Policy Diffusion: Seven Lessons for Scholars and Practitioners

• Author: Craig Volden,Charles R. Shipan
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2012.02610.x
• Date: 01 November 2012
• Published date: 01 November 2012

Theory to Practice

Charles R. Shipan is J. Ira and Nicki

Harris Professor of Social Science at the

University of Michigan. Previously, he taught

at the University of Iowa and held research

positions at the Brookings Institution, the

University of Michigan’s School of Public

Health, and Trinity College in Dublin. He is

author of numerous articles, book chapters,

and books about political institutions

and public policy, including Deliberate

Discretion? The Institutional

Foundations of Bureaucratic

Autonomy (with John D. Huber,

Cambridge University Press, 2002).

E-mail: cshipan@umich.edu

Craig Volden is professor of public policy

and politics in the Frank Batten School

of Leadership and Public Policy at the

University of Virginia. His research focuses

on legislative politics and interaction

among political institutions. He is currently

exploring issues in American federalism and

examining why some members of Congress

are more effective lawmakers than others.

E-mail: volden@virginia.edu

788 Public Administration Review • November | December 2012

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 72, Iss. 6, pp. 788–796. © 2012 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.111/j.1540-6210.2012.02610.x.

Donald P. Moynihan, Editor

Charles R. Shipan

University of Michigan

Craig Volden

University of Virginia

 e scholarship on policy dif‌f usion in political science

and public administration is extensive.  is article

provides an introduction to that literature for scholars,

students, and practitioners. It of‌f ers seven lessons derived

from that literature, built from numerous empirical

studies and applied to contemporary policy debates. Based

on these seven lessons, the authors of‌f er guidance to policy

makers and present opportunities for future research to

students and scholars of policy dif‌f usion.

Over the past 50 years, scholars have published

nearly 1,000 research articles in political

science and public administration journals

about “policy dif‌f usion.”  is interest in how policies

spread from one government to the next has been

increasing among scholars and practitioners alike. Yet,

although this focus has produced numerous insights

into the policy-making process, the sheer volume of

scholarship makes it dif‌f‌i cult to identify and under-

stand the key f‌i ndings and lessons. Indeed, it is hard

to see the forest through all of these trees.1 In this

article, we step back and draw seven lessons from the

literature and its current direction. Our review has

three main purposes: First, this article may serve as

an introduction for readers who are largely unfamiliar

with policy dif‌f usion. Second, practitioners may better

understand dif‌f usion pressures and their impacts on

policy choices by focusing on key lessons. And f‌i nally,

scholars who are interested in policy adoption, inno-

vation, and dif‌f usion may f‌i nd new research directions

in the takeaway points of‌f ered here.  us, our goal is

to provide insights to both practitioners and scholars,

knowing that this necessarily entails sacrif‌i cing some

depth and specif‌i city in order to capture broad lessons

of general interest.

In its most generic form, policy dif‌f usion is def‌i ned as

one government’s policy choices being inf‌l uenced by

the choices of other governments. With this def‌i nition

in hand, the importance of policy dif‌f usion is undeni-

able.  ose who wish to understand why governments

adopt particular policies would be hard-pressed to

f‌i nd examples of policies that are selected entirely

for internal reasons. Policy makers rely on examples

and insights from those who have experimented with

policies in the past. Government of‌f‌i cials worry about

the impact that the policies of others will have on

their own jurisdictions.  e world is connected today

as never before, and those connections structure the

policy opportunities and constraints faced by policy

makers at the local, regional, state, national, and

international levels.

In the American context, for example, health policy

cannot be understood without assessing both the

ef‌f ects of state experiments on the formulation of

national policies and the subsequent ef‌f ects of those

national policies on the states.2 Welfare reforms of‌f er

opportunities to learn from other governments’ earlier

policies while trying to avoid becoming attractive

to a needy population. Local and state governments

compete for businesses with various tax incentives.

 e centralization of education policy in recent

decades, with more funding provided and regulatory

controls exerted by state and national governments,

has dramatically altered local choices by superintend-

ents and school boards. And the U.S. experience is

not unique. External factors inf‌l uence internal policy

choices in every major policy area around the world.

As just one example, pressure on European Union

countries facing debt crises to adopt austerity meas-

ures by other member governments illustrates how

policy dif‌f usion considerations do not stop at national

borders.

In today’s interconnected world, understanding policy

dif‌f usion is crucial to understanding policy advocacy

and policy change more broadly. For instance,

given that state governments may learn from local

antismoking experiences, is an antismoking group

better served by targeting its limited resources toward

advocating change at the local level or at the state

level (see, e.g., Shipan and Volden 2006)? And, given

numerous policy dif‌f usion pressures, can scholars

be conf‌i dent in their explanations of policy choices

without adequately accounting for external inf‌l uences

Policy Dif‌f usion: Seven Lessons for Scholars and Practitioners