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A Formal Model of Learning and Policy Diffusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2008

CRAIG VOLDEN ,
MICHAEL M. TING  and
DANIEL P. CARPENTER
CRAIG VOLDEN*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
MICHAEL M. TING*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
DANIEL P. CARPENTER*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
*
Craig Volden is Professor of Political Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210-1373; E-mail: [email protected].
Michael M. Ting is Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027; E-mail: [email protected].
Daniel P. Carpenter is Professor of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

We present a model of learning and policy choice across governments. Governments choose policies with known ideological positions but initially unknown valence benefits, possibly learning about those benefits between the model's two periods. There are two variants of the model; in one, governments only learn from their own experiences, whereas in the other they learn from one another's experiments. Based on similarities between these two versions, we illustrate that much accepted scholarly evidence of policy diffusion could simply have arisen through independent actions by governments that only learn from their own experiences. However, differences between the game-theoretic and decision-theoretic models point the way to future empirical tests that discern learning-based policy diffusion from independent policy adoptions.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 102 , Issue 3 , August 2008 , pp. 319 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2008

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