Agents of transfer or organic learners? Explaining the policy process role of International Non-Government Organisations (INGOs) in the development of the Jordan’s recent refugee policy response

In this paper I use qualitative methods to examine the applicability of policy transfer theory in an authoritarian context. In doing so I challenge assumptions shared with other public policy theories (Weible and Sabatier, 2017) about actors, their learning, and the nature of ideas. I do this by exploring the specifics of policy learning processes, focusing on International Non-Government Organisations (INGO) as implementers, their relationship with other actors and how this influences Jordan’s recent refugee policy response. I ask: can the extant concept of transfer agent account for the causal role of INGOs in the development of Education and Livelihoods initiatives introduced after the Jordan Compact 2016? Or does an alternative new concept of organic learners offer a better account? In utilising process tracing, I introduce this reimagined concept of policy learning, adapted from Hugh Heclo’s policy middlemen (1974), and synthesised with more recent scholarship on ideas, learning and policy practice (Carstensen, 2018; Freeman, 2006; 2019), as a rival to test policy transfer’s agent against. Drawing on original semi-structured interviews with elite level actors in Jordan, in the summer of 2021, policy document analysis and INGO website reviews, I argue that the concept of transfer agency cannot provide a fully satisfying explanation, and instead argue that organic learners, better illuminate the observed association between INGOs and policy evolution. I find weak evidence that INGOs are moving policy from one place to another through learning, although the concept proves difficult to test. I find stronger evidence of INGOs situated at a mesolevel within networks in Jordan, in a state of learning readiness treating policy as emergent and developing responses in a bespoke and locally sensitive way. These findings contribute to our knowledge and understanding of autocracies and their policy making processes, and challenge both the way in which learning is currently thought about in the study of Public Policy, and the suitability of theories developed in more democratic contexts for application in these alternative settings. Additionally, the study sheds light on some of the practices which are shaping services provided for this very vulnerable population in this highly strategic region. In closing, I make recommendations to refine and stabilise the concept through extended study and the use of shadow cases to see if this can be generalised across other autocracies, thus providing further insight into conducting policy process research in these regimes.