Policy Innovativeness as a Trait of American States

Abstract

1HE LITERATURE MAKING USE of quantitative data in the comparative analysis of policy outputs across the American states has largely been dependent upon public expenditure levels as indicators of policy efforts. One of the few potential altematives has been measurements of policy innovativeness, most recently reintroduced for political analysis by Jack L. Walker.' While policy innovation might be measured in a number of ways, Walker has been especially concemed with a general tendency toward innovativeness of state govemments, or as rural sociologists refer to it, adoptionproneness.2 Certainly, American political folklore is rich in suggesting that some states are innovators while others are laggards. Findings by others in later research, however, cast some doubt upon not only the adequacy of the quantitative measures devised