30% share and the parliamentary party also with a 30% share. Under this system, voting was conducted at a special meeting of the college, at which delegates from the various unions, societies and CLPs would always cast their votes as blocs – mandated to vote in a particular way by the bodies they represented (Bale and Webb 2014, 14). In 1993 the college was changed to apportion each group an equal share of the vote, and each college was to aggregate their votes under a one-member-one vote system.3 In contrast, unions were not given a specific share in the ALP’s electoral college. There was some criticism from the union lobby when the decision was announced, predominantly on the grounds that the reforms missed a significant number of union members (around a million) that could have been enfranchised, and that the party risked drifting too far to the left if controlled by the rank and file (Financial Review July 10, 2013, 1). However, apart from a few days of media coverage the unions’ concerns did not impact significantly upon the trajectory of reform. Rudd’s position on the issue was that … what we are seeking to do here with this reform is say to all our friends and supporters in the trade union movement, we want you active in the branches of the Australian Labor Party … That is where we want to see the activism of our trade union friends and that is what this reform is designed to encourage. (Rudd 2013b)
There are several potential reasons as to why unions did not feature prominently in the reform discussion. In so far as unions were caught up in the factional politics of leadership churn, they were seen as part of the problem. Gradually declining organising capacities and internal influence (see Schulman 2015) may have hampered the unions’ ability to effectively respond to this rhetoric. In procedural terms, the changes took place so quickly and wholly within the parliamentary party, that unions – like the broader extra-parliamentary party – were simply excluded from the process. Union opposition may have been quelled by the belief that the 2013 changes were an interim measure and the hope that in future discussions (at National Conference), unions may be included in the process. As National President Jenny McAllister commented (Australian October 7, 2013): I think there is a broader discussion to have about how best to organise that relationship so that we make sure we maximise the involvement of those millions of people who are members of unions. I wouldn’t rule out union members having a vote for Labor leader, but I think it is only part of the conversation we should have.
Had the ALP decided to give unions a discrete share in the vote for party leader, they would have adopted a process that would soon be outdated. In response to the recommendations of the Collins Report (2014), the UK Labour Party once again changed the vote for Labour leader to a single electoral college conducted under a one-member-one-vote system. The fact that in 2014 the UK Labour Party moved to abolish the union vote may have contributed to the decision to keep such a discussion off the Australian conference agenda. There was also relatively little debate within the ALP as to whether specific restrictions should be placed on voting eligibility. This may have been due to the fact that only the basic principles of reform were announced by Rudd, and the details of the contest had to be worked out by the National Executive when the contest was imminent. On 16 September – four days before nominations for the contest closed – the National Executive decided that
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everyone who was a financial member of the party as of September 7 would be able to vote in the leadership ballot. This provision was very similar to the 2010 UK Labour rules, in which all current financial members were able to participate in the membership vote (Chapter 4C). Previously, it was expected that only people who had been members for at least two years would be given a vote (ABC News, September 16, 2013; ALP 2013). The reason for this extension was to give volunteers who had joined the party to get involved in the election campaign their say on the leader (Jenny McAllister, ABC News 16 September 2013). Although party officials and parliamentarians cited an increase in membership numbers (of around 4000) during the contest (AAP 10 October 2013), it was not specifically designed as a tool for recruitment. There was no further consideration of the electoral system to be used in the ALP reforms (and other more detailed aspects of the electoral process) because the contest was only announced after it was clear that only two candidates would nominate. There was no need, therefore, for the National Executive to specify whether the alternate vote system (as used in the UK), would also be used in Australia. Because the changes to ALP leadership selection in July 2013 were made in the context of persistent leadership instability, the removal of the party leader was one of the most prominent and controversial aspects of the debate. Previously, the party leader could be removed by a simple majority of the caucus. Kevin Rudd’s original proposal for leadership selection reform retained this power exclusively for the federal caucus, and contemplated that a party leader could only be removed and a new contest called in four circumstances: an automatic spill would occur following a general election if the party did not win government, if a leader resigned voluntarily, at the request of a leader, or if at least 75% of the parliamentary party signed a petition that the leader had brought the party into disrepute. No real consideration was given to allowing the membership or extra-parliamentary party any role in the removal process. Immediately concerns were voiced that the 75% requirement was too rigid and in practice meant that a leader could only be removed in the most exceptional of circumstances. This would alter the balance of power between the leader and the caucus, reducing accountability between periodic leadership contests. Several days after the initial proposal was announced, Rudd indicated that we would be willing to compromise on the 75% threshold for ALP leaders who were in opposition (The Australian, July 12, 2013, 8). At the special caucus meeting that approved the rule changes, Rudd’s proposal was amended so that only a petition of 75% of the caucus could remove a leader in government (the sitting prime minister), but an opposition leader could be removed with a petition of 60% of the caucus. It is interesting to note that although the ALP did not adopt the UK Labour Party’s method of removing a leader, or indeed make any reference to it, the general direction of the reform was the same – making it more difficult to remove a party leader, particularly a sitting one. A UK Labour prime minister can only be challenged if a challenger receives sufficient support from the parliamentary caucus and the party conference approves a vote for a new leader. As Cross and Blais (2012, 112) note, ‘this high threshold makes a successful challenge virtually unimaginable’. Despite criticisms, the amended proposal passed through the caucus relatively smoothly. This is surprising given the amount of power that the parliamentary party ceded, but is largely explained by the timing and context of the reform process – highlighting the continued importance of structural factors. Considerations of the electoral damage
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caused by leadership change within the party in recent years were of greater concern to parliamentarians than the prospect of holding future leaders to account. Only three months out from a general election the leadership change resulted in the departure of half of the campaign team and ‘severely frustrated and derailed important policy and messaging work’ (Garrett and Dick 2014, 7).
