Undertaking cross-national research in order to improve national policy is an idea that goes back centuries. Aristotle examined the constitutions of city-states for the sake of civic betterment. The American Founding Fathers studied the English Constitution to avoid its presumed defects. In turn, Tocqueville examined democracy in America because, as he explained to his French readers, ‘My wish has been to find there instruction by which we may ourselves profit’ (1954 ed.: vol. 1, 14). In the contemporary world, policymakers in every society constantly cite the lessons that they draw from their own past or from the experience of other nations – and in Eastern Europe and the Third World there are many governments anxious to learn from the practice of others how to improve their own policies.

Lesson-drawing addresses the question: Under what circumstances and to what extent can a programme that is effective in one place transfer to another. Searching for fresh knowledge is not normal; the second section describes the stimulus to search as dissatisfaction with the status quo. Lessons can be sought by searching across time and/or across space; the choice depends upon a subjective definition of proximity, epistemic communities linking experts together, functional interdependence between governments, and the authority of intergovernmental institutions. The process of lesson-drawing starts with scanning programmes in effect elsewhere, and ends with the prospective evaluation of what would happen if a programme already in effect elsewhere were transferred here in future. Lesson-drwaing is part of a contested political process; there is no assurance that a lesson drawn will be both desirable and practical. The conclusion considers the uncertainty and instability of judgements about the practicality and desirability of transferring programmes.

This article examines how evidence about Program A in Country A may be utilized in Country B, and thus how utilization may explain the adoption of the same program. Elites and activists have a number of interests in using policy evidence from another country: to put an issue to a systemic or institutional agenda, mollify political pressure, provide an exemplar, indicate the range of options or reinforce conclusions already reached. The interests of the importer dictate the nature, timing and origins of the evidence injected into policy debate. This framework is applied to the case of freedom of information policy. An analysis of how and why evidence about the United States Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was utilized in Canada and Britain reveals that FOIA was used as an exemplar in Canada and the reverse in Britain.

Political adversaries have reason and opportunity to use foreign lessons to gain advantage in political conflicts. Political factors strongly affect the way public policy lessons are drawn and transformed into public policy. Political opponents contest the value, practicality, and transferability of policy initiatives in order to bias the outcome. The paper hypothesizes that (i) the politicization of lesson-drawing induces issue experts to emphasize the descriptive and technical aspects of programs; (2) gives an incentive to advocates of change to use lessons to advance their position during the agenda-setting process; and (3) gives opponents of change an incentive to draw counterbalancing negative lessons from foreign experience when a proposed lesson reaches the point where adoption is entirely possible. The 1988 Congressional debate over mandatory plant closing prenotification provides evidence supporting hypotheses. The paper further hypothesizes: (4) most polities will not adopt both conservative and liberal programs even when theoretically they could do so; and (5) the degree to which a population of polities adopt a particular lesson will be a function of the program's economic and politicial feasibility. The diffusion of labor market and income maintenance policies across the American states supports both of these claims.

Because events occur too fast and ideas mature too slowly for responses to be designed anew for each pressing problem, policy innovation often relies on pre-existing models, foreign or domestic. This seems to be especially true for regulatory policymaking, since public regulation is typically introduced in conditions of crisis. In this paper we examine several cases of policy innovation in the area of economic and social regulation where the influence of foreign models is quite clear: the development of competition policy in Europe in the 1950s, the growth of European Community regulation, and the impact of the American deregulation movement on the telecommunications policies of different European countries. The analysis shows that while utilization of preexisting models is a common feature of policy innovation, such models are not literally translated into current policy. More or less extensive adaptations to a particular political, institutional and economic context are usually required. We also identify two distinct ways – push or pull – in which foreign models can affect domestic policy.

This article analyzes the American influence on Canadian environmental regulation in order to show the international sources of domestic public policy, especially the manner in which Canadian policy development is influenced by the United States, and the specific dynamics of Canadian regulatory policy. The United States influences Canadian domestic public policy by the export of costs and the export of knowledge. An analysis of major developments in the areas of air pollution, water pollution, pesticides, toxic substance regulation, and environmental impact assessment demonstrates that American influence over Canadian environmental regulation is pervasive. The most frequent pattern is emulation, where value convergence combined with U.S. leadership leads to Canadian borrowing of U.S. policy innovations. This process can be either elite-driven or activist-driven, the latter being characterized by an enlarged scope of conflict, media exposure, and pressure campaigns on policymakers.