EPRC was virtually present at Regional Studies Association's Global Conference 2014, which took place in Fortaleza, Brazil, on 27-30 April 2014, through a Special Session on "Cross-National Policy Transfer and Learning in Regional and Urban Policy", co-organised by Laura Polverari, of EPRC, and Dr Marcin Dabrowski (TU Delft) and Dr Ida Musialkowska(Poznan University of Economics).
The Session, chaired by Dr Xuefeng Wang (CURDS, Newcastle University), was attended by numerous conference participants and saw the presentation of three papers:
- 'EU-China and EU-Brazil cross-national policy transfer and learning: the case of regional development Policy' by the three scholars organizing the session Musialkowska, Dabrowski and Polverari (presented by Marcin Dabrowski and Ida Musialkowska)
- 'Transferring Territorial Governance in the European Union: Why, What, How and through Whom' by Dr Giancarlo Cotella and Prof. Umberto Janin Rivolin (Politecnico di Torino)
- 'RegLab - a Scandinavian model for regional capacity building based on strong ownership, horizontal learning and communities of practice' by Frederik Rakar from RegLab.
Two papers concentrated on intra and extra-EU policy transfer - one on transfer through Europanisation and one transfer from the EU to non-EU countries (Brazil and China) - while the third paper focused on the practical implementation of best practices and lesson-drawing in Scandinavia.
Many aspects of cross-country policy transfer and learning were discussed, anticipating new research avenues. The session is intended as a stepping stone towards the creation of a new research consortium on cross-national learning in the field of regional and urban policy, on which expressions of interest should be sent the three organisers.