Valerie NiklasLiterature Review on Policy DiffusionDecember 17, 2015

Abstract

The objective of this review is to clarify and organize what research has been done in re-gards to policy diffusion, as well as how policy diffusion research can be improved. I found that there were four major factors which influence policy diffusion: internal and external pressures, learning, coercion, and policy characteristics. Based off of these factors, one of the strongest con-clusions we can draw from existing policy diffusion research is that policy diffusion is not a con-crete process. Policy adoption and diffusion revolves around a district, state, or nations individ-ual political, economic, and societal circumstances, as well as the characteristics of the policies.

Introduction

Policy diffusion, defined as the phenomenon in which policy adoption is influenced by policy choices made elsewhere, has been studied by political scientists for decades. Therefore, continuing research in this field may be difficult without a strong understanding of what needs to be researched and what has already been researched. This review found that existing research points to four determining factors in policy diffusion: internal and external pressures, learning, coercion, and policy characteristics. The first section will look at environmental policy, and how internal and external pressures play a role in the diffusion of environmental policymaking. The third discusses learning, and the three primary factors governments consider when adopting poli-cies from other governments: innovation, proximity and ideology, and political consequences. The fourth section will assess how coercion by powerful players such as the media, government, and stakeholders affects diffusion. The final section will summarize ways policy diffusion re-search can be improved.

Internal vs. External Pressures

It is not surprising that states may prioritize adopting a policy when there is internal or external pressure to do so. However, there might be limits to a nation or state's ability to adopt policies. One field of study where this was applicable was environmental policymaking. Two consistent findings were made in research revolving around environmental issues. First, that eco-nomic factors and a national capacity for change were important factors. Second, that internal and external pressures led to environmental policy change.

Kern et al. (2005) and Daley (2005) found in their research that economic resources of a country or state played an important role in policy adoption and diffusion. A core finding of Kern et al.’s (2005) research was that the national capacity for change was an important factor in which policy’s are adopted. Governments must take into account economic resources, as well as political or social barriers. For example, a policy which contradicts national traditions has less of a chance of being implemented. Without the proper resources, a state might not be able to adopt the same policies a wealthier and more powerful state might adopt. This would lead to the con-clusion that internal factors can affect diffusion positively or negatively. The easier the policy can be implemented without repercussions, the more likely it is to diffuse.

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Matisoff (2008), Kern et al. (2005), and Daley (2005) all concluded that there were exter-nal and internal pressures that affected policymaking. Matisoff (2008) found that internal de-mand for a policy or solution played an important role. He found this by looking for the motiva-tion behind policy diffusion. However, motivation does not necessarily only come internally. Ex-ternal pressures such as international agreements, or recovering from an environmental scandal can also motivate players to bring environmental policies on the agenda. Their conclusions sug-gest that policy diffusion, at least in terms of environmental policy, depends on international and national demand. Moreover, if there is a crisis or pressure to act then policies are adopted. China might be pressured externally because they are such a powerful industrialized player in the inter-national community, but it might also be pressured internally, by the populace, because of the smog problem. These conclusions are especially applicable to environmental policy because there is a global and local need for change, however research on charter school policy diffusion also found that intrastate circumstances, such as political structures, the presence of formal orga-nizations and social movements, affected diffusion.

In sum, when there is a statewide, national, or international crisis or pressure to change, diffusion is likely to occur if the government has the means to do so. These conclusions are drawn from research that specifically target environmental policymaking, further research could be done to assess the extent of these correlations.

Learning

An overwhelming amount of the research agglomerated for this review concluded that states learn from states. However states do not simply turn to any other government. Researchers found several different strategies states use when looking at other policies, specifically: innova-tion, ideological similarities, and political consequences.

