Does Policy Diffusion Need Space? Spatializing the Dynamics of Policy Diffusion

For decades, scholars in multiple disciplines have examined spatial diffusion, or the spatiotemporal properties associated with the diffusion of innovations. These properties include contagious, hierarchical, and relocation diffusion. Each of these refers to a spatial model that epitomizes how innovations spread among geographic locations. Policy diffusion, a separate but homologous research tradition, had its theoretical underpinnings in spatial diffusion. However, contemporary policy diffusion has focused largely on mechanism‐based diffusion. This article demonstrates how exploratory spatial data analysis can be used to uncover spatial policy diffusion properties. In this study, municipal smoking regulation adoptions, religious‐based initiatives, and bag ban and bag fees are examined. This study finds evidence that for each policy more than one property is occurring; therefore, this study proposes that a hybrid model best explains diffusion. This article demonstrates how examining spatial diffusion properties, in addition to diffusion mechanisms, can improve the conceptualization of diffusion theories, enhance mechanism or theory‐based specification of diffusion models, and unravel the specific regional or neighboring causal pathways linking policies between adopting jurisdictions.     

Punctuated Equilibrium Theory and the Diffusion of Innovations

This article builds on punctuated equilibrium theory to evaluate the diffusion of public policy innovations in the United States. The article argues that punctuated equilibrium theory provides a unifying framework for understating three mechanisms leading to the diffusion of innovations: gradual policy diffusion driven by incremental policy emulation, rapid state‐to‐state diffusion driven by policy imitation and mimicking, and nearly immediate policy diffusion driven by state‐level responses to a common exogenous shock. Drawing upon the Bass mixed influence diffusion model, this research generates measures of the coefficients of external and internal influences for diffusion for 81 public policy innovations that have spread across the United States. The article then evaluates how the policy image and direct participation of the federal government contribute to distinct patterns of diffusion over time.     

Social construction and the diffusion of anti-trafficking laws in the U.S.

Human trafficking is a compelling and persistent problem that has attracted a great amount of attention among political leaders, government institutions, NGOs, and nonprofit organizations. While there is consensus that trafficking necessitates a multipronged policy response commonly known as the “3Ps” (prosecution, protection, and prevention), anti-trafficking policies diffused across U.S. states in a piecemeal fashion. In this paper, we explore the fragmented diffusion of the different types of anti-trafficking laws. Drawing from social constructivist approaches, we posit that the differential diffusion rates depend on the social construction of the target population and policy intention of the law. Using event history analysis, we examine the diffusion of 14 types of human trafficking laws throughout the U.S. during 2003–2013. We find strong support for our hypotheses and show substantial differences in the rates at which prosecution, protection, and prevention-related laws diffuse.     

Traceable Tasks and Complex Policies: When Politics Matter for Policy Implementation

Implementation represents a key venue for the expression of political conflict. The challenge of illusory implementation, implementing the law's letter but not its spirit, has long vexed scholars and architects of public policy. We develop a political model of policy implementation to predict the kinds of politics—electoral, group, administrative—that different parts of complicated laws activate during implementation. Using original state‐level data on landmark education policy, we assess whether and how these politics render illusory implementation more or less likely for specific policy tasks embedded in complex laws. Consistent with our model, we find electoral politics render illusory implementation less likely for a narrow set of tasks. Group‐based politics and administrative politics bear on illusory implementation for a broader set of tasks in diverse ways. Overall, how policy activates politics during implementation depends on the features of the policy lever, where it is put into practice, and how traceable it is to the bureaucrats who do the implementing. Further, the results underscore how nuanced insights about implementation emerge when one considers individual components of complex laws, rather than treating the laws themselves whole cloth.     

A Multipopulation Comparison of the Diffusion of Public Organizations and Policies across Space and Time

This study examined the longitudinal spatial diffusion of state government policies and their related implementation organizations in the American states. The impact of coercive, institutional, and competitive processes on policy and state agency adoption were considered, as well as how aspects of the underlying policy can impact the degree of spatial diffusion. The rises of 27 different policy populations were analyzed over time, each representing not only a different policy form but a distinct implementation organization.
The policy adoption/spatial diffusion relationship across all populations was examined and results showed that the degree of spatial diffusion varied greatly. Analysis of potential relationship moderators indicated that federal impetus (coercive processes) led to an absence of spatial diffusion. Policies with an institutional basis also showed an absence of spatial diffusion while competition-based policies diffused spatially.     

