Policy Reinvention Research Articles

Policy reinvention in diffusion: Evidence from municipal solid waste classification policy in China

AbstractWhile research on policy diffusion has gained significant interest among scholars worldwide, little attention has been given to policy reinvention in diffusion. This study aims to investigate the influencing factors and combination paths of policy reinvention in the Municipal Solid Waste Classification Policy (MSWCP). To achieve this, a theoretical framework encompassing internal factors, intergovernmental relations, and external influence has been constructed. Empirical analysis has been conducted on the MSWCP of 31 large‐ and medium‐sized cities in China using Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Through this analysis, several combination paths that prompted local governments to reinvent policies have been identified. Furthermore, the study has clarified the various roles of six conditions—financial resources, government attention, policy experience, peer competition, organizational learning, and social demand—in achieving policy reinvention. These findings are expected to provide new theoretical and practical insights into the field of policy reinvention research.

Policy Reinvention and Diffusion: Evidence from Chinese Provincial Governments

Since the late 1950s, more than 1,000 academic articles related to policy innovation and diffusion have been published; most focus on how a policy spreads once it has been created, yet less attention is paid to how it is changed by those who adopt it. We extend the focus of policy innovation research from policy inventors to followers by focusing on the diffusion and adoption of the “One Visit at Most” policy in China. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is used to summarize the core factors affecting the reinvention of this policy by provincial governments in China. The results verify the characteristics of political systems are important factors in the provincial government’s policy reinvention. The vertical intergovernmental relation is the necessary condition to influence the policy reinvention. The combination of the factors for horizontal intergovernmental relations, the geographical leadership mobility of governors, and the characteristics of the government’s own economic environment also affect the provincial government’s policy reinvention. This study contributes the unique characteristics of the Chinese system and important theoretical developments to the study of policy reinvention within the broader policy innovation literature.

Multiple Pathways to Public-Private Partnerships for Urban Public Service Delivery: A Cross-City Comparison of Bicycle-Sharing Service in China

ABSTRACTAlthough extant studies have examined the factors affecting the formation of public–private partnerships (PPPs) for urban public service delivery, few have conducted case studies on how institutional and strategic complexities have been addressed in service PPPs that recur across a geographical area. This article applies a perspective of collaborative governance to studying Mobike bicycle-sharing services in four Chinese cities: Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Policy learning and regulations address two complexities. Four pathways to the formation of PPPs emerged from comparative case studies: spontaneous market-driven, regulation-driven, innovation-driven and active governance-driven. Shared value and trust, interaction, policy reinvention and joint actions are embedded in these pathways.

How does public-private collaboration reinvent? A comparative analysis of urban bicycle-sharing policy diffusion in China

The public–private collaboration process reinvents itself during policy diffusion. To reveal the cooperative-reinvention process, this study integrates theories of policy reinvention and collaborative governance to develop a framework outlining the interplay between initial conditions, learning, the reinvention process, the governance structure, and outcomes of reinvention. This study uses the framework to conduct an exploratory in-depth case study of Mobike urban bicycle-sharing service in China to examine such interplay. Findings showed that the combinations of leadership, formalization of cooperation mechanisms, and centralization of governance structure led to reinvent outcomes of institution innovation and content innovation.

Lobbying, learning and policy reinvention: an examination of the American States’ drunk driving laws

AbstractScholars have consistently shown that learning of successful policies in other states leads to higher likelihood of policy adoption. This study extends this finding two ways. First, policy learning can also lead to more comprehensive adoption of successful policies. Second, the effect of policy learning on policy comprehensiveness is conditional on lobbying by interest groups, an alternative source of information about policy success. To test these hypotheses, we conduct a directed dyad-year analysis using a dataset on American state drunk driving regulations from 1983 to 2000. The results show that more comprehensive policy adoption by states is positively related to policy success in other states when lobbying by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) is relatively low. Moreover, lobbying by MADD increases policy comprehensiveness when policy success is relatively low. This study advances the literature by examining the conditional effects of lobbying on the relationship between policy learning and policy reinvention.

Empirical evaluation of the stringency and design of renewable portfolio standards

In two decades of experience with state renewable portfolio standards (RPSs), the United States has observed immense growth in renewable energy markets, initially in wind energy and more recently in solar power. During this time, RPSs have experienced considerable policy reinvention and increased diversity. Here, we explain how changes in RPS policy design features relate to different market outcomes. We develop a score for measuring RPS stringency and show that a one-point increase in RPS stringency leads to increases of 0.2%, 1% and 0.3% in renewable energy, solar generation and renewable energy capacity, respectively. Other important design features include resource eligibility, planning processes, cost recovery and geographical restrictions. These findings are then reaffirmed through 42 semi-structured phone interviews with experts in the field of RPS implementation from government agencies, including public utility commissions and state energy offices, electric utilities and various renewable energy firms and associations. Renewable policy standards have been instrumental in the growth of renewable energy in US states. Through a ranking of policy stringency and interviews with industry stakeholders, researchers show the significance of stringency and other policy design features towards a standard’s effectiveness.

Copy and Paste Lawmaking: Legislative Professionalism and Policy Reinvention in the States

Research on policy reinvention tends to focus on whether policies become more or less comprehensive over time while neglecting to explain copying policy language verbatim. We argue that the extent to which lawmakers reinvent policy depends on the resources available to them. Lawmakers serving in more professional state legislatures have greater capacity to reinvent policies. In contrast, lawmakers serving in less professional settings are more likely to copy policy language. As evidence, we gather bill texts of 12 policies that diffused across the 50 states between 1982 and 2014. Using cosine similarity scores to measure language copying, we find that less professional legislatures copy more text from previous adopters, and that the likeliest culprit is a lack of funding for staff assistance. The findings have implications for states’ ability to amend policies to suit their own citizens’ needs.

