This study introduces experimental research design into policy diffusion studies, focusing on political ideology's impact.
Context & Approach:
* Two experiments embedded within national surveys of U.S. municipal policymakers explored their learning behaviors.
* Policymakers were exposed to vignettes about successful zoning and home foreclosure policies from other cities.
Key Findings:
* Ideologically opposed policymakers showed reduced willingness to learn from peer experiences.
* This bias could be mitigated by highlighting the policy's success or its adoption by co-partisans elsewhere.
* A partisan-based bias was also observed among traditional ideological supporters, reducing learning from opponents' communities.
Methodological Contribution:
* The experimental approach offers new insights and opportunities for scholars studying how policies spread.
| Ideology, Learning, and Policy Diffusion: Experimental Evidence was authored by Daniel Butler, Craig Volden, Adam M. Dynes and Boris Shor. It was published by Wiley in AJPS in 2017. |
