Transferring territorial governance

Abstract

To what extent are conceptual ideas and institutional practices transferred from place to place, who is involved in the process of transfer, and from where do these ideas and practices originate? This chapter considers how these questions can be studied in the context of territorial governance. Our contribution identifies and explains four distinct analytical frameworks, each of which can be employed to study these questions - policy diffusion, policy transfer, policy mobilities, and Europeanization. Each framework focuses on different explanatory mechanisms and variables, reflecting the main academic disciplines in which the three frameworks were developed - policy diffusion and policy transfer from political science and public administration; policy mobilities from geography and urban studies; and Europeanization from European studies and political science. This chapter also discusses how the frameworks have been employed to study the transfer of ideas and practices related to territorial governance and offers an assessment of their strengths and weaknesses.