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.
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Notes
- 1.
Interestingly, early scholarship in rural sociology examined the diffusion among farmers of agricultural innovations developed at state land-grant universities. One influential analysis of diffusion of hybrid seed corn across Iowa communities found that more educated and cosmopolitan farmers tended to adopt the new seeding practices first, and that direct experiences and communication with nearby farmers were key mechanisms in spreading those practices (Ryan & Gross, 1943).
- 2.
Rogers’ longer line of research pointed to a number of factors as having influenced a unit’s probability to innovate. Such factors included resources, organizational size and complexity, education levels (individual or aggregate), the unit’s age, the unit’s tolerance for risk, the extent to which the unit may be networked with others, the extent to which the unit seeks the advice of opinion leaders, and the unit’s propensity for innovativeness overall.
- 3.
Other diffusion models exist. A prominent one is Gray’s (1973) “national interaction model,” which posits that public-sector officials learn about innovative policies elsewhere from peers in other states through national communications networks. Gray proposed that officials from states that have already adopted a particular program interact thoroughly with officials from states that have not yet adopted the program, and that each contact between the members of the two groups provides an added stimulus for the latter to adopt. Whereas both regional- and contiguous-diffusion models posit that states are most influenced by their geographically proximal neighbors, the national-interaction model conceptualizes the social system as consisting of the entire community of American states, with each state capable of exerting an equal influence over other states regardless of spatial distance.
- 4.
Other analysts have pursued a similar course, using EHA to study such decisions as state adoptions of broad-based merit-scholarship programs (Doyle, 2006, 2010). Of course, analysts have also studied innovation using a variety of research methods and strategies other than EHA, including some qualitative investigations (e.g., see Cohen-Vogel, 2007).
- 5.
In a significant recent report, McGuinness (2016) argues that governing boards should take an increasingly central leadership role in policy creation, debate, and initiation in the states. Hearn and Anderson’s (1995) study of Minnesota’s “Design for Shared Responsibility” presents an example of a coordinating board taking such a role.
- 6.
There are other possible indirect policy effects of professionalism. An oft-debated question is whether professionalization leads to a higher incidence of divided government --- the condition in which one of the two major parties controls one or more legislative chambers while the other party controls the executive branch. Fiorina (1994) has argued that increased levels of member compensation, one of the components of the professionalism measure, can induce government service-oriented Democrats to hold on to their legislative seats even when GOP candidates are elected governor. Squire (1997) advanced a somewhat different argument, claiming that professionalization “generates electoral resources that incumbents may use to insulate themselves from changing political tides” (p. 17). In either event, professionalization can be viewed as shaping legislators’ incentives, which in turn may influence party control of legislatures and thus policy outcomes.
- 7.
Schlesinger’s (1965) index of gubernatorial power was the first to array the states according to the formal powers of their chief executives in such areas as veto, appointment, tenure, and budget authority. Different measures were subsequently developed (Dometrius, 1979; Beyle, 2004), notably the index that Beyle popularized.
- 8.
Among other relationships, Dye’s (1969) multivariate model examined the impact of governor’s formal powers on 25 different policy outcomes, including funding and educational performance of public K-12 school systems. The budget powers of governors rarely were found to significantly affect educational outcomes, but the appointive powers of governors did positively affect per pupil expenditures and average teachers’ salaries.
- 9.
In that same vein, Jacoby and Schneider (2001) found that, when there are fewer interest groups, specific interests tend to receive more funding. See the work of Browne (1990), Cigler (1991), and Heinz, Laumann, Nelson, and Salisbury (1993) on other aspects of interest-group power and effectiveness.
- 10.
Michigan, in 1850, was the first state to grant its flagship institution, the University of Michigan, constitutional standing. This practice was pursued to further remove public universities from the reach of “meddlesome politicians” in legislatures and governors’ offices. By codifying the self-governing authority of universities in the constitution, state constitutional conventions elevated the status of their flagship university to that of a “fourth branch of government” with powers that, in theory at least, placed the university on a legal plane coordinate to that of the state’s legislature, executive, and judiciary (Glenny and Dalglish, 1973). Over the next 20 years, California and Minnesota, and a handful of other states, followed Michigan’s lead (Chambers, 1965; Douglass, 1992).
- 11.
In states with coordinating boards but highly centralized sector-specific systems (e.g., for a research university sector, a state comprehensive sector, and a community-college sector), it is possible that coalitions can build between sectors to wield influence sufficient to parallel that of a consolidated governing board system (Austin Lacy, personal communication, May 28, 2016).
- 12.
Our four bases for state policy adoption diffusion in higher education have roots in social and political theories regarding institutionalism and isomorphism, including the works of Walker (1969) and the Berrys (2014) in political science and, from sociology, works in the pioneering tradition of DiMaggio and Powell (1983). Most recently, such theoretical influences can also be seen in the conceptualizations of Sponsler (2010) and Lacy and Tandberg (2014).
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by a research grant to the first author from the W.T. Grant Foundation. The authors gratefully acknowledge Will Doyle, Austin Lacy, and Erik Ness - recent discussions with these colleagues greatly enriched our perspectives on the topic of this chapter. We also thank the many who have collaborated with the first two authors over the years in research on state policy adoption, including the three above plus Melissa Anderson, Laura Cohen-Vogel, Russ Deaton, Carolyn Griswold, Don Heller, Nick Hillman, Ginger Marine, Stephanie Lee, Aaron Levine, Christine Mokher, Laura Perna, David Tandberg, John Wachen, Jarrett Warshaw, and Steven Young.
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Hearn, J.C., McLendon, M.K., Linthicum, K.C. (2017). Conceptualizing State Policy Adoption and Diffusion. In: Paulsen, M. (eds) Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research. Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, vol 32. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48983-4_7
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