Conceptualizing and Researching Policy Convergence1

This article develops criteria to classify the relative development of public policies across countries as convergent, divergent, identical and synchronous, and indeterminate. It emphasizes that relative policy developments have to be compared over defined time periods, and that they cannot be aggregated or averaged over several time periods, or across policy sectors or policy dimensions. The significance of policy convergence between countries needs to be evaluated against relative policy developments between other countries during the same period. Given these rigorous conceptual and methodological requirements, it is doubtful whether policy convergence is as pervasive as generally assumed in the literature.     

ON THE DATING OF THE TYRRHENIAN GROUP1

Iconographic and epigraphic evidence suggest that the Attic black-figure vases of the Tyrrhenian Group should be dated to the period c.560–530 BC rather than to the second quarter of the sixth century BC. Imagery on some vases, particularly those of the later painters, points to a lowering of the date for the end of the group to c. 530 BC. Epigraphic evidence, particularly the absence of crossed theta , closed heta and qoppa from almost all of the vases of the earlier painters allows the start of the group to be lowered to c. 560, closer to Exekias than to Kleitias.