The Role of Policy Attributes in the Diffusion of Innovations

Studies of policy diffusion have given insufficient attention to the role that characteristics of the policies themselves play in determining the speed of policy diffusion and the mechanisms through which diffusion occurs. We adopt Everett Rogers’ (1983, 2004) attribute typology from the diffusion of innovations literature and apply it to a sample of 27 policy innovations from the sphere of criminal justice policy in the U.S. states between 1973 and 2002. We find that policy attributes, ranging from the relative advantage of the policy over its predecessors to its complexity to its compatibility with past practices, affect the likelihood of adoption. Furthermore, policy attributes shape the extent to which spatial adoption patterns and learning mechanisms are relevant to the policy’s diffusion.

[1]  David A. Peterson,et al.  Ideology and Learning in Policy Diffusion , 2004 .

[2]  Sean Nicholson-Crotty.  The Politics of Diffusion: Public Policy in the American States , 2009, The Journal of Politics.

[3]  William D. Berry,et al.  State Lottery Adoptions as Policy Innovations: An Event History Analysis , 1990, American Political Science Review.

[4]  Paul Brace,et al.  The Preemptive Power of State Supreme Courts: Adoption of Abortion and Death Penalty Legislation , 2005 .

[5]  P. Peterson,et al.  Welfare Magnets: A New Case for a National Standard , 1990 .

[6]  C. Volden.  The Politics of Competitive Federalism: A Race to the Bottom in Welfare Benefits? , 2002 .

[7]  Frederick J. Boehmke,et al.  Disentangling Diffusion: The Effects of Social Learning and Economic Competition on State Policy Innovation and Expansion , 2004 .

[8]  Jennifer Suzanne Earl,et al.  The Enactment of State-Level Hate Crime Law in the United States: Intrastate and Interstate Factors , 2001 .

[9]  Theodore J. Lowi,et al.  American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies, and Political Theory , 1964 .

[10]  C. Volden,et al.  States as Policy Laboratories: Emulating Success in the Children's Health Insurance Program , 2006 .

[11]  Steven J. Balla,et al.  Interstate Professional Associations and the Diffusion of Policy Innovations , 2001 .

[12]  Theodore Sasson,et al.  The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America , 1999 .

[13]  Paul M. Kellstedt.  The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes , 2003 .

[14]  M. Mintrom,et al.  Policy entrepreneurs and the diffusion of innovation , 1997 .

[15]  V. Jenness,et al.  THE HOMOGENIZATION AND DIFFERENTIATION OF HATE CRIME LAW IN THE UNITED STATES, 1978 TO 1995: INNOVATION AND DIFFUSION IN THE CRIMINALIZATION OF BIGOTRY * , 1998 .

[16]  L. G. Tornatzky,et al.  Innovation characteristics and innovation adoption-implementation: A meta-analysis of findings , 1982, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

[17]  Michael A. Bailey,et al.  A Wider Race? Interstate Competition across Health and Welfare Programs , 2004, The Journal of Politics.

[18]  Frank Dobbin,et al.  Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism , 2006, International Organization.

[19]  Virginia Gray,et al.  Innovation in the States: A Diffusion Study , 1973, American Political Science Review.

[20]  Edward G. Carmines,et al.  Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics , 1989 .

[21]  Michael M. Ting,et al.  A Formal Model of Learning and Policy Diffusion , 2008, American Political Science Review.

[22]  Thad Kousser.  Term Limits and the Dismantling of State Legislative Professionalism , 2004 .

[23]  Scott P. Hays.  Influences on Reinvention During the Diffusion of Innovations , 1996 .

[24]  E. Rogers.  Diffusion of Innovations , 1962 .

[25]  D. Stone.  Learning Lessons and Transferring Policy across Time, Space and Disciplines , 1999 .

[26]  Harvey S. Rosen,et al.  Budget spillovers and fiscal policy interdependence: Evidence from the states , 1993 .

[27]  A. Karch,et al.  Emerging Issues and Future Directions in State Policy Diffusion Research , 2007, State Politics & Policy Quarterly.

[28]  Donald P. Haider‐Markel,et al.  Making the National Local: Specifying the Conditions for National Government Influence on State Policymaking , 2004, State Politics & Policy Quarterly.

[29]  William D. Berry,et al.  Using Geographic Information Systems to Study Interstate Competition , 2005, American Political Science Review.

[30]  F. Boehmke.  THE INDIRECT EFFECT OF DIRECT LEGISLATION , 2021 .

[31]  C. Mooney,et al.  The Influence of Values on Consensus and Contentious Morality Policy: U.S. Death Penalty Reform, 1956-82 , 2000, The Journal of Politics.

[32]  Scott P. Hays,et al.  Innovation and Reinvention in State Policymaking: Theory and the Evolution of Living Will Laws , 1991, The Journal of Politics.

[33]  Nathaniel Beck,et al.  Taking Time Seriously: Time-Series-Cross-Section Analysis with a Binary Dependent Variable , 1998 .

[34]  Christopher Howard,et al.  Women's Associations and the Enactment of Mothers' Pensions in the United States , 1993, American Political Science Review.

[35]  P. Squire.  Legislative Professionalization and Membership Diversity in State Legislatures , 1992 .

[36]  V. Webb,et al.  The Politics of Crime and Criminal Justice , 1987 .

[37]  William D. Berry,et al.  Measuring Citizen and Government Ideology in the American States , 1998 .

[38]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Development of an Instrument to Measure the Perceptions of Adopting an Information Technology Innovation , 1991, Inf. Syst. Res..

[39]  Jack L. Walker.  The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States , 1969, American Political Science Review.

[40]  Charles R. Shipan,et al.  Bottom-Up Federalism: The Diffusion of Antismoking Policies from U.S. Cities to States , 2006 .

[41]  Lyman E. Ostlund.  Perceived Innovation Attributes as Predictors of Innovativeness , 1974 .

[42]  C. Mooney,et al.  Legislative Morality in the American States: The Case of Pre-Roe Abortion Regulation Reform , 1995 .

[43]  Daniel J. Elazar,et al.  American Federalism: A View from the States , 1972 .

[44]  L. J. Wei,et al.  Regression analysis of multivariate incomplete failure time data by modeling marginal distributions , 1989 .

[45]  Eric R. Lotke.  The Real War on Crime: The Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission , 1996 .

[46]  Charles R. Shipan,et al.  The mechanisms of policy diffusion , 2008 .