Innovation and Front-Runners

When looking at policy knowledge diffusion, that is the diffusion of ideas of policies rather than the actual implementation of policies, researchers found that policy makers actively seek out policies from more innovative states (Glick & Friedland, 2014). Innovative states were determined through an "Innovativeness score", determined by Boehmke and Skinner (2012). When larger and more influential countries adopt a policy, the diffusion process is much higher than if a smaller country adopts the policy first (Kern et al., 2005). These front-runner countries, such as Britain, the U.S., and Germany, were found to have a serious impact of environmental policy adoption because they are seen as influential and innovative. Shipan and Volden (2008) found that a core mechanism for diffusion was imitation of larger cities, which they found tended to be innovative leaders. These conclusions mean that powerful and innovative governments in-fluence policy diffusion, and that states and nations turn to these players when looking for poli-cies.

Proximity and Ideology

Proximity and ideology have been linked together because most research conducted on regional similarities of policies led to the conclusion that it was predominantly similar ideology that affected the diffusion of these policies.

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When researching charter school policy diffusion across the United States, Renzulli and Roscigno (2005) found that there were regional similarities in charter school legislation. They suggest that there are two main factors for this. First, information is most easily transferred through shared borders. When states are uncertain, they will turn to neighboring states to evalu-ate whether a policy is a success or not. Second, states turn to states with similar cultural norms, as well as shared regional identities for policymaking. When looking at how states study each other, Glick and Friedland (2014) discovered that states searched for policies in neighboring states, however they found that similarity of states accounts for diffusion more than proximity. These conclusions mean that although proximity does play a role in learning, states predomi-nantly factor in and learn from similar states. Gilardi (2010) found that ideological positions in-fluence the interpretation of policies and their effectiveness. Specifically that “Right govern-ments tend to be more sensitive to information on the electoral consequences of reforms, while left governments are more likely to be influenced by their policy effects.” (Gilardi, p.660). Policy effects refers to the outcomes of the policies, how effective or ineffective it was, what drawbacks it had, etc. This means that not only do states turn to ideologically similar states, but their ide-ologies influence their views and interpretations of policies.

Political Consequences

Perhaps most importantly but not unique from the previous strategies is that states factor in political consequences and effectiveness when adopting policies. As previously stated, ideol-ogy affects how governments view the effectiveness of a policy. Ideology is also taken into ac-count when asking whether a policy will work for the state (Nicholson-Crotty & Carley, 2015). States cannot adopt policies without taking into account the political makeup of their constituen-cies. Furthermore, governments must consider political consequences of policies (Gilardi, 2010). If they were to adopt a policy that conflicts with internal politics, there could be backlash. In conclusion, diffusion most frequently occurs after a state has investigated a policy and asked whether it would be applicable to them.

Learning is one of the biggest contributors to policy diffusion. States will wait to see if a policy is effective before adopting it. It is usually innovative players which are first to implement these policies. Further research could be done to better understand the connection between learn-ing from policy and from political outcomes, and finding the connection between ideology and prior beliefs.

Coercion

Significant research points to coercion as a mechanism for policy diffusion. This review will mention three of the most prominent players of coercion: the media, government players, and stakeholders.

Media

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In a review of 23 studies on the diffusion of criminal justice policies, Bergin (2015) found that mechanisms such as geographic proximity and political ideology had mixed results, whereas media attention had consistent support in increasing policy diffusion (2015). When studying the effects of media attention on fetal homicide policies, Oakley (2009) found that in-creased media attention increased the likelihood of policy change in states. Media attention makes a policy more salient, which puts pressure on legislators, and changes public opinion.

Government Players

Another important player in policy diffusion is the government. Karch (2010) analyzed the politics of embryonic stem cell research and found that the national government can influ-ence state agendas in several ways. National political activities (Supreme Court rulings, public opinion) can affect the diffusion process, national governments can provide financial incentives and help states overcome certain obstacles, and encourage agenda setting in states (Karch, 2010). Shipan and Volden (2008) also found that vertical coercion by governments affected diffusion. They found that it is very easy for national governments to coerce states to implement policies through the use of grants.

