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How Do Policy Ideas Spread Among International Administrations? Policy Entrepreneurs

and Bureaucratic Influence in the UN Response to AIDS
By: Oliver Nay

This article by Nay focuses on two main points: 1) the relationship between
bureaucratic influence and policy ideas; and 2) the role of UNAIDS secretariat in the
proliferation of policy ideas about AIDS throughout UN. The UNAIDS secretariat for the
author is the best example to analyze how policy ideas spread by using the policy transfer
approach. The policy transfer approach usually involves actors, configurations and processes
through which policy priorities and instruments, organizational standards and institutional
patterns can be transferred from one jurisdiction (e.g., a country, a sector, an organizational
field, a level of government, a political setting, a scientific discipline) to another. The author
started to link bureaucratic influence and policy ideas by identifying the three sources of
bureaucratic influence which are: prescriptive influence, technical influence, and cognitive
influence. Prescriptive influence is the capacity to prepare, influence, and implement legal
regulations, the capacity to develop standard procedures and formal rules, and the capacity to
shape informal rules, practical solutions, and routines to be used by organizations in
establishing agreements. Technical influence on the other hand, is the capacity to assist
policy actors to establish agreements, designs programmes and implement decisions. The
third source, the cognitive influence is the capacity to gather, integrate, shape, publicise, and
circulate information and knowledge used in international public policies; the capacity to
select empirical data that would be accepted by various organizations with different beliefs
and norms; and the capacity to frame policies to influence policy agenda setting, which is by
contributing to the identification of policy problems and by defining policy solutions. As
pointed out by the author, in reality, these are only ideal sources. That is why the author
highlighted the importance of substantial legitimacy, which is a clear mandate given to states
that enables organizations to spread policy ideas even without having the three sources
mentioned above. In order for the readers to understand the relationship between influence
and policy ideas, the author discussed the contribution of UNAIDS secretariat to the
collection, integration and dissemination of information and knowledge which are most likely
to be of use to UNs response to AIDS. The author discussed five main areas: 1) the UNs
ways of spreading policy ideas n development; 2) the UNAIDS as having a multi-
organisational system geared towards policy convergence; 3) the role of knowledge and
information in the degree of the UNAIDS Secretariats influence; 4) the UNAIDS
Secretariats influence on policy agenda setting; and 5) the presentation of innovative ideas in
the system as a form of influence. The specific study on UNAIDS made the relationship
between bureaucratic influence and policy ideas clearer. Lastly, it highlights the deep
association of policy transfers to policy entrepreneurs who mobilize resources to expand their
influence.

Questions:
1)