About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


14 Pol'y Stud. J. 1 (1985-1986)

handle is hein.journals/plyssjnl14 and id is 1 raw text is: Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, September, 1985 ARTICLES OF GENERAL INTEREST POLICIES THAT 'DON'T FIT': WORDS OF CAUTION ON ADOPTING OVERSEAS SOLUTIONS TO AMERICAN PROBLEMS* Dennis Muniak INTRODUCTION The capacity to innovate has long been perceived as a beneficial quality of Americans and of their governments. The extent to which this perception is rooted in fact rather than myth is not clear. Nevertheless, in American society today to label oneself an innovator is to mobilize a powerful positive symbol on one's behalf. As recent evidence consider the campaign of new ideas mounted by Gary Hart in his candidacy for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. Over the last several decades American policymakers and political leaders have been willing to advocate and accept domestic policy innova- tions which, while new to the United States, are clearly based on European prototy0es. This fascination with borrowed approaches to American domestic policy is not a recent occurrence but has a long and established history in this country. New American policies do, after all, have to originate somewhere and the source has frequently been rooted in policies employed overseas. In seeking to transfer to America a policy which appears to be func- tioning successfully overseas, the principal aim sought by policymakers is to attain positive results from the policy comparable to those experenced by the originating nation. Once implemented, an ideal policy fit could be said to have been achieved in cases where these positive results are realized nd where serious negative secondary effects absent in the overseas policy experience were avoided in the U.S., despite adaptations necessitated by the transfer process. Of course, attainment of a perfect fit in utilization of transferred policies is not likely. Usually we can, at best, hope to achieve an approximation, not a mirror image, of the overseas policy experience. But a number of policies transferred to the United States have fallen short of even more modest goals. Many policies have been adopted in formats responsible for producing major adverse secondary effects; some even fail to yield the positive primary effects they intended. Innova- tive policies from abroad, when closely examined, may constitute policies that don't fit as neatly as their American advocates would have had us believe. What is most disturbing about these poor outcomes is that their cause may reside in the transfer process itself. Examination of a series of