Managing a Policy Experiment

Abstract

The unique nature of recreational marijuana policy makes for a compelling study in the policy adoption and implementation process. As a local control state, Colorado cities, municipalities, and counties may choose whether or not to adopt marijuana legalization policies in their jurisdictions and how to do so. This research is based on survey and panel data from Colorado local officials regarding issues of adoption and implementation in their jurisdictions. Overall, the initial findings show that the decision regarding adoption was a result of a combination of policy determinants (both cultural and economic) and policy diffusion (from prior policies on medical marijuana). Factors related to public opinion, economics, and prior policy on medical marijuana affected both the decision to permit and the decision to prohibit. Policy diffusion also appears important in early implementation, as cities use the existing medical marijuana policies to shape recreational marijuana policies.

Local Prohibitions on Marijuana Businesses With On-Site Consumption: Evidence from New York State

“…Despite the common practice among states to grant opt-out authority over commercial activities to local governments, few studies in the extant literature have examined the motives of elected officials using individual-level data. One exception included a survey of local government officials by Johns (2015) following Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana. In the survey results, local government officials had a stronger tendency to cite factors related to citizens’ preferences, rather than economic development, as reasons for their city’s decision to permit or ban commercial marijuana activity.…”

Policy diffusion theory, evidence-informed public health, and public health political science: a scoping review

“…Policy diffusion was applied to several public health domains, most commonly anti-smoking- and tobacco-related policies ( n = 13/39) (e.g., Shipan & Volden, 2006 ) and HIV/AIDS-related policies ( n = 4/39) (Chorev, 2012 ; Clark, 2013 ; Clarke et al, 2016 ; Kavanagh et al, 2021 ). Other policy domains included COVID-19 ( n = 2/39) (Givens & Mistur, 2021 ; Sebhatu et al, 2020 ), marijuana ( n = 2/39) (Johns, 2015 ; Train & Snow, 2019 ), vaccinations ( n = 2/39) (Pacheco & Boushey, 2014 ), and impaired driving ( n = 2/39) (Anderson et al, 2016 ; Macinko & Silver, 2015 ) (see Table 1 for full list of policy domains).…”

“…Policy learning was evident in ten articles, including the adoption of cancer control policies and public health training in South America (Agostinis, 2019 ), youth tobacco restriction policy adoption in the USA (Shipan & Volden, 2014 ), intellectual property rights of AIDS drugs (Chorev, 2012 ), and dog breed specific legislation in the USA (Fix & Mitchell, 2017 ). Two articles identified the role of the learning mechanism via replication diffusion in marijuana regulation (Johns, 2015 ; Train & Snow, 2019 ); for example, a greater number of American cities in the state of Colorado permitted the sale of recreational marijuana if they had previously implemented a medical marijuana-use policy (Johns, 2015 ).…”

Policy Diffusion in a Redistributive Policy: Affordable Housing and State Housing Trust Funds

“…Studies of policy diffusion have been applied to a wide range of policy fields, including state lotteries (Berry and Berry 1990;Mallinson 2019), education (McLendon, Hearn, andDeaton 2006;Birdsall 2019), abortion regulation (Medoff and Dennis 2011), tax and expenditure limits (Miller and Richard 2010;Seljan and Weller 2011), and criminal justice (Hoyman and Weinberg 2006). Recent work includes policy areas such as energy policy (Nicholson-Crotty and Carley 2018), health policies (Pacheco 2017), marijuana legalization (Johns 2015;Hannah and Mallinson 2018), public budgeting (Krenjova and Raudla 2017), policy networks (Yi, Berry, and Chen 2018), same-sex marriage (Fay 2018), and antismoking restrictions (Shipan and Volden 2014). There is also emerging research looking at the diffusion mechanism outside of the U.S. context to expand the external validity of the theory across countries (Beer and Cruz-Aceves 2018;Heggelund et al 2019).…”

“…Throughout decades of work, scholars have applied the diffusion mechanism in numerous policy and national contexts. Recent contributions have included policy areas such as energy policy (Nicholson-Crotty and Carley 2018), tobacco policy (Pacheco 2017), medical marijuana laws (Johns 2015;Hannah and Mallinson 2018), and same-sex marriage (Fay 2018). Theories of policy diffusion also have been applied to different national contexts, including China, Germany, Latin American countries, and the United States (Meseguer 2004;Shipan and Volden 2014;Abel 2019;Heggelund et al 2019).…”