Innovation and Diffusion Models in Policy Research

This chapter reviews the dominant theories of government innovation in the public policy literature. It shows that the theories borrow heavily from ones developed to explain innovative behavior by individuals. The chapter begins with separate discussions of the central features of internal determinants and diffusion models. Much of the theory underlying internal determinants models of state government innovation can be traced to research about the causes of innovativeness at the individual level. The chapter suggests that explaining the adoption of any specific policy is likely to require attention to a set of variables that are ad hoc from the point of view of innovation theory but critical given the…