Assessing policy transfer Were the ALP leadership selection reforms the result of a process of policy transfer? As I argued at the beginning of the paper, three conditions are necessary in order to identify policy transfer: motivation (parties need to be looking to change their practices), intention (there must be empirical evidence that they are learning from the experiences of another party) and implementation (that what is implemented resembles the practices of the party from which it was transferred). The first of these criteria is relatively easy to satisfy. The period of leadership instability that the ALP experienced and the negative impact this had on the party’s popularity created the necessary conditions for reform to occur. Agency was also clearly a factor: in this instance, policy transfer was facilitated by a remarkably top-down process orchestrated by the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, however, other prominent officers and parliamentarians had also publicly declared their support for a change in the ways party leaders were selected. The method by which the changes were adopted was contentious and presented a significant departure from the usual process of conference or executive approval for the changes. This process avoided many of the normative disagreements that would usually be inherent in the political process of intra-party reform (see Rose 1991, 10). While it is clear that those responsible for pushing through changes to the leadership selection process were motivated by the experiences of the UK Labour model, and some had advocated for its adoption several years earlier, there is a clear disconnect between the timing of the reforms and when lessons were being learned from UK Labour. For several key protagonists, this had occurred several years earlier. If the requirements of the policy transfer framework are interpreted strictly, this is a barrier to transfer having occurred – as party agents were not actively looking for a policy lesson/solution. However, there may be some utility in relaxing the timeframe so that theoretically policy learning can occur before a problem occurs, or before the opportunity to undertake reforms arises. Loosening the temporal element – or appreciating that learning can occur in a different sequence of events – also acknowledges the interplay between structure and agency in shaping the process of party change. While actors may gather information on structures and policies at one point in time, it may be several years before political and contextual circumstances allow a change to occur – or for that learning to be implemented. Although those floating change within the ALP referred to the UK model of leadership selection, it is not clear that this was the only source of inspiration. As Cross and Blais (2012) and Pilet and Cross (2014) have shown, there has been a general shift towards more inclusive forms of leadership selection across Westminster and West European democracies, and across parties of different families. The trend is not restricted to social democratic parties. The experience of the US model of ‘primaries’ has been invoked not only by the ALP but also UK Labour as an arena from which lessons could be learned. This provides evidence for Richard Rose’s claim that in the field of policy transfer generally, not just party
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organisational reform, ‘a small number of countries exert a pull as exemplars, attracting a stream of visitors to examine their programmes. The United States, by virtue of novelty and scale, has long been an exemplar’ (Rose 1991, 14; see also Dolowitz, Greenwold, and Marsh 1999 who cite the power of the US’ global hegemony). The third element of the empirical framework – the similarity of the implemented policy to the original – is more difficult to satisfy. The model of leadership selection adopted in Australia differed quite substantially from that of the UK Labour Party in several key aspects of the process, including the role of unions, supporters, and the provisions for removal of the leader. Rather, what was adopted was the general move towards more inclusive forms of leadership selection and greater restrictions on leadership removal. There are several ways to interpret this, although the policy transfer literature does not appear to provide a definitive answer on how this experience could best be categorised. For example, because the two methods of leadership selection were substantially different we might conclude that no policy transfer occurred. Alternatively, we could reinterpret what was transferred, and categorise this as a ‘soft’ transfer of ‘ideas, concepts and attitudes’ rather than a ‘hard’ transfer of particular policy programmes (Evans and Davies 1999, 382). Another alternative would be to locate the reform process on a broader scale of degrees of policy transfer. Several different iterations of this scale have been suggested, but the most common points are copying, emulation, hybridisation, synthesis/combinations and inspiration (Rose 1991, 22; Dolowitz and Marsh 2000, 13; Evans 2009, 245–246). In this case policy transfer could be described as either emulation (a process involving the transfer of ideas behind the policy/program) or inspiration (where policy in another jurisdiction inspires change, but the final outcome does not draw upon the original). However, in the context of intra-party reform the distinction between these two degrees of transfer is difficult to discern, as obtaining clear evidence of ‘inspiration’ alone, without further triangulation with intention, motivation and the actual changes made would be problematic. The literature on contagion offers no clear distinction either, as terms such as ‘copying’ and ‘adoption’ tend to be used rather generally and with limited critical reflection.
