Visibility and facticity in policy diffusion: going beyond the prevailing binarity

Quantitative-oriented diffusion studies, either focused on diffusion patterns or mechanisms, take for granted that policy adoptions are manifest and therefore directly observable in the legislation. A more nuanced perspective of policy adoption taking into account gradual differences between adoptio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPolicy sciences Vol. 45; no. 4; pp. 385 - 398
Main Authors Strebel, Felix, Widmer, Thomas
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Boston Springer 01.12.2012
Springer US
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Cantons
Case studies
Coercion
Concrete
Diffusion theory
Economic Policy
Empirical evidence
Energy
Energy consumption
Energy Policy
Energy politics
Environmental policy
Evidence
Facticity
Federal legislation
Innovation diffusion
Investigation
Legislation
Policy Making
Political Science
Political Science and International Relations
Political Science and International Studies
Public Administration
Studies
Switzerland
Transfer
United States > US
Switzerland
Transfer
Facticity
Visibility
Binarity
Policy diffusion
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Summary:Quantitative-oriented diffusion studies, either focused on diffusion patterns or mechanisms, take for granted that policy adoptions are manifest and therefore directly observable in the legislation. A more nuanced perspective of policy adoption taking into account gradual differences between adoption and non-adoption is proposed with this paper, valid for diffusion among communities and states in federal settings and among countries on the global level. Besides the aspect of visibility, intentions are also important when measures are adopted. While some measures are transferred with a clear instrumental aim, others are rather transferred for symbolical reasons. Looking at specific processes, the paper proposes a concept that disentangles the current understanding of policy diffusion and provides empirical evidence that current diffusion research misconceives instances. The four different transfer types are illustrated with empirical evidence from sub-national energy policy-making in Switzerland. The systematic investigation of the cases allows to finding explanations for the different transfer types.
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ISSN:0032-2687
1573-0891
DOI:10.1007/s11077-012-9161-y