What really drives state-level policy innovation?
at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

If you want to understand why policy reform occurs at the state level, says Assistant Professor Christine Roch (PAUS), you must understand the relationship between policy change and the expectations and strategic interaction of a state’s key policy decision makers and interpreters; its legislators and judges.

Roch examines state policy change with co-author Robert Howard of the Georgia State University political science department in their article, "State Policy Innovation in Perspective: Courts, Legislatures and Education Finance Reform." In their research, Roch and Howard develop a new framework for studying policy change and innovation that can be used as a model in areas beyond education finance reform.

They created this new approach, they write, because models formulated from the traditional framework fail to account for the actions and perspectives of each respective policy-maker. "For instance, legislative and judicial actors at the state level have different perceptions, different motivations and exist in varying institutional structures and designs." Their findings support their belief that it is the interaction of each actor's perspectives, motivations and structures that foster policy innovation.

"A framework that fails to capture these mechanisms falls short of generating accurate predictions about when policy change will, in fact, occur," says Roch.

"Our results indicate that institutional constraints, or political factors, help direct the attention of key policy-makers," says Roch. "Retrospective factors, like the extent of the problem in the state, seem to have a larger influence on state courts, particularly when judges are appointed rather than elected. Prospective factors are more likely to influence state legislatures, such as the resources available to address the problem."

Roch and Howard believe that their work is an important addition to previous work in understanding state-level policy innovation. "Because we emphasize the interactive process of legislative and judicial decision-making within the state structural and information environment," she says, "our framework will allow others to better predict the likelihood of policy change." However, they also caution that certain limitations of their analysis should be kept in mind when considering results.