Messing about, political indulgence, or making progress?

The article, as an opinion piece, considers the experience of Government policy change with reference to the further education sector in England. An Institute for Government report, ‘All change: Why Britain is so prone to policy reinvention, and what can be done about it’ focused on further education as one of its case examples. Those of us who have worked in some capacity in further education for many years will have almost taken for granted the expectation of regular policy changes. The Institute of Government report makes clear how much change there has been. The article considers the possible consequences for the governing of colleges from policy change on the scale experienced by the further education sector. There is no intention in the article to argue for stopping important and necessary improvements for learners and learning in the further education sector in England. However, the case is made for reviewing the nature of intent and the processes of change.

Content and Complexity in Policy Reinvention and Diffusion: Gay and Transgender-Inclusive Laws against Discrimination

AbstractThis article sheds new light on policy diffusion by exploring policy complexity in state-level lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) antidiscrimination policies. The multiple component event history approach taken in this research allows for the concurrent study of both policy content and the factors that affect policy adoption. Results reveal that the factors influencing policy adoption vary depending on both the content and scope of the policy in question. In addition to addressing laws that protect gay people from discrimination, this article is one of the first studies in the political science and policy literature to empirically investigate the spread of transgender-inclusive laws. Despite combined advocacy and public conflation of identities, gay and transgender-inclusive laws appear to be influenced by different internal and external factors.

Fresh start or false promise? Lessons from Tory policy reviews

As the Labour Party gears up to share early findings from its wide‐ranging policy review at the autumn party conference, author and academic Tim Bale looks for lessons in over 60 years of Conservative party policy reinvention.

Morality Policy Reinvention: State Death Penalties

Morality Policy Reinvention: State Death Penalties

Morality Policy Reinvention: State Death Penalties

How does morality policy change as it diffuses? Social learning theory holds that later adopters learn from earlier adoptions to modify, or reinvent, a policy to fit their needs better. But because of its technical simplicity, saliency, and conflicts of basic values, morality policy may not be amenable to policy learning. We develop and test three reinvention hypotheses reflecting distinct roles for learning. Our analysis of U.S. state death penalty policy supports each hypothesis but under different political conditions. We conclude that, when possible, policymakers make morality policy in their usual way, by incremental steps and learning from previous adoptions. But when basic moral conflicts surface, considerations other than policy learning drive reinvention.

Influences on Reinvention During the Diffusion of Innovations

This study considers how states change policy innovations as they diffuse. This process, known as reinvention, has been the subject of recent innova tion diffusion research (Mooney and Lee 1995; Glick and Hays 1991). This paper examines the role of controversy in structuring the nature of reinvention, creating a more fully specified model of the causes of reinven tion. This research is a comparative analysis of the evolution of provisions of three policy innovations: child abuse reporting laws, crime victim com pensation law, and public campaign funding laws. The data show that vary ing levels of controversy affect the nature of policy reinvention and that reinvention results from a combination of social learning, political charac teristics, and contextual factors.

Judicial Innovation and Policy Re-Invention: State Supreme Courts and the Right To Die

n a dynamic model of the political process, demands are converted into policy, and outputs and outcomes constantly generate new pressures for fresh solutions to old and new problems. But research on the adoption and diffusion of policy innovations generally ignores most of the political cycle. Instead of portraying a continuous process of policymaking and reformulation, innovation research usually examines the initial adoption of a presumed uniform policy and its diffusion among political units, or on how deeply a particular innovation has penetrated state or local governments at a particular point in time. Little attention has been given to the probable alteration of policy by other political units, later revisions or renovations by the early adopters, and resulting variations in the content of policies among adopting units. The research presented here is an exploratory examination of judicial policy change during diffusion. The research has two purposes. The first is to expand the concept of innovation and its application to policy research, particularly to include the concept of policy change during diffusion. Change is conceptualized as policy re-invention, which is the modification by a user of a core policy during the diffusion process (Rogers 1962, 1983). The operating theory is that late adopters adapt early innovations to respond to new demands and social conditions and the experiences of previous implementation. I examine two related re-invention hypotheses: first, while many similar policies may be grouped into one broad, general category, later adopters create distinctive policies which are re-inventions of a core innovation; second, early re-inventions have unequal effects on the policy decisions of later

Judicial Innovation and Policy Re-Invention: State Supreme Courts and the Right to Die

Judicial Innovation and Policy Re-Invention: State Supreme Courts and the Right to Die

Innovation and Reinvention in State Policymaking: Theory and the Evolution of Living Will Laws

Most research on the diffusion of policy innovations focuses on the date of adoption and its correlates. This research examines an aspect of innovation which has received little attention: policy reinvention during the initial diffusion process and through amendment. The central proposition is that even though a set of laws or policies may be grouped into one broad, general category, states create substantively different policies through reinvention, which has important consequences for groups affected by the legislation. Hypotheses concerning the relationship between date of adoption and policy content and the effect of particular controversial policy provisions on reinventions are examined. The study has general implications for the study of the diffusion of innovations and policy in state politics.

Policy Innovativeness as a Trait of American States

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