U.S states are often described as ‘laboratories of democracy’, as they have a significant amount of freedom to try out and experiment with public policies. David Glick takes a close look at how states learn from one another. Focusing on policy briefs prepared for state policymakers, he finds that these reports tend to focus on information from nearby states and those that are known to be innovative. He also finds that other states’ policies tend to be used as inputs into the policymaking process rather than being simply adopted wholesale

Glick, David

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blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/05/05/state-policymakers-tend-to-look-for-lessons-from-their-neighbors-and-other-innovative-states/State policymakers tend to look for lessons from theirneighbors and other innovative states.U.S states are often described as ‘laboratories of democracy’, as they have a significant amountof freedom to try out and experiment with public policies. David Glick takes a close look at howstates learn from one another. Focusing on policy briefs prepared for state policymakers, he findsthat these reports tend to focus on information from nearby states and those that are known to beinnovative. He also finds that other states’ policies tend to be used as inputs into the policymakingprocess rather than being simply adopted wholesale.Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously characterized the 50 United States aspotential laboratories of democracy that can “try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest ofthe country” (New State Ice Co. v. Lieberman , 1932). While the federal government’s powers have grown relativeto the states’ over time, the U.S. federal system still allows for significant variation and experimentation. Forexample, motorists crossing the border from New Hampshire into Massachusetts in the summer encounterflashing signs reminding them that fire works, which are widely available for private purchase and use in theformer, are very much banned in the latter. Perhaps most famously in recent years, Massachusetts’ unique healthcare reform experiment ultimately became a controversial model for the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), andthe functionality of each state’s new health care exchange varied wildly after launch.Research into “policy diffusion,” at least as applied to the U.S., focuses on the spread of policy experiments fromstate to state. This literature comprises many sophisticated studies and a number of important findings about thepatterns and mechanisms through which policies spread. Most of what we know comes from studies that pick onepolicy and track it across the 50 states. My recent research with Zoe Friedland (who was an undergraduate at thetime) supplements this literature by focusing on two states across 60 or so policy issues. Instead of using policyadoptions as the dependent variable, we focus on the information gathered when considering policy change asthe primary dependent variable.  This allows us to address new questions that build on previous research such as;do policy makers systematically seek out information about others’ policies, or does diffusion happens in otherways?  If they seek out information, how often do they do it, and where do they look for ideas? Do they study theirneighbors? Perceived successes? Or high capacity states?To answer these questions we coded research briefs prepared for policy makers in New Hampshire and Vermontto track the instances in which researchers described other states’ policies. This unique data opportunity followsfrom the fact that students working in the Policy Research Shop (PRS), a program of Dartmouth College’sRockefeller Center for Public Policy, fill the research gap in two states with citizen legislatures and very limitedstaff by producing policy research briefs responsive to policy maker’s needs and requests. The fact that these arestudent, rather than professional, briefs raises a number of data validity questions. We argue that these concernsare important and that readers should generalize cautiously, but that the Dartmouth program effectively resemblesmore professional work done elsewhere. The students, advised by faculty, are tasked with responding to actualrequests from policy makers rather than specific assignment expectations. Through an interview with aprofessional policy researcher in New Hampshire and an analysis of 10 policy briefs from Washington State’smore professional policy research organization we have been able to show that the Dartmouth work reasonablyapproximates policy research done elsewhere.To make use of these reports, we coded the references to other states’ policies. Nearly all of the reports mentionedothers’ policies, and 80% included at least one detailed case study of another’s policy. The best way to makesense of the “who is studied” data is to map all of the citations. We do this in Figure 1. The first map plots all of thementions of other states’ policies, the second map depicts only detailed policy case studies, and the third plotsinstances in which other states’ policies were cited for being successes.Following other research we focus on researching neighbors and learning from successes. First, our analysisprovides evidence that researchers disproportionately seek out information about their neighbors’ policies. Maine,Vermont, and Massachusetts were among the most cited states, and New England states averaged 12.6mentions and 6.4 detailed studies compared to 5.4 and 3.1 for all others (all highly significant). At the same time,our data show that geographic proximity is far from dominant. California, Washington, Georgia, and Minnesotahad policies described in case studies nearly as often as Vermont and Maine, and more often thanMassachusetts. Moreover, all but about 10 states had at least one of their policies studied in detail. The third mapspeaks to learning from perceived successes. California was cited the most, and Washington, Oregon, andGeorgia were all cited at rates comparable to the neighbors. It is clear from the map that the policy researchers, attimes prompted by legislators that may have heard about particular states’ policies, genuinely search for, andreport on, good practices from across the country. Combined, the maps provide some evidence supportive of botha neighbors and a successes hypothesis. As importantly, they evince fairly sophisticated information gatheringsince the research does not myopically focus on neighbors or big states.Figure 1: State policies: mentioned (top), studied in detail (middle) and studied as “good” (bottom). Note: darker shading indicates more instances. Because some of the reports were preparedfor Vermont and some for New Hampshire we have to make an adjustment to make themaps easier to interpret. To give each state an equal chance of being studied, we treat allreports prepared for Vermont as if they were prepared for New Hampshire and treatinstances in which Vermont reports cite New Hampshire policies as instances in which NewHampshire studied Vermont. This is necessary to give the next-door neighbor as manychances to appear as all of the other states get.We also investigated the link between the historical state innovativeness scores (roughly a measure of whichstates adopt innovations early and late) estimated by Boehmke and Skinner (2012), and our data from theresearch reports. We plot the counts of detailed case studies by innovativeness scores in Figure 2. This simpleanalysis shows that there is a strong relationship between a state’s innovativeness and the number of times itshows up in the research reports, and that nearly all of the “over-cited” states are neighbors.  Vermont, Maine,Massachusetts, and New York all stand out well above the line. Regression analysis corroborates the pictures andshows that both relationships are highly significant. The researchers tend to study more innovative and highcapacity states while also disproportionately studying nearby states. These results are consistent with our broaderclaim that the information gathering that underlies policy diffusion is systematic and strategic.Figure 2: Relationship between number of detailed studies and state innovativeness score Note: Line is a function of Boehmke and Skinner’s 1959-2009 Innovativeness Scores. Theline is a linear fit between innovativeness and the count of each states’ policies in thereports. Moving from “who” to “when” questions, as well as evidence of implementation of policies, we find little evidencethat factors like issue salience and complexity affect learning from others. We also find few cases in which NewHampshire or Vermont implemented the policies discussed in the briefs. While we find a few instances, we thinkthe evidence points to others’ policies being important inputs in policy choice but normally as ideas to learn fromrather than models to simply adopt. Our evidence also suggests that much of the learning and influence happensin low salience issues that scholars normally don’t pay much attention to.This article is based on the paper How Often Do States Study Each Other? Evidence of Policy KnowledgeDiffusion in American Politics Research.  Featured image credit: Jimmy Emerson, DVM (Creative Commons BY NC ND)Please read our comments policy before commenting.Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USApp– American Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics. Shortened URL for this post:  http://bit.ly/RkYeZY _________________________________About the author David Glick – Boston UniversityDavid Glick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Boston University. His primary research and teaching interests include political institutions – especially courts, publicopinion about institutions, learning and decision making, policy diffusion, law and regulation. Hiswork draws on a mix of archival evidence, personal interviews, formal theory, statistical analysis,surveys, and laboratory experiments.CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 2014 LSE USAPP

State policymakers tend to look for lessons from their neighbors and other innovative states

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