Policy Diffusion: A Regime‐sensitive Conceptual Framework

Abstract

The analysis of diffusion processes is an expanding field of research in the social and economic sciences. However, prolific scholarship has highlighted the transnational diffusion of policy innovations, but the insights provided – at least for policies – are limited by a ‘democracy bias’, that is, the focus of most studies is on democracies. This limitation concerns both the empirical scope of most diffusion studies and their theoretical underpinning. Furthermore, the emphasis placed on the diffusion mechanisms has hindered the development of conceptual frameworks that systematically account for political regime characteristics and their role for policy diffusion. To take a first step towards reducing this gap, we propose an alternative conceptual framework. It builds on the existing literature on policy diffusion, but shifts the perspective from the international to the national context. In the subsequent discussion we put forward a theoretical framework that explicitly accounts for the role of political regime types in policy diffusion and shifts the analytical focus from mechanisms to ‘routes’ of diffusion.

Collective climate action and networked climate governance

“…106 At the most basic level, the characteristics of political systems matter: Because democracies offer more opportunities for participation and initiative than autocracies, the former are likely better at stimulating collective climate action than the latter. 15,16,45,109,110 Building on this line of thought, we argue that the changes in the global climate governance architecture Overview wires.wiley.com/climatechange and especially growing opportunities for non-state actor participation constitute an important contextual factor that is worth taking into consideration. 14,22 More specifically, we argue that the notion of opportunity structure 35 is an apt concept to link the literatures on collective climate action with studies of networked climate governance.…”

The Diffusion of Values among Democracies and Autocracies

“…(2014a) and Tosun and Croissant (, in this special section), value change is shown for four types of autocracies: party‐based, personalist, military and personalist autocratic regimes. The theoretical distinction between permissive and restrictive opportunity structures in democracies (Tosun and Croissant, ) is captured by our distinction between liberal and electoral democracies.…”

Drivers of Change in National Disaster Governance under the Hyogo Framework for Action

“…Future studies should try to integrate the effects of learning and knowledge diffusion to a larger extent. Spillover effects are capable of transporting experience and knowledge across national borders, and, thus, can lead to policy transfer and diffusion of policy innovation without an actual event (Aldrich et al, 2019;Benson & Jordan, 2011;Berry & Berry, 1990;Dobbin, Simmons, & Garrett, 2007;Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000;Tosun & Croissant, 2016). Globalised mass media might yet be another facilitat-ing factor transporting impacts from the event location to other parts of the world (Wittneben, 2012), although geographical proximity might strengthen the effect (Nohrstedt & Weible, 2010).…”