Defiant Innovation: The Adoption of Medical Marijuana Laws in the American States

Diffusion research often characterizes the role of the federal government in innovation adoption as a supportive one, either increasing the likelihood of adoption or its speed. We examine the adoption of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) from 1996 to 2014 to shed light on what motivates states to adopt innovations that are in explicit defiance of federal law. Furthermore, we examine whether federal signals have any influence on the likelihood of adoption. In doing so, we utilize implementation theory to expand our understanding of how the federal government's position impacts state policy innovation adoption. We find mixed evidence for the influence of federal signals on the adoption of MMLs. The results suggest that medical marijuana policies are much more likely to be adopted in states when proponents have the political or institutional capital, rather than a medical or fiscal need. Moreover, this political capital is sufficient independent of the federal government's real or perceived position.     

Who Are Your Neighbors? The Role of Ideology and Decline of Geographic Proximity in the Diffusion of Policy Innovations

States adopt policy innovations within the confines of a dynamic American federal system, but our study of policy diffusion tends to be fairly static. Single‐policy studies incorporate temporal variation, but for only one innovation. Macro‐level analyses examine broad patterns, but often by completely pooling across policy and time. This makes it difficult to identify how diffusion patterns change over time, though Walker's early work explicitly identified such temporal instability. This study specifically examines how neighbor and ideological cues change in importance over time using a dataset of 556 policies adopted from 1960 to 2014. While the findings demonstrate the generality of many key internal, external, and policy‐level determinants of adoption, there is variation in these effects across time. Most important is the relative stability of ideological similarity between adopters and declining influence of contiguous neighbors. Further, political polarization plays a role in conditioning neighbor and ideological cues.     

Rethinking American Public Policy: The Environment, Federalism, States, and Supranational Influences

The politics of American public policy recently have transformed in response to changing power relationships between levels of government in the United States. Certain policy choices now are made in different arenas–for example, state and local government institutions often make policy decisions that previously had been within the jurisdiction of America's national government. At the same time, new policy relationships between states also are altering previous political patterns. This article highlights and explains this phenomenon, and focuses particularly on the changing power relationships between levels of government in the United States–national, state, and local–and the resulting policies and politics. More specifically, it closely examines two 20th century innovations in government and public policymaking within the context of a discrete case study. One of these innovations is institutional–the rise of public authorities or public corporations as highly insulated, governmental entities. The other is procedural–the environmental impact statement process. Together, these innovations, in concert with broader international and global trends, have played a large role in the shifting power structure and politics underlying American public policymaking activities.     

Shifting Constellations of Actors and Their Influence on Policy Diffusion: A Study of the Diffusion of Drug Courts

The existing studies of policy diffusion have paid insufficient attention to how policy actors in the macroenvironment of local jurisdictions influence the process of policy diffusion, what kind of mechanisms drive the interdependent spread of a policy, and how the diffusion process changes over time. We explore, both theoretically and empirically, the role different go‐betweens can play in policy diffusion, what kind of interactions take place between the micro level and macro level, and how shifts in the constellations of actors in the macroenvironment of a local jurisdiction can influence the mechanisms and rate of policy diffusion. Our empirical study of the diffusion of drug courts in four U.S. states demonstrates that there can indeed be significant interactions between the micro level and the macro level and that these interactions are likely to shape the diffusion process.     

