Fraternal foreign policy transfer? Evaluating the case of Australian Labor and British Labour

The literature on policy transfer and policy diffusion is vast, but analysis of how this operates in the domain of foreign policy is limited. Is there evidence that policy-related knowledge and ideas in the foreign policy realm are transferred between jurisdictions? This article addresses this question in the context of the relationship between two fraternal social democratic parties – the British Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party. It focuses on the period between 2006 and 2010, which covers Kevin Rudd’s assumption of the Labor leadership and his first term as Prime Minister and the transition from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown in June 2007. Kevin Rudd’s Prime Ministership was terminated in a party room coup in June 2010 while Gordon Brown led the British Labour Party to electoral defeat one month earlier. The article investigates three prominent areas of foreign policy – regional engagement, climate change, and aid and international development – to evaluate the extent of policy transfer and diffusion between the Rudd and Brown Governments. Using the ‘degrees of transfer’ framework outlined by Dolowitz and Marsh, it finds that emulation, policy combinations, and inspiration all featured but that there was scant evidence of complete transfer.