The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion: How Health, Family and Employment Laws Spread Across Countries

Why do law reforms spread around the world in waves? Leading theories argue that international networks of technocratic elites develop orthodox solutions that they singlehandedly transplant across countries. But, in modern democracies, elites alone cannot press for legislative reforms without winning the support of politicians, voters, and interest groups. As Katerina Linos shows in The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion, international models can help politicians generate domestic enthusiasm for far-reaching proposals. By pointing to models from abroad, policitians can persuade voters that their ideas are not radical, ill-thought out experiments, but mainstream, tried-and-true solutions. The more familiar voters are with a certain country or an international organization, the more willing they are to support policies adopted in that country or recommended by that organization. Aware of voters' tendency, politicians strategically choose these policies to maximize electoral gains. Through the ingenious use of experimental and cross-national evidence, Linos documents voters' response to international models and demonstrates that governments follow international organization templates and imitate the policy choices of countries heavily covered in national media and familiar to voters. Empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated, The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion provides the fullest account to date of this increasingly pervasive phenomenon.

About the Author :
Katerina Linos is Assistant Professor of Law at The University of California-Berkeley Law School.

Review :
"Katerina Linos's account of policy diffusion is the first to take voters seriously. She perceptively compares diffusion through technocracy with diffusion through democracy, and in the process demonstrates the power of citizens to use media and other information to join the domestic debate over social policy. Finally a sophisticated and convincing account of policy convergence as though local politics matters!" --Beth Simmons, Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University "Katerina Linos is both political scientist and legal scholar par excellence. She combines state-of-the-art empirical methods with a subtle understanding of international and comparative law. The result is a book that delivers a powerful message built upon rigorous and innovative empirical research. These pages are chocked full of important insights about the relationship between democratic politics and the global legal order. The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion could not come at a better time-when so many countries are reconfiguring their relationships to international organizations and grappling with the maintenance of effective and humane social policies for their own people." --Ryan Goodman, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Professor of Law, New York University "When do one nation's reforms-of health care, anti-discrimination, and other domestic programs-influence policies in another? In this path breaking work, Katerina Linos uses opinion polls, case studies, and rigorous statistical analysis to show policies moving across 18 Western democracies, even when domestic leaders claim indifference or opposition to foreign models. Anyone interested in domestic or international politics would benefit from this powerful research to examine how ideologies, economic conditions, and local politics affect domestic choices." --Martha Minow, Dean and Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor, Harvard Law School "Linos brings impressive mixed-method analysis to bear on the phenomenon of cross-national policy diffusion... This work has important consequences for the understanding of the influence of international organizations -- policies need not be binding to be persuasive... Essential." --CHOICE "For scholars, the book poses as many questions as it answers. For policymakers, it suggests novel ways to build support for policy innovations." --Foreign Affairs "Linos's book can be read against the grain as valuably as with it--surely the mark of a lasting contribution to scholarship." --American Journal of International Law