The Specialized Cities of the Gulf Cooperation Council: A Case Study of a Distinct Type of Policy Innovation and Diffusion

This article examines a new phenomenon in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) referred to as specialized cities (SC). These cities, in addition to being new towns, implement innovations in selected policy areas. This article goes beyond describing the spread of SC to answering a broader question: what motivates a GCC country to adopt such policy innovation? After a quantitative overview of the phenomenon, three cases have been selected to cover three main policy areas: energy, health care, and education, in Abu Dhabi Masdar City, Dubai Healthcare City, and Qatar Education City. A preliminary analysis of each of the cases is followed by a comparative approach that aims at discovering similarities and differences, as well as developing the basis for a preliminary analytical model that explains the driving factors behind these innovations. The country adoption of a policy innovation and its diffusion are mainly the results of geographical proximity and similarity, as these proximate countries tend to have similar economic aspects and common social problems that lead to similar policy action effects. Regional competition and positive reputational mechanisms are also particularly strong determinants for diffusion. The findings suggest that in the GCC region a diffusion of the phenomena is occurring, rather than that of a specific type of SC.     

Shifting Winds: Explaining Variation in State Policies to Promote Small‐Scale Wind Energy

States have increasingly taken leading roles in U.S. environmental policymaking over the past two decades. As laboratories of democracy, states have developed different levels and mixes of policies to address climate change, nonpoint source pollution, alternative energy, and other challenging environmental issues. Policy scholars have sought to explain variation in state environmental policy through two primary theoretical lenses: internal determinants and regional diffusion. While our understanding of state environmental policy adoption has grown to identify which variables are most important, less is known about how these variables interact in particular states to influence policy adoption. This study examines the interactions of variables from both theories to explain how state policies for small‐scale wind energy promotion were adopted in three U.S. states. Our results highlight the nuanced role of citizen ideology, which may be important in contexts at either end of the ideological spectrum but less important in the middle—where economic development is more critical. Results also indicate that interstate competition may be over environmental as well as economic leadership. Interestingly, strength of the wind resource is not necessarily correlated with policy adoption for small‐scale wind energy promotion.     

The Public Policy Process among Southeastern States: Elaborating Theories of Regional Adoption and Hold‐Out Behavior

Having been adopted by legislatures in over a dozen states, postsecondary merit aid programs are largely concentrated in the southeastern United States. The observed clustering pattern seems to support previous evidence that policies spread between proximate states, a phenomenon referred to by political scientists as policy diffusion. Often, however, policy diffusion is not complete, and one or more states in a region fail to adopt. By interviewing policymakers throughout the southeastern United States—including actors in the three states in the region without merit aid—the study addresses the following question: Why do diffusion pressures lead to adoption in some states but not in others? Studying state “hold‐outs” promises not only to uncover the reasons for failed legislation in specific state contexts but also to better our understanding of the limits of diffusion theory.     

SPID: A New Database for Inferring Public Policy Innovativeness and Diffusion Networks

Despite its rich tradition, there are key limitations to researchers' ability to make generalizable inferences about state policy innovation and diffusion. This paper introduces new data and methods to move from empirical analyses of single policies to the analysis of comprehensive populations of policies and rigorously inferred diffusion networks. We have gathered policy adoption data appropriate for estimating policy innovativeness and tracing diffusion ties in a targeted manner (e.g., by policy domain, time period, or policy type) and extended the development of methods necessary to accurately and efficiently infer those ties. Our state policy innovation and diffusion (SPID) database includes 728 different policies coded by topic area. We provide an overview of this new dataset and illustrate two key uses: (i) static and dynamic innovativeness measures and (ii) latent diffusion networks that capture common pathways of diffusion between states across policies. The scope of the data allows us to compare patterns in both across policy topic areas. We conclude that these new resources will enable researchers to empirically investigate classes of questions that were difficult or impossible to study previously, but whose roots go back to the origins of the political science policy innovation and diffusion literature.     

