Rethinking the travel of ideas: policy translation in the water sector
本文提出“政策翻译”作为新方法，研究政策思想跨国传播中的非理性、尺度变化和思想变异，并以土耳其水部门案例说明其价值。
The travel of policy ideas across countries is a widely acknowledged phenomenon. Conventional approaches to the study of this process hinge on concepts such as ‘policy transfer’, ‘policy diffusion’, ‘lesson-drawing’ and ‘institutional isomorphism’. These approaches are influential in understanding public policy; however, they assume perfect rationality of actors, the stability of governance scales and the immutability of policy ideas in their travel. I propose policy translation as a new approach to counter these shortcomings and study the travel of policy ideas in order to shed light on pertaining policy questions, such as whether the travel of policy ideas may be navigated, and if so, how. I illustrate the relevance and value of policy translation with a case study from the water sector in Turkey.