Stakeholders

Finally, stakeholders and interest groups play an important role in policy diffusion. Re-searchers looked at modification, or the process by which states alter statutes in response to polit-ical and societal changes, to better understand the effect of stakeholders on diffusion. They found that during this process, stakeholders are able to influence information that lawmakers need to take into account (Karch & Cravens, 2014). In other words, this process gives the opportunity for other parties to give new or biased information, therefore influencing the final statute. Garret and Jansa (2015) looked at the influence of interest groups on policy diffusion and had similar find-ings: special interest groups can influence the diffusion process by providing information to law-makers. They use model legislation and connections to legislators to influence state policy mak-ing (Garret & Jansa, 2015). However, it is important to note that research on environmental poli-cymaking found that interest groups were not influential in decision making, suggesting that this mechanism could be relative to areas of policymaking (Daley, 2005).

In sum, there seems to be a strong connection between powerful influences and policy diffusion. Furthermore, Karch and Cravens (2014), who studied the process of modification to better understand policy diffusion, concluded that there is much to be learned from treating diffu-sion as a process, to better understand specific mechanisms which affect diffusion.

Policy Characteristics

A final influence on policy diffusion is the characteristics of individual policies. Nichol-son-Crotty (2009) found that looking at policy characteristics can help formulate predictions about the diffusion of certain policies. He found through a multivariate analysis that high-salience, low-complexity policies were most likely to diffuse rapidly because lawmakers are willing to forgo policy learning in order to have immediate electoral gains. Moreover, salience

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and complexity of a policy were found to be the two key characteristics in policy diffusion. Salient policies are key because a vast majority of people are concerned or affected by it, there-fore there is increased incentives for policymakers to take action. Salient policies therefore dif-fuse more rapidly. Complex policies require expertise and technical information, which takes more time. Therefore complex policies tend to increase uncertainty and diffuse more slowly (Nicholson-Crotty, 2009). In terms of environmental policy diffusion, Kern et al. (2005) found that policies which called for a redistribution of funds were controversial.

These findings make it clear that policy characteristics affect the rate of diffusion. Further research could be done to investigate the effects of other policy characteristics.

Research Methods: What Can Be Improved?

With the amount of research on policy diffusion, there are critics on how policy diffusion research is conducted. To conclude this review I will summarize the ways researchers suggest we can improve policy diffusion research.

According to Gilardi (2015) there are four ways ways to improve policy diffusion re-search. First, he suggests that instead of thinking of new ideas, researchers should focus on new measurements of existing ideas. Second, researchers should decide whether they are hoping to learn something new about diffusion, or to understand more of a pre-existing phenomenon. Third, researchers should develop new research designs tailored to their specific research ques-tion. He suggests that they “use better data, carry out placebo tests whenever possible, and pay more attention to causal inference.” (Gilardi, p.9). Fourth, he says researchers must make it clear why their conclusions matter.

Dobbin et al. (2007) argue that theorists often attribute identical phenomena to different mechanisms. These overlaps can be seen in some of the research shown here. He devises four schools of thought of policy diffusion: constructivism, coercion theorists, competition theorists, and learning theorists. He says that there are overlaps in these theories and that much can be learned from looking at the big picture, “Scholars who have devised strategies for testing the concrete mechanisms that the four different schools point to have not only produced more rigor-ous and compelling analyses, but they have also developed new insights that feed back into the-ory development” (Dobbin et al., p. 464). This means that researchers should think outside what their individual theories point to, and try to understand how other mechanisms might be at play.

Conclusion

This review determined that there are four primary groupings of existing policy diffusion research. First, when there is an internal or external demand for change or intervention, diffusion of these policies occurs more rapidly, if the policies are financially and politically realistic for a government. Second, governments learn from existing policies. They tend to learn from states that are most innovative, with similar ideologies and close proximity. When implementing these policies, they tailor them to their individual circumstances. Third, coercion by the media, govern-ment, and stakeholders helps diffusion occur more rapidly through financial, social, and political incentives. Fourth, the characteristics of certain policies, especially salience and complexity, af-fect how rapidly they will diffuse. Finally, future researchers should focus on what we already know about policy diffusion and find ways to better understand existing phenomena.

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