The movement and translation of drug policy ideas: the case of ‘new recovery’

Introduction: 'New recovery' can be conceptualised as both a social movement and a broader policy agenda to restructure treatment service systems towards 'recovery-oriented systems of care'. Emerging initially out of the United States, new recovery has gained currency as a policy agenda in other jurisdictions - perhaps most distinctly in the United Kingdom. In 2012, the ideas behind 'new recovery' were debated in the Australian alcohol and other drug field as the Victorian government sought to incorporate recovery principles into policy and service design. This paper uses the policy transfer and policy translation literature to understand how international policy ideas about 'new recovery' were negotiated in the Australian context, focusing specifically on the role of non-government actors in the process. Methods: This paper draws on an analysis of policy documents, organisational documents and interviews with representatives from the Australian non-government alcohol and other drug sector to consider how new recovery was translated into Victorian drug policy. Results: The interactions between organisations and actors — including bureaucrats, governmental agencies and policy entrepreneurs — facilitated the circulation and translation of policy ideas in the Victorian context. Despite this, the analysis suggests that policy transfer was largely a symbolic exercise: overall, some of the key features of new recovery policy from the United States and the United Kingdom, such as encouraging peer-led recovery and mutual aid, were not incorporated in the Victorian policy. NGOs resisted what they considered to be some of the more problematic elements of 'new recovery', and informed the local translation of the policy. Discussion: The results have implications for understandings of the relationship between social movements, non-government organisations and the state, as well as the dynamics of knowledge transfer in drug policy