What Is Policy Convergence and What Causes It

Political scientists, sociologists, and economists have all sought to ana- lyze the spread of economic and political liberalism across countries in recent decades+ This article documents this diffusion of liberal policies and politics and proposes four distinct theories to explain how the prior choices of some countries and inter- national actors affect the subsequent behavior of others: coercion, competition, learn- ing, and emulation+ These theories are explored empirically in the symposium articles that follow+ The goal of the symposium is to bring quite different and often isolated schools of thought into contact and communication with one another, and to define common metrics by which we can judge the utility of the contending approaches to diffusion across different policy domains+

/pdf/introduction-the-international-diffusion-of-liberalism-j0407lw02p.pdf

Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism

Part I. Creating a Common Framework: 1. Organizations and movements Doug McAdam and W. Richard Scott 2. Where do we stand? Common mechanisms in organizations and social movements research John L. Campbell Part II. Political and Mobilization Context: 3. Institutional variation in the evolution of social movements: competing logics and the spread of recycling advocacy groups Michael Lounsbury 4. Elite mobilizations for antitakeover legislation, 1982-1990 Timothy Vogus and Gerald F. Davis 5. Institutionalization as a contested, multilevel process: the case of rate regulation in American fire insurance Marc Schneiberg and Sarah A. Soule 6. From struggle to settlement: the crystallization of a field of lesbian/gay organizations in San Francisco, 1969-1973 Elizabeth Armstrong Part III. Social Movement Organizations: Form and Structure: 7. Persistence and change among federated social movement organizations John McCarthy 8. Globalization and transnational social movement organizations Jackie Smith Part IV. Movements Penetrating Organizations: 9. How do social movements penetrate organizations? Environmental impact and organizational response Mayer N. Zald, Calvin Morrill, and Hayagreeva Rao 10. Organizational change as an orchestrated social movement: recruitment to a corporate quality initiative David Strang and Dong-Il Jung 11. Subventing our stories of subversion Maureen A. Scully and W. E. Douglas Creed Part V. Conclusion: 12. Social change, social theory, and the convergence of movements and organizations Gerald F. Davis and Mayer N. Zald 12. Two kinds of stuff: the current encounter of social movements and organizations Elizabeth Clemens.

https://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/39495/frontmatter/9780521839495_frontmatter.pdf

Social movements and organization theory

Any theory of the manner in which governmental policies get formulated and implemented, as well as the effects of those actions on the world, requires an understanding of the behavior of major types of governmental institutions (legislatures, courts, administrative agencies, chief executives), as well as the behavior of interest groups, the general public, and the media. The dominant paradigm of the policy process, the stages heuristic popularized by Jones (1970), Anderson (1975), and Peters (1986), has outlived its usefulness and must be replaced, in large part because it is not a causal theory. In the course of their empirical work, policy scholars have highlighted a number of phenomena that need to be incorporated into theories of the policy process. The development of such theories requires an integration ‘of both political scientists’ knowledge of specific institutions and behavior and policy scholars' attention to policy communities, substantive policy information, etc.Innovations by Policy Scholars in Understanding the Policy ProcessAt least since World War II, most political scientists have tended to focus on either a specific type of institution (legislatures, the presidency, courts, interest groups, administrative agencies, local governments, political parties) or on specific types of political behavior outside those institutions (public opinion, voting, political socialization). These have become the standard subfields within the discipline.In contrast, scholars interested in public policy have not been able to stay within these subfields because the policy process spans all of them. In the course of empirical work, policy scholars have highlighted a number of phenomena often neglected by political scientists without a policy focus:a) The importance of policy communities/networks/subsystems involving actors from numerous public and private institutions and from multiple levels of government;b) The importance of substantive policy information;c) The critical role of policy elites vis-a-vis the general public;d) The desirability of longitudinal studies of a decade or more;e) Differences in political behavior across policy types.

Toward Better Theories of the Policy Process

This article makes a conceptual and theoretical contribution to the study of clustered political and economic reforms. Conceptually, we review the use and meaning of the concept of diffusion as well as its related terms. We suggest that the concept be reserved for processes (not outcomes) characterized by a certain uncoordinated interdependence. Theoretically, we identify the principal sources of clustered policy reforms. We then clarify the characteristics specific to diffusion mechanisms and introduce a categorization of such processes. In particular, we make a distinction between two types of diffusion: adaptation and learning. We argue that this categorization adds conceptual clarity and distinguishes mechanisms with distinct substantive consequences.

On Waves, Clusters, and Diffusion: A Conceptual Framework

The apparent fact that interactive effects are more common in policy innovations taking a long time to diffuse among the states, contrary to the presumed effects of interaction, suggests the existence of alternate diffusion mechanisms. Some policies diffuse directly from a federal model, while others diffuse among states via a segmented pattern of emulations. The order of state adoption of fair employment practices legislation is compared with the adoption order for three labor policies and two civil rights policies. Fair employment practice, by this test, is identified as a civil rights policy and not as a labor policy. State minimum wage legislation is discussed as a case of federal influence in the diffusion process. A first wave of diffusion was followed by a period of federally inspired court rescission. Federal legislation in 1938 began another wave of diffusion. In a third wave of innovations, states with existing laws amended those laws by emulating the new federal legislation.

Confusion, Diffusion, and Innovation.

In spite of common challenges stemming from the common environment shared by all cities in a metropolitan region, continued and even increasing social and economic differentiation among and within cities rather than ho-mogenization and integration are the most significant features of the contemporary metropolitan scene. 1 Cities within the same metropolitan region are not only maintaining but also developing distinct and unique “public life styles.” Urban sociology and urban geography have raised a multitude of questions and given a multitude of answers in seeking to account for the fact that cities facing basically similar challenges from the environment react so differently to these challenges. Most relevant research deals with the problem of differentiation and its effects on the development of cities in terms of historical settlement patterns, economic location and growth, or geographical space distribution. 3 But differences in municipal life styles may also be the result of differences in public policies deliberately pursued by local governments in the metropolitan area. If this is so, the common pressures from the environment are evidently interpreted differently in the process of public decision-making that seeks to cope with them. It would seem, then, that metropolitan cities are in different stages of policy development. Leaving aside momentarily the meaning of “stages of policy development,” we can ask a number of questions that may shed light on the relationship between environmental pressures and public policies designed to meet these pressures.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1953330

Policy Maps of City Councils and Policy Outcomes: A Developmental Analysis

This study is based on data collected by the City Council Research Project, Stanford University. The project was concerned with decision making in small, natural-state legislative groups, legislative behavior within the city council, the kinds of people who become members of the city council, how they are chosen, how they learn their jobs, and the many problems they have to deal with.

The Recruitment of Political Leaders: A Study of Citizen-Politicians.@@@The Threads of Public Policy: A Study in Policy Leadership.@@@City Mangers in Legislative Politics.@@@Local Interest Politics: A One-Way Street.@@@Labyrinths of Democracy: Adaptations, Linkages, Representation, and Policies in Urban Politics.

Politics and the Professors: The Great Society in Perspective . By Henry J. Aaron. (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1978. Pp. 186. $9.95 cloth, $3.95 paper.)

Robert Eyestone

Papers

Confusion, Diffusion, and Innovation.

Policy Maps of City Councils and Policy Outcomes: A Developmental Analysis

Politics and the Professors: The Great Society in Perspective . By Henry J. Aaron. (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1978. Pp. 186. $9.95 cloth, $3.95 paper.)

Time and the optimization of policy decisions