At the Interface Between Theory and Practice: Policy Transfer and Lesson-Drawing

Richard Rose’s Learning from Comparative Public Policy is an outstanding contribution to the study of comparative public policy. It confronts, though
perhaps unwittingly, two of the central problems with much of the present academic literature on public policy in general and lesson-drawing or voluntary policy transfer in particular. First, there is the relative absence of enterprising prescription to help public organizations solve public policy problems and, secondly, a stark failure to engage with practice, reflected in the reluctance to make social scientific enquiry relevant to practice. This has made it all too easy for practitioners to dismiss social scientific inquiry as ‘abstract’ and ‘impractical’ at a time when academics should be helping to set the public policy agenda.