Four Ways We Can Improve Policy Diffusion Research

Abstract

This article puts forward four strategies to improve policy diffusion research in political science: (1) use existing concepts consistently and improve their measurement, (2) clarify whether the goal is to improve the understanding of diffusion itself or to use diffusion research to explain another phenomenon, (3) pay more attention to the quality of the research design, and (4) discuss explicitly the practical implications of diffusion. Taken together, these recommendations trace a distinctive way forward for policy diffusion research.