by Sybille Münch
This article examines how assisted voluntary return (AVR) policies diffuse across European and national contexts, focusing on Germany within the multi-level governance system of the European Union. Developing an interpretive, mechanism-based account of policy diffusion, author Sybille Münch argues that understanding how policies travel requires close attention to how actors construct meaning, rather than relying solely on abstract diffusion models.
Moving beyond single diffusion mechanisms
Policy diffusion research often seeks to identify a dominant mechanism—such as learning, emulation, or competition—to explain how policies spread. Münch instead proposes a more fine-grained approach, drawing on interpretive process tracing and the concept of complex causal mechanisms. These mechanisms operate as sequences of actor-driven actions and interpretations, rather than as singular explanatory forces.
This approach challenges assumptions that policies are simply transferred intact between contexts. Rather, policies are actively interpreted, adapted, and sometimes contested as they move across governance levels.
Explaining AVR in a multi-level governance system
Empirically, the article analyses AVR policies—programmes that encourage migrants to return to their countries of origin through counselling, financial support, and reintegration assistance. These policies have expanded significantly across Europe, shaped both by EU-level initiatives (such as the Return Directive) and by national and subnational actors.
Münch shows that diffusion in this area is neither purely top-down nor horizontal. Instead, it reflects a complex interplay between EU institutions, national governments, and implementing organisations. This produces what the article describes as a layered and multi-directional diffusion process, where ideas circulate across levels and are reshaped along the way.
Identifying complex causal mechanisms
The core contribution lies in reconstructing a set of interacting mechanisms that underpin AVR diffusion. These include:
- constructing and sharing problem definitions
- institutionalisation and competition between actors
- incentivisation and framing strategies
- sharing expertise through transnational networks
- performing ‘voluntariness’ to legitimise policy
- co-optation and boundary work among organisations
Taken together, these mechanisms highlight how diffusion is driven by actors’ interpretations, strategic positioning, and organisational identities. For example, the notion of “voluntary” return is not simply a policy design feature, but something actively performed and negotiated in practice.
Reframing policy diffusion
By foregrounding interpretation and meaning-making, the article contributes to ongoing debates about the role of causal mechanisms in policy process research. It suggests that diffusion is best understood not as the movement of fixed policy models, but as a dynamic and sometimes contradictory process shaped by multiple actors across governance levels.
More broadly, the analysis raises questions about how far existing diffusion frameworks can capture the complexity of contemporary policy environments—particularly in areas such as migration, where overlapping institutional arrangements and contested meanings are central.
Table of contents for Themed Section blog series on Advancing Interpretive Process Tracing in Policy Research
Interpretive Process Tracing in Policy Research (Introduction to the themed section)
by Hilde van Meegdenburg, Sandra Plümer and Johanna Kuhlmann
How social reporting put poverty on the agenda in Germany: an interpretive process tracing analysis
By Christopher Smith Ochoa
The Role of Causal Mechanisms in Policy Diffusion: Assisted Voluntary Return Policies in Germany
By Sybille Münch
Interpretive Process Tracing? How PT Can Become Amenable to Interpretive Research
by Hilde van Meegdenburg
Policy & Politics Journal Blog 