The neglected dimension: bringing time back into cross-national policy transfer studies

Policy transfer studies have significantly contributed to our understanding of how the ‘space’ dimension matters for policy and institutional changes. However, the literature has commonly ignored the significance of the ‘temporal’ dimension. This article thus argues for a more systematic consideration of ‘time’ and ‘temporal’ factors to broaden our understanding of how cross-national policy transfers develop, and to strengthen our capacity for explaining why these processes occur in the first place. The article briefly summarises recent scholarly debates on how time/temporal factors matter for politics and public administration/policy; reviews the mostly tangential, isolated and implicit references on time/temporal factors that have been flagged by policy transfer studies; and illustrates how and why ‘time’ might matter for this literature with the use of empirical examples from the transfer of ‘management by results’ practices to Chile and Mexico. The article closes with a discussion on the challenges of building a more ‘time-orientated’ research agenda on cross-national policy transfers.