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Abstract This article seeks to analyze how norms and procedures created in International Organizations spread to member states. More specifically, the analysis focuses on how changes in the training architecture for UN peace operations, driven by the Brahimi report, caused institutional and procedural changes on the administrative, political and military spheres in Brazil. Combining official documents and analytical literature, through process tracing, we find that the main causal mechanism observed was emulation, given Brazil’s desire to adapt to use the capacity building as a tool for international action.

Abstract The article argues that international policy diffusion should also be understood as one of the many foreign policy instruments, and that it is a rather versatile one, as it can be coupled to most or perhaps all traditional foreign policy instruments: political, economic, cultural, and military. It also proposes that the exportation of Brazilian policy innovations may be regarded as the backbone of Lula da Silva’s foreign policy (2003-2010), as it was central to: (a) the manufacturing of a renewed international identity for the country; (b) the promotion of post-liberal regionalism in Latin America; (c) the defence of new or expanded roles for international organizations, which was a central priority for Brazilian foreign policy in that period; (d) the revitalisation of the South-South coalition; (e) the presidential diplomacy; and (f) the promotion of systematic bilateral cooperation with Latin American and African countries.

The number of climate change laws in major economies has grown from less than 40 in 1997 to almost 500 at the end of 2013. The passage of these laws is influenced by both domestic and international factors. This article reviews the main international factors, drawing on a powerful new dataset of climate legislation in 66 national jurisdictions. We find that the propensity to legislate on climate change is heavily influenced by the passage of similar laws elsewhere, suggesting a strong and so far under-appreciated role for international policy diffusion. International treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol work in two ways. The impact of the Kyoto Protocol itself is limited to countries with formal obligations under the treaty. In addition, the prestige of hosting an international climate summit is associated with a subsequent boost in legislation. Legislators seem to respond to the expectations of climate leadership that these events bestow on their host. Policy relevance A global solution to climate change will ultimately have to be anchored in domestic legislation, which creates the legal basis for countries to take action. Countries are passing climate legislation in a growing number. This article asks to what extent they are motivated to do so by international factors, such as existing treaty obligations. We find that the Kyoto Protocol has been a less important factor in explaining climate legislation outside Annex I than the passage of similar laws elsewhere. This suggests that international policy diffusion plays an important and so far under-appreciated role in global climate policy, complementing formal treaty obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A perennial concern among scholars of globalization is the relationship between global social formations and national and subnational political and economic developments. While sociological understanding of “the global” has become increasingly rich, stressing the complex relationship between material and cultural pressures, an undertheorized nation state often sits on the receiving end of the sociologist’s model of globalization. The goal of this article is to help move the sociology of globalization out of the analytical trap of global-national dualism by developing an account of the transnationalization of political authority. Building on neo-Marxist and Weberian theories of the transnational, or global state, which explicate the macro-structural dynamics that have led to the transnationalization of the state as such, I look at the process of the transnationalization of political authority from an institutional perspective, one that focuses on processes of transnationalization within, and across, specific state agencies. These theoretical points are empirically motivated through an historical investigation of the transnationalization of monetary authority and its relationship to the international diffusion of policies of austerity from the era of the classical gold standard through the economic crisis of 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]