Examining the Policy Learning Dynamics of Atypical Policies with an Application to State Preemption of Local Dog Laws

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-247
Author(s):  
Michael P. Fix ◽  
Joshua L. Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Learning Effect ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
Exponential Model ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Local Breed ◽  
Learning Mechanism ◽  
Conditional Learning ◽  
State Adoption ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Relevant Factors

Abstract Most of the literature on policy diffusion focuses on palpable issues such as economic or morality policies. As such, we know little about the mechanisms of diffusion for preemption of atypical policies such as animal regulations that lack a clear economic or ideological motivation. In this article, we propose and test a theory of conditional policy learning to explain the diffusion of atypical policies. We posit that a type of policy learning is occurring here, but that states only look to their neighbors when certain policy specific factors are present in their state. His theory is then applied to examine the dynamics of state adoption of laws preempting local Breed Specific Legislation from 1988 to 2014. Using an exponential model, two policy learning and two conditional learning hypotheses are tested. This study finds that policy learning is occurring through both external and internal pathways. This advances the literature by demonstrating that preemption occurs through the learning mechanism, but this learning effect is conditioned on policy relevant factors within the state.

scholarly journals How do Public Officials Learn About Policy? A Field Experiment on Policy Diffusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Miguel M. Pereira
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Learning Context ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Non Profit

Abstract Prior research suggests that partisanship can influence how legislators learn from each other. However, same-party governments are also more likely to share similar issues, ideological preferences and constituency demands. Establishing a causal link between partisanship and policy learning is difficult. In collaboration with a non-profit organization, this study isolates the role of partisanship in a real policy learning context. As part of a campaign promoting a new policy among local representatives in the United States, the study randomized whether the initiative was endorsed by co-partisans, out-partisans or both parties. The results show that representatives are systematically more interested in the same policy when it is endorsed by co-partisans. Bipartisan initiatives also attract less interest than co-partisan policies, and no more interest than out-partisan policies, even in more competitive districts. Together, the results suggest that ideological considerations cannot fully explain partisan-based learning. The study contributes to scholarship on policy diffusion, legislative signaling and interest group access.

A Data Analysis of the Irradiation Parameter D10 for Bacteria and Spores under Various Conditions

1999 ◽  
Vol 62 (9) ◽  
pp. 1024-1032 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUZANNE J. C. van GERWEN ◽  
FRANK M. ROMBOUTS ◽  
KLAAS van't RIET ◽  
MARCEL H. ZWIETERING
Keyword(s):  
Low Temperatures ◽  
Deinococcus Radiodurans ◽  
Specific Question ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Irradiation Parameter ◽  
Irradiation Process ◽  
Very High ◽  
Relevant Factors

This paper provides approximate estimates for the irradiation parameter D10 to globally predict the effectiveness of any irradiation process. D10 is often reported to depend on many specific factors, implying that D10 cannot be estimated without exact knowledge of all factors involved. For specific questions these data can of course be useful but only if the conditions reported exactly match the specific question. Alternatively, this study determined the most relevant factors influencing D10, by quantitatively analyzing data from many references. The best first step appeared to be a classification of the data into vegetative bacteria and spores. As expected, spores were found to have significantly higher D10 values (average 2.48 kGy) than vegetative bacteria (average 0.762 kGy). Further analyses of the vegetative bacteria confirmed the expected extreme irradiation resistance of nonpathogenic Deinococcus radiodurans (average 10.4 kGy). Furthermore the analysis identified Enterococcus faecium, Alcaligenes spp., and several members of the Moraxella–Acinetobacter group as having very high resistance at very low temperatures (average 3.65 kGy). After exclusion of high- and low-resistance spores and some specific conditions showing relevant high or low D10 values, the average for spores was estimated to be 2.11 kGy. For vegetative bacteria this average was estimated to be 0.420 kGy. These approximate estimates are not definite, as they depend on the data used in the analyses. It is expected that inclusion of more data will not change the estimates to a great extent. The approximate estimates are therefore useful tools in designing and evaluating irradiation processes.

Policy Learning and Policy Failure

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Meso Level ◽  
Policy Failure ◽  
Limited Success ◽  
Opportunities For Learning ◽  
Policy Failures

First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this updated volume explores policy failures and the valuable opportunities for learning that they offer. The book begins with an overview of policy learning and policy failure. The links between the two appear obvious, yet there are very few studies that address how one can learn from failure, learn to limit failure, and fail to learn. The book attempts to bring the two together. In doing so, it explores how dysfunctional forms of policy learning impact policy failure at the meso-level. The book expands on this by demonstrating how different learning processes generated by actors at the meso-level mediate the extent to which policy transfer is a success or failure. It re-assesses some of the literature on policy transfer and policy diffusion, in light of ideas as to what constitutes failure, partial failure, or limited success. This is followed by an examination of situations in which the incentives of partisanship can encourage a government to actively seek to exacerbate an existing policy failure rather than to repair it. The book studies the connections between repeated assessments of policy failure and subsequent opportunities for system-wide policy learning and reform. Finally, it introduces the idea of ‘policy myopia’ as a pressing source of failure in policy making and explores the possibility of developing policies that learn to help mitigate its impacts.

