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

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Abstract

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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Notes

  1. For further information on the case selection, see Strebel (2012).

  2. The assignment of the remaining cases is discussed in Strebel (2012).

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Acknowledgments

Research was conducted in the Energy Policy Fundamentals Research Program funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy SFOE (Project number: 102670). We thank the SFOE for the enabling of this project and the valuable feedback. In addition, we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor of Policy Sciences Toddi Steelman for their helpful comments.

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  1. Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Affolternstrasse 56, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland

    Felix Strebel & Thomas Widmer

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  1. Felix Strebel
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  2. Thomas Widmer
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Correspondence to Felix Strebel.

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Strebel, F., Widmer, T. Visibility and facticity in policy diffusion: going beyond the prevailing binarity. Policy Sci 45, 385–398 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-012-9161-y

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