Effective Transfer of International Regulatory Standards

The role of international regulatory standards within the current global environment has become of the most importance. Regulations are now becoming the emerging mode of global governance. This study focuses on information aimed at promoting international standards and good practices in policy domain areas that cut across national agendas. Transferring international standards-related information from international organizations comes with challenges, many of which result from differences in the characteristics of elements involved in the information transfer process. My principal proposition is that adoption of a specific international standard can be explained by individual-level attributes as well as by country-level attributes. The findings provide strong evidence that individual client''s lack of transparency regarding standard''s compliance, use of standardized templates for data gathering do matter for standard''s adoption. Additionally, at the country level, absorptive capacity of the overall government and WTO membership does affect the country''s adoption of the standard.