“…By copying ideas from other states—a process facilitated by policy entrepreneurs (Mintrom, 1997) and/or national professional groups (Balla, 2001)—policymakers reduce information costs. Although neighboring states sometimes exhibit comparable policy preferences (Case, Hines, & Rosen, 1993; Seljan & Weller, 2011), geographic policy transfer does not contribute to all new enactments (Miller & Richard, 2010; Mintrom & Vergari, 1998) and there is a declining belief that neighboring state effects are as strong now as in previous decades (Shipan & Volden, 2008, 2012).…”
Section: What Drives Pension Reform Enactments?mentioning
This study analyzes the diffusion of public sector pension reforms across the American states between 1999 and 2012, a policy area notable for its fiscal implications as much as its recent political polarization. Previous enactment in other, non-contiguous states was the largest and most consistent driver of reform. Otherwise, empirical findings suggest that reform antecedents varied by reform type. Existing funding levels reduced the likelihood that states would cut benefits, change pension governance, or reduce cost of living allowances, but had no effect otherwise. Evidence for partisan legislative influence is weak, although Republican control had partial, positive effects on the enactment of pension governance reforms and increases to the retirement age. Across the board, other relevant factors such as constitutional pension protections, collective bargaining rights, and union membership density had no effect. That external contagion pressures have a more robust influence than endogenous conditions raises questions about the future efficacy of pension reform.
“…By copying ideas from other states—a process facilitated by policy entrepreneurs (Mintrom, 1997) and/or national professional groups (Balla, 2001)—policymakers reduce information costs. Although neighboring states sometimes exhibit comparable policy preferences (Case, Hines, & Rosen, 1993; Seljan & Weller, 2011), geographic policy transfer does not contribute to all new enactments (Miller & Richard, 2010; Mintrom & Vergari, 1998) and there is a declining belief that neighboring state effects are as strong now as in previous decades (Shipan & Volden, 2008, 2012).…”
Section: What Drives Pension Reform Enactments?mentioning
This study analyzes the diffusion of public sector pension reforms across the American states between 1999 and 2012, a policy area notable for its fiscal implications as much as its recent political polarization. Previous enactment in other, non-contiguous states was the largest and most consistent driver of reform. Otherwise, empirical findings suggest that reform antecedents varied by reform type. Existing funding levels reduced the likelihood that states would cut benefits, change pension governance, or reduce cost of living allowances, but had no effect otherwise. Evidence for partisan legislative influence is weak, although Republican control had partial, positive effects on the enactment of pension governance reforms and increases to the retirement age. Across the board, other relevant factors such as constitutional pension protections, collective bargaining rights, and union membership density had no effect. That external contagion pressures have a more robust influence than endogenous conditions raises questions about the future efficacy of pension reform.
“…Not only could states “learn” from the experiences of others, but also the enactment of DC accounts in a neighboring state could help policy makers justify the proposal to the public—and to public employees. While the geographic proximity of states does not drive all new policy adoptions (Miller and Richard ; Mintrom and Vergari ), proximate states often exhibit congruent policy preferences (Bowman ; Gray ), and enactments in one state can lead to policy learning in one or more neighbors (Case, Hines, and Rosen ; Seljan and Weller ; Stream ), a process that may be affected by policy makers’ ideology (Grossback, Nicholson‐Crotty, and Peterson ). As a result of growing interconnectedness across governments, there is a declining belief that contagion effects are as strong today as they were previously (Shipan and Volden ); however, this study's time frame extends back to the mid‐1990s, and it is useful to seek evidence of peer‐driven enactments.Theoretically, the probability of DC account enactment increases in a particular state if a neighboring state has already pursued the accounts.…”
Recent confl icts over public sector defi ned benefi t pension funding have inspired polarized debates about the need for reform, including the utility of replacing pensions with defi ned contribution accounts, which are popular throughout the private sector. Between 1996 and 2011, 15 American states enacted legislation to implement either mandatory or optional defi ned contribution accounts for certain public employees. What drove this process? Th is article investigates the role of political, budgetary, and contagion infl uences on the diff usion of defi ned contribution accounts for general state employees. Empirical results suggest that enactments were infl uenced by Republican legislative, but not executive, partisanship. Gains in state indebtedness also increased the likelihood of enactment independent of political and other factors. Th ere is no evidence of policy learning based on neighboring state activity and no infl uence from two measures of organized labor power. Both quantitative and qualitative robustness checks largely reinforce these fi ndings.
“…In doing so, last adopter ideology has increasing weight over time as more and more states are added to calculating the average for all other adopter ideologies (see Cruz-Aceves 2018). Some researchers, however, have not chosen to weight at all though it is often unclear whether this is due to theoretical reasons or practical (Hannah and Mallinson 2018; Karch and Cravens 2014; Seljan and Weller 2011; Sylvester and Haider-Markel 2016). In one case, weighting did not occur because of the use of a different approach for handling tied recent adoptions (Hannah and Mallinson 2018).…”
“…But there are variations in how this is applied in subsequent research. Though nearly as many papers use the alternative citizen ideology (Boushey 2016; Bradford and Bradford 2017; Bromley-Trujillo et al 2016; Hannah and Mallinson 2018; Mallinson 2019; Seljan and Weller 2011), Karch and Cravens (2014) use “policy mood” from Enns and Koch (2013), and Finger (2018) uses a measure of policy liberalism from Caughey and Warshaw (2016), as opposed to government or citizen liberalism.…”
Research on policy diffusion has recently paid more attention to ideological patterns of policy adoption. Grossback, Nicholson-Crotty, and Peterson operationalized a measure of ideological diffusion; however, it has not been consistently calculated in subsequent studies. This is mainly due to difficulties in interpreting how to measure ideological distance based solely on the original article. Specifically, there are three factors that prevent common measurement of the concept: starting values, adoption ties, and weighting of recent adoptions. Recommendations are made for each of these. The purpose is to establish a consistent ideological distance measure. To illustrate, a replication of the original lottery diffusion model in the authors’ paper shows how the results change with different measurement choices. Consistently measuring this concept is important as scholars increasingly recognize that states do not always follow their geographic neighbors but increasingly their ideological “neighbors.”
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