Policy Diffusion

A sizeable part of policy studies focuses on incremental changes in established policies. Nevertheless, it is equally important to acknowledge the reality of drastic policy changes as well as the induction of new policies into a jurisdiction. The analysis of policy innovation and diffusion is important in explaining policy introduction and the non-incremental aspect of policy change. This paper is my response to the literature by Frances Stokes Berry and William D. Berry titled “Innovation and Diffusion Models in Policy Research” as well as the article by Charles R. Shipan and Craig Volden called “The Mechanisms of Policy Diffusion”. In this essay, I maintain that the unified model proposed by Berry and Berry is the most relevant representation of policy innovation today, and that when it comes to policy diffusion across countries, the region diffusion model becomes less applicable because of the increasing prevalence of international over regional economic competition.

Berry and Berry (2007) defined policy innovation as a programme that is new to the government adopting it (p. 223) and presented the diffusion model and the internal determinants model as the main theories to explain the different possible structures of policy innovation. They argued that the models presented hypothesise that states emulate each other for one of three basic reasons: to learn from one another, to compete with one another, and the pressure to conform to national standards (p. 225). Shipan and Volden (2008) on the other hand paid less attention to the internal determinants model. While they echoed Berry and Berry’s three basic reasons of innovation, Shipan and Volden added a fourth reason – to imitate larger cities. Both literatures acknowledged the fact that even though testing the theories in isolation could create misleading assumptions, it helps to attest the validity of those theories and explain how they work. Both literatures also devoted their primary attention to