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Abstract
Since the 1990s in several European countries, such as Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium (Flanders), Spain or Estonia as well Asian countries, such as e.g. Japan or Korea new elder care policy were introduced. The shape of policy-making processes can be explained by the interplay of national conditions related to the policy field of elder care embedded in welfare state policy development in general, and demographic and societal change on one hand and different modes of cross-border influences on the other.
In the focus of the paper is the construction of a theoretical-conceptual framework for the analysis of the interaction of national and transnational factors based on a combination of different research strands. It draws on theoretical-conceptual approaches related to international comparative welfare state research, i.e. on social care and social policy change in general, in order to define the logic and dynamics of the policy field embedded in welfare state developments. In addition, new-institutionalist approaches with their emphasis on the interplay of ideas, interests and institutions are used to exam the policy processes. Finally, concepts of policy transfer, policy diffusion and policy learning are combined to analyse transnational processes. Developments in Asian as well as European countries are used as empirical basis for the construction of the conceptual-theoretical framework. The empirical part draws on research findings on the role of national and transnational factors in the process of policy-development in the different countries and available statistics.
The processes of policy-making and policy-transfer in and between European and Asian countries have already been analysed on case study basis. In contrast, conceptual approaches for a more systematic analysis of national and transnational factors and their interplay are only at the beginning.