Are Cultural Differences Between
Nations a Barrier to Cross-National
Policy Learning?
John Hudson University of York, UK
Nam K. Jo SungKongHoe University, South Korea
Antonia Keung University of York, UK
Award ES/J00460X/1
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Overview
• Draw together two strands of research
• Policy transfer/policy learning processes
• Impact of culture on politics of welfare policy
• Some initial reflections
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Policy Transfer & Culture
• Often shapes search for lessons
• Key to understanding national differences
• Said to influence policy success in host country…
• …and so of transfer to recipient country
• A commonly cited barrier to policy transfer
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The Evans and Davies Model
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Welfare States & Culture
• ‘Culture matters’ thesis
• ‘Macro’ perspective
– Broad conception, stable dominant beliefs
– often post hoc explanations
• ‘Micro’ perspective
– Public opinion,
– specific issues, unstable attitudes
• Culture is a nebulous concept
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‘Theories of political culture emphasize the distinctiveness
of national political values, and imply that trying to draw
lessons across national boundaries will fail. The success of
a programme in a given country is ascribed to its
distinctive values and beliefs or style of policy, implying
that any attempt to export it elsewhere would be doomed
to failure because each national culture is deemed unique.
A programme that would be acceptable in Swedish
political culture may not be acceptable in the United
States, and vice versa. However, such general statements
do not identify the specific features of a culture that are
obstacles to lesson-drawing.’
(Rose, 2004: 93)
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Can We Measure Culture?
• Jo (2011) culture as stable societal values
– More concrete than macro
– More enduring than micro
– Proxy for national culture
• Cultural context of social policy making
– Interacts with politics, economics, institutions
– culture as meso-level influence
• Not a decisive influence, but a significant one
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Extracting Societal Values
• Identify stable, distinct examples of societal values
• Data from successive waves EVS/WVS data 1981-2009
– 173 societal cases; 243,975 responses
– 59 countries x max 4 time points
– Factor analysis of pooled data
– Manual inspection and reanalysis
• Built on Hofstede, Jo, Schwartz, van de Vijver et al
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Extracting Societal Values
Societal Value
Example Survey Item
Relgiosity
God is important in my life
Conservative Social Norms
Is divorce permissible?
Permissive Values on Adherence to
Laws
Justifiable to cheat on taxes?
Optimistic Values
Satisfied with your life?
Traditional Family Values
Is marriage an out-dated institution?
Interpersonal tolerance
Would you not like heavy drinkers as your
neigbours?
Political Activeness
Do you participate in lawful demonstrations?
Political Orientedness
Do you regularly discuss politics with friends?
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Policy Impact
• Regression analysis, medium term picture
• Independent variables
– Societal values
– Economic context (GDP per capita, growth,
unemployment)
– Political context (cabinet composition)
– Historical Institutional context (welfare regime)
• Dependent Variables:
– unemployment spending
– family policy spending
– maternity leave policy structures
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Policy Impact
Unemp Exp
(% PE)
Unemp Exp
(% GDP)
Culture
Matters?
✔✔
✔✔
Any Key
Values?
- Perm Laws
+ Toler
- Perm Laws
+ Toler
Other
Factors?
Regime (SE)
Economy
Regime (SE)
Economy
Fam Pol Exp
(% PE)
Fam Pol Exp
(% GDP)
Maternity
Leave
(FTE)
- Religiosity
+ Con Norms
+ Toler
+ Perm Laws
+ Opt Val
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Policy Impact
Unemp Exp
(% PE)
Unemp Exp
(% GDP)
Fam Pol Exp
(% PE)
Fam Pol Exp
(% GDP)
Maternity
Leave
(FTE)
Culture
Matters?
✔✔
✔✔
✔
✔
✔✔
Any Key
Values?
- Perm Laws
+ Toler
- Perm Laws
+ Toler
- Religiosity
+ Con Norms
- Religiosity
- Religiosity
+ Con Norms
+ Toler
+ Perm Laws
+ Opt Val
Other
Factors?
Regime (SE)
Economy
Regime (SE)
Economy
Regime
Regime (SD)
Regime
Left Cabinet
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Policy Impact
• Good degree of support for culture matters thesis
• Some interesting findings
– Interpersonal tolerance, religiosity
• Some important limits
– Data driven, intepretation, gaps in data
• NB: only examples of societal values
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Policy Impact
• Ex ante… similar for ex post
• Both matter for Policy Transfer
• Can examination of culture help with
identifying candidates for policy transfer?
• QCA methods may help trace processes?
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Policy Impact: Family Policy
LIBERAL
Consistency with LOW SPENDING of 0.753
Remote Factors
Two routes with combined coverage of 0.773 and consistency with LOW
SPENDING of 0.901
TRADITIONAL FAMILY VALUES
AND conservative social norms
TRADITIONAL FAMILY VALUES
AND RELIGIOSITY
Consistency with LOW
SPENDING of 0.913 and raw
coverage of 0.503
Consistency with LOW
SPENDING of 0.942 and raw
coverage of 0.613
Intermediate Factors
EXIT ROUTE
EXIT ROUTE
LEFT GOVERNMENT
Consistency with HIGH
SPENDING of 0.813 and
raw coverage of 0.265
left government AND
growth
Consistency with LOW
SPENDING of 0.957 and
raw coverage of 0.670
growth
Consistency with LOW
SPENDING of 0.946 and
raw coverage of 0.328
LEFT GOVERNMENT
Consistency with HIGH
SPENDING of 0.901 and
raw coverage of 0.315
Proximate Factors
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Conclusions
• Culture long seen as a barrier to policy transfer
• Legitimate questions about how we measure it
• In-between analysis addresses measurement?
• QCA may help trace pathways
• Captures complex, non-linear processes
• But, more work needs to be done
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