Book Description

A distinct pattern emerged in the British education and training reform process in the latter half of the 1980s. A government minister or a team of policy experts paid a brief study visit to the United States; a short time later a new initiative was announced which bore a close resemblance to a US programme. More recently, the flow of policy ideas across the Atlantic appears to have reversed direction. This book develops a three-tiered approach to the analysis of policy borrowing. The first section draws on a number of different literatures relevant to this area to create an analytical framework for the study of policy borrowing. Section Two examines the specific context in which these borrowing episodes occurred, asking: ‘Why did Britain look to America for policy inspiration in the latter half of the 1980s?’ The final section examines individual cases of policy borrowing at the local and national levels, attempting to distill lessons about the borrowing process.