This study focuses on a nonmonetary dimension of public policy—innovation by states in the fields of education, welfare, and civil rights. Innovation is considered equivalent to the adoption of a law by a state. From the literature on diffusion (or spread) of innovations, the explanation of user interaction is taken, and a simple model with an interaction term is constructed. The model performs fairly well when evaluated by several common criteria. The results do vary somewhat from one issue area to another; other types of supplementary analysis also indicate variation in diffusion patterns according to the issue involved. Political and economic differences among states are found to account for differences in time of adoption, and “innovativeness” is shown to be an issue- and time-specific factor.

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This article examines whether organized interests alter the strong opinion-policy linkage observed by Erikson, Wright, and McIver (1993). We first replicate the EWM model circa 1980 with the addition of measures of interest organization density and diversity under a variety of specifications. We then extend the analysis to the contemporary period, using EWMs’ new public opinion data through 1999. To execute this second stage of the analysis, we construct a new index of policy liberalism circa 2000 comparable to EWMs’ 1980 measure. Our results suggest that interest community bias in favor of traditional economic interests modestly weakens policy liberalism responsiveness, but that simply having many organized interests registered to lobby may promote more liberal policy.

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