Culture and Policy Transfer: From Insight to Impact

Culture has long been recognized and conceptualized as an important and indispensable influencing factor in policy transfer. However, inadequate attention has been devoted to the study of culture in this area of scholarship. Using qualitative data, mainly from interviews with policy-makers and policy-takers in Vietnam, this paper examines the relevance of culture in Vietnam’s merit-based policy transfer. It indicates how the conceptualization of culture is significant to policy transfer analysis. It also shows that culture at all levels—macro, meso, and micro—can influence both the policy transfer process and the outcomes. At the same time, it contends that despite this important role, culture acts more as a joint-influencing factor than a sole determinant in policy transfer. This paper argues that a multi-level and culture-sensitive approach to cultural analysis in policy transfer is a key to understand the dynamics of culture in the process.