Final remarks and future directions I began this paper with the claim that both party change and policy transfer literatures could benefit with greater engagement with each other. To this end, the three-step framework for identifying policy transfer in the context of party reform was suggested as a useful synthesis of approaches that also incorporated clear empirical indicators. For party scholars, the policy transfer literature provides a much more systematic way of engaging with the concept of contagion and the analytical tools to shift focus from not just the timing of reform events, but to the process involved. For policy transfer scholars, many of the insights derived from party scholarship are able to shed light on the complex relationship between structure and agency. Building on the notion of ‘bounded rationality’ in instances of voluntary lesson drawing, accounts of party change are particularly useful in highlighting the importance of the political context (and actors’ perceptions of it) as important drivers of policy change. Party scholarship is therefore able to establish, in instances of voluntary transfer, when and why change occurs.
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Two main issues remain to be explored in future research. The first is the transfer/convergence distinction. If conditions under which political parties seek to reform their organisations are similar (for example, electoral defeats, broader systemic factors such as declining memberships) then there appears to be little to distinguish the process of policy transfer from that of policy convergence. Yet, in many ways – given the interdependent relationship between the structural forces that prompt policy and organisational changes and the actors that interpret and implement them – maintaining such a strict conceptual distinction may not ultimately be helpful (see, for example, Marsh and Sharman 2009, 285). What might be a more fruitful line of future inquiry, highlighted by this case study, is investigating the tendency of political parties and change agents to emphasise policy transfer as an appropriate mechanism of dealing with problems of common concern. For example, in explaining his reforms to the Australian public, Rudd noted that ‘parallel reforms, reforms like this have taken place in many other western political parties in countries right around the world in recent decades. We’re not Robinson Crusoe on this, in fact, we’re a bit late’ (Rudd 2013a). While we may debate the specifics of whether policy transfer has actually occurred, it is used as a prominent justification for the legitimacy of the policy-making, or reform, process. The second issue is determining the appropriate level and scope of the analysis. If these changes are viewed from the perspective of the individual actors who facilitated them, then they sit comfortably at the ‘lesson-drawing’ end of the continuum. However, if the unit of analysis is broadened to that of the political party, then they might almost be described as coercive – owing to the top-down method of their introduction. A similar disparity occurs when we consider the detail of the policy, or whether we focus on only one aspect of organisational change. Focusing on one particular area, leadership selection, revealed that whilst the general direction of change is shared by the two political parties, the specifics of the policies differ quite substantially. In recent years, however, the ALP has followed the organisational practices of the UK Labour Party in a number of other areas including changes in the intra-party policy development process, campaigning and community organising techniques, as well as the introduction of a greater range of affiliation options (for example, registered supporters). Analysing reform in the context of policy transfer in each one of these areas would most likely show similar patterns of change. The devil, however, is in the detail.
Notes 1. Note that although the focus is on the federal reforms, State parties have since followed suit, for example, NSW (2016 Rules, Section O.3), Queensland (2015 Rules, Part I (14)) and Victoria (2015 Rules, Schedule K). 2. Adopting the reverse perspective, Matland and Studlar (1996, 708) define contagion as ‘a process by which one party in a multiparty system stimulates other parties to adopt their policies or strategies’. I have chosen not to adopt this definition for two reasons: first, to preserve the agency of the reforming party as an organisational actor, and second, to acknowledge that contagion need not be limited to individual party systems. 3. The New Zealand Labour Party used a three-way college (split 40% to the caucus, 40% to the membership and 20% to unions) in its first party-wide ballot to elect the parliamentary leader (2011). However, I could find no publicly available evidence to suggest that the ALP looked to this model as inspiration for its own reforms.
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Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding information This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number DE130100309].
Notes on contributor Anika Gauja is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Her research centres on the study of political parties and how these organisations are adapting to social change and shifting participatory demands. She is the author of The Politics of Party Policy (2013) and Party Reform (2016) and co-editor of Party Rules (2016), Party Members and Activists (2015) and Contemporary Australian Political Party Organisations (2015).
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