论通信网络之时间形态——非漫射性、非渐进性、非彻底变革性

本文认为通信使用的渗透效应关系决定了其网络的定向性推进而非漫射状;社会任务和需求家庭化共同导致了整个邮电通信系统呈爆发式而非渐进式增长;事实证明通信媒介的更替,则表现出具有革命性,而绝非彻底变革。本文将如上时间形态的诸方面特征聚焦于通信使用者的行为规律上。作者坚信新的信息通信技术的迅速扩展将符合上述之时间形态。     

Studying Immigrant Policy One Law at a Time

This article shows that, in the study of immigrant integration policy in the U.S. states, it is critical to report data and coding decisions for individual laws. This analysis uses an updated and public database of law‐level decisions, which includes 2,703 legislative actions recorded by the National Conference of State Legislatures from 2005 to 2016. These data are used to estimate models of aggregate state policy activity in a variety of ways: as a single continuum of policy balance versus separate models of welcoming and hostile, lumping all policy subareas together versus analyzing a specific subarea, and lumping all years together in one cross section versus panel analysis. The results in these models differ enough to indicate that reporting codes for individual‐level laws is absolutely essential so that each researcher easily can construct the measure that fits his or her theoretical framework best.     

A short history of dapsone, or an alternative model of drug development

From 1936 until 1996, the drug dapsone treated a diverse array of diseases, including tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria, and AIDS-related pneumonia. This article explores how dapsone transformed from a cure for one disease into a treatment for a totally different malady. This process of reinvention in the clinic represents an alternative model of drug development that the historical literature, focused on success in the laboratory, has largely ignored. The core of the paper discusses the reinvention of dapsone as an antimalarial in the Vietnam War through trials led by Robert J. T. Joy, a physician and military officer. As a case study, it offers a fresh perspective on the clinic-as-laboratory approach that other scholars have addressed in a civilian context. Viewing the randomized clinical trial (RCT) through a military prism will demonstrate how a combat environment combined with the regimentation of the armed forces affected the standard methodology of the RCT.     

Impacts of urban living labs on sustainability transitions: mechanisms and strategies for systemic change through experimentation

ABSTRACT

Urban Living Labs (ULL) are considered spaces to facilitate experimentation about sustainability solutions. ULL represent sites that allow different urban actors to design, test and learn from socio-technical innovations. However, despite their recent proliferation in the European policy sphere, the underlying processes through which ULL might be able to generate and diffuse new socio-technical configurations beyond their immediate boundaries have been largely disregarded and it remains to be examined how they contribute to urban sustainability transitions. With this study, we contribute to a better understanding of the diffusion mechanisms and strategies through which ULL (seek to) create a wider impact using the conceptual lens of transition studies. The mechanisms of diffusion are investigated in four distinct ULL in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Malmö, Sweden. The empirical results indicate six specific strategies that aim to support the diffusion of innovations and know-how developed within ULL to a broader context: transformative place-making, activating network partners, replication of lab structure, education and training, stimulating entrepreneurial growth and narratives of impact.     

The gradual transformation of a weak but enduring regime: contemporary French prostitution policy in transition (1946–2016)

Historically, states have tended to opt for one of three prostitution policy regimes: prohibition, regulation or the abolition of state regulation with a view to providing social support to the individuals involved. This is the approach France has espoused since 1960. Nevertheless, while the state has remained committed to abolitionism, the policies and laws adopted in the name of French abolitionism have varied considerably. This coexistence of stability and change challenges current assumptions of how policy regimes behave and evolve. This is because internal policy change suggests that the regime is weak, and weak regimes that experience strong political challenges are assumed to wither away or collapse. Consequently, this article presents the historical case study of contemporary French prostitution policy, and seeks to explain how and why this policy regime has changed the way it has since World War II. It describes the three phases that have contributed to the evolution of policy in this area, from sex workers’ rights protests in the mid 1970s, to the introduction of a demand-side ban on prostitution in 2016. In doing so, it explains how strong commitment to policy ideas can help sustain an otherwise weak or ineffective policy regime.     

Who governs culture? Actors,federalism and expertise in Swiss regional cultural policy

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a novel approach to cultural policies and cultural policy change, drawing on public policy and institutional analysis to study how decision-making power is distributed between actors in the public and private sectors and at different state levels, as well as the precise roles of public administrations, elected officials and cultural actors. Indeed, rather than directly defining cultural policy, laws on culture mostly designate actors in charge of policy implementation. Based on an empirical application of this analytical framework to the case of Swiss cantons and focusing specifically on the positions of cultural actors, findings show that cultural policies are transformed in different ways, affording more or less power to actors from the cultural sector in implementation arrangements generally dominated by administrative actors.