Why do some countries pass laws to cut greenhouse gas emissions after climate disasters while others do not? The argument is that disasters make global warming feel more immediate to politicians, but whether those politicians have an incentive to enact mitigation depends on how vulnerable their location is to future climate damages.
Text-as-data methods reveal mixed success in party policy diffusion across Western democracies. This study examines nineteen countries from 1960-2016, finding that successful parties resist changing their manifestos when borrowing occurs. However, regional cultural reference groups significantly influence adoption patterns within European Parliament factions regardless of election outcomes.
This study investigates how partisan endorsements influence officials' interest in policies.
This article asks whether states’ freedom-of-foreign-movement policies affect human trafficking flows and how spatial context matters. Using cross-national data, the authors test competing claims that open borders either enable traffickers by reducing detection or that restrictive movement increases vulnerability to traffickers. The central contribution is to show that considering a state’s own mobility rules together with neighboring states’ practices is necessary to understand how freedom of movement relates to trafficking.
Does exposure to cues influence legislative positions? Two field experiments investigated this question within a state legislature's naturally occurring communication network. The results show that randomly assigned information treatments spread through these networks, affecting policy stances significantly late in the process. This finding aligns with classic studies of self-selected expert networks but extends them by demonstrating diffusion occurs even when cues are introduced into endogenous political discussions.
This study introduces experimental research design into policy diffusion studies, focusing on political ideology's impact.
New approach traces policy idea flow in US Congress using text reuse analysis.
This paper explores two theories explaining state lottery adoption—internal determinants models focusing on political economy characteristics like partisanship, policy capacity, and fiscal pressures, versus regional diffusion models suggesting innovation spreads via neighboring states. Using Mohr's theory of organizational innovation as a framework connecting both approaches, we develop a unified explanation that incorporates these factors.