Conceptualizing State Policy Adoption and Diffusion

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the U.S. states have adopted numerous new postsecondary-education policies, spanning the range from student-directed initiatives in merit scholarships and college-savings plans to institution-focused initiatives in performance-based funding and targeted researcher recruitment. In recent years, higher-education researchers have begun aggressively examining not only the effects of these new policies but also their origins in the fifty states. This essay reviews earlier research on policy adoption in political science, sociology, and other fields, then presents a conceptual framework for understanding and investigating the contextual factors driving state actions in the higher-education arena. The framework identifies four major domains of influence: a state’s socioeconomic context, organizational and policy context, politico-institutional context, and policy diffusion context. Research literature on these influences is reviewed, with special attention to developing theoretical propositions regarding the influences of specific factors under particular contextual conditions. The essay reviews emerging developments in policy-adoption scholarship in varied disciplines, then closes with a discussion of promising areas for future higher-education adoption scholarship.