Policy Study Visits: Policy Transfer in Practice.

Policy study visits - formal visits or tours made by participants to a specific site or sites outside of their own jurisdiction to observe and gather information about a policy or policies in place at the site(s) ? are a form of policy learning through the processes of policy transfer. In this paper we review the research literature in the fields of organizational and policy learning and in policy transfer in order to generate hypotheses about policy study visits and their potential effectiveness. We then set forth a tentative typology of policy study visits and discuss various functions they might serve. We discuss the probable roles played by the visit participants, host, and organizers in affecting the effectiveness of the visit. We define effectiveness to include not only the communication of policy ideas to participants, but also that these ideas are adequately assessed and that conclusions derived from that assessment are utilized in policy making. Finally we describe research we are undertaking to better understand policy study visits and to test the hypotheses we generate in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]