scholarly journals How do Public Officials Learn About Policy? A Field Experiment on Policy Diffusion.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel M. Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Field Experiment ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Learning Context ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Non Profit

Prior research suggests that partisanship can influence how legislators learn from each other. However, same-party governments are also more likely to share similar issues, ideological preferences, or constituency demands. Establishing a causal link between partisanship and policy learning is difficult. In collaboration with a non-profit organization, this study isolates the role of partisanship in a real policy learning context. As part of an email campaign promoting a new policy among local representatives, I randomized whether the program was endorsed by co-partisans, out-partisans, or both parties. The results show that representatives are systematically more interested in the same policy when endorsed by co-partisans. Bipartisan initiatives also attract less interest than co-partisan policies, and no more interest than out-partisan policies, even in more competitive districts. Together, the results suggest that ideological considerations cannot fully explain partisan-based learning. Implications for the study of policy diffusion, legislative signaling, and interest group access are discussed.

scholarly journals California’s Cap-and-Trade System: Diffusion and Lessons

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guri Bang ◽  
David G. Victor ◽  
Steinar Andresen
Keyword(s):  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Cap And Trade ◽  
Trading System ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Trading Systems ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Eu

This article investigates the roles of policy diffusion and policy learning in shaping the design of California’s cap-and-trade system. On the surface, it is very similar to other cap-and-trade programs, but in practice many detailed differences reflect active efforts by California policy-makers to avoid flaws that they saw in other systems, such as the EU ETS and the US East Coast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. We assess how California’s cap-and-trade system emerged, the significance of policy diffusion, and the lessons for other trading systems by applying two broad sets of theoretical frames—the role of policy diffusion and the role of organized local political concerns. We find that despite the signature status of the trading system, California mostly relies on much less transparent and more costly direct regulation. We also find that California’s cap-and-trade system has developed mostly in its own, special political context, which hampers the feasibility of cross-border trading.

Between policy failure and policy success: bricolage, experimentalism and translation in policy transfer

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-92
Author(s):  
Diane Stone
Keyword(s):  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
Policy Transfer ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Learning ◽  
Policy Adoption ◽  
Meso Level ◽  
Selective Learning ◽  
Policy Success ◽  
Policy Failure ◽  
Lesson Drawing

This chapter re-assesses some of the literature on policy transfer and policy diffusion, in light of ideas as to what constitutes failure, partial failure, or limited success. Rather than frame a policy transfer as a failure or success, scholars must recognise transfer (and so failure) as a messy process involving an array of meso-level actors. Two aspects are of particular note. First, the treatment of imperfect transfer as underscored by flawed lesson-drawing is useful as it takes one back to questions about the depth of learning. Second, the chapter highlights two aspects of learning that are often overlooked in mainstream accounts: ‘negative lesson-drawing’ and selective learning. Negative lesson-drawing is a quest to avoid policy failure where policy learning is not synonymous with policy adoption. Instead, policy lessons can help crystallise what ideas and policy paths decision-makers do not wish to follow.

scholarly journals METHODICAL ASPECT OF ASSESSMENT OF INNOVATIVE SUSCEPTIBILITY OF CANNING ENTERPRISE

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2(64)) ◽  
pp. 176-182
Author(s):  
O.I. Layko ◽  
V.S. Ivanchenkov
Keyword(s):  
Financial Economic ◽  
Strategy Evaluation ◽  
Strategic Approach ◽  
Methodical Approach ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Optimal Approach ◽  
High Level ◽  
Canning Industry ◽  
Relevant Factors

The theoretical bases of research of category of innovative susceptibility of the canning industry enterprise are considered. The most significant components of the category of innovation susceptibility are defined and they are underlined as the basis of methodical approach to the identifying of the degree of readiness of enterprises to introduce innovative development strategies and to select the optimal approach to organizational, economic, informational and financial support for the implementation of this strategy. It is developed the conceptual scheme of the implementation of innovative approaches to the development of enterprises of canning industry, which includes the stages of identifying the key challenges of canning companies, the key solutions to these problems, assessment of the degree of susceptibility of enterprises to innovative changes for the definition of type of innovation strategy, evaluation of efficiency of the adopted strategy. The existing methodical approaches to assessment of the level of innovation receptivity of company is based on consideration of relevant factors that create problems for innovations implementation, namely of material, technological and intangible nature, personnel, organizational, managerial, financial, economic, logistic-infrastructure, marketing, investment. The system of standards for assessing of the level of innovative susceptibility that has been developed, includes 5 ranges from critically low level of innovative susceptibility to high level. It is proposed to abandon the practice of determining of the integral indicator of innovative susceptibility of an enterprise in order to avoid inaccuracies in imposing of influence of various factors. The methodical approach to assessing of the susceptibility of innovative enterprises by groups of indicators allows us to evaluate the level of company security by specific factors. The future prospects of research on the subject of canning enterprises innovative susceptibility include the development of strategic approach to managing of their activities in target direction.

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