Commentary: A Governor's View of Policy Diffusion

• Date: 01 November 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2012.02660.x
• Published date: 01 November 2012
• Author: James H. Douglas

796 Public Administration Review • November | December 2012

James H. Douglas

Middlebury College

A Governor’s View of Policy Dif‌f usion

Commentary

James H. Douglas served the state

of Vermont for more than 35 years in

the state’s House of Representatives, as

secretary of state, as state treasurer, and

as a four-term governor. He advanced

groundbreaking health reforms that have

ranked Vermont as the healthiest state.

Douglas served as chairman of the National

Governors Association. He is now executive

in residence at Middlebury College, his

alma mater. He serves on the boards of

several companies and on the Governors’

Council of the Bipartisan Policy Center.

E-mail: jdouglas@middlebury.edu

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 72, Iss. 6, pp. 796–797. © 2012 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.111/j.1540-6210.2012.02660.x.

Throughout my nearly four decades in state

government, I was always looking for good

ideas. Why reinvent the wheel, I reasoned, if

someone, somewhere had designed and implemented

a program that could address the need at hand?  is is

consistent with the central theme in “Policy Dif‌f usion:

Seven Lessons for Scholars and Practitioners” by

Charles R. Shipan and Craig Volden.  ey note that

policies are rarely developed in a vacuum and explain

that, in a much more connected world, policy dif-

fusion may be even more prevalent today.  eir real

contribution is expanding on their earlier research by

presenting seven very broad lessons in policy dif‌f usion

that explain how public policies are transferred. In

general, I concur with these lessons.

 e authors present four mechanisms for policy dif‌f u-

sion: competition, learning, imitation, and coercion.

 e f‌i rst is when a government reacts to the pressure

imposed by another entity and enacts a policy that is

designed to more compete successfully. Some poli-

cies, such as enhancing the quality of education, can

benef‌i t students in all competing states, while others,

such as providing signif‌i cant tax credits to f‌i rms

that locate in a given state, could be detrimental to

others. Learning is gaining insights about another

jurisdiction’s experiences and adopting an appropriate

policy based on them. Imitation is simply adopting

a proposal because another government has done so,

while coercion is, as the term implies, forcing a policy

choice through a mandate, whether funded or not.

Gaining insights from another government’s action

and imitating another state generally do not have

negative impacts; coercion, however, such as mandates

on lower levels of government, often results in unin-

tended consequences.

 e authors note that geography is less inf‌l uential on

policy development than might formerly have been

the case. It can be a factor in some circumstances:

living next to a state with no sales or income tax

certainly af‌f ects Vermont’s tax policy and economic

development strategy, and our neighbor’s enactment

of the f‌i rst lottery in the nation undoubtedly inf‌l u-

enced our decision to follow suit. But we live in an

age of interconnectivity and instant communication.

In general, a state is equally likely to mirror a policy

choice a continent away as one next door.

National organizations of state of‌f‌i cials provide oppor-

tunities for the interchange of ideas, whether success-

ful or not. Learning from colleagues was among the

most valuable features of the meetings of the groups to

which I belonged.  e Council of State Governments

established an innovations transfer program in 1976

and annually presents awards to states with the most