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Replication Data for: Policy Diffusion: The Issue-Definition Stage

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: Policy Diffusion: The Issue-Definition Stage
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QEMNP1
 
Creator Gilardi, Fabrizio
Shipan, Charles R.
Wüest, Bruno
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description We put forward a new approach to studying issue definition within the context of policy diffusion. Most studies of policy diffusion---which is the process by which policymaking in one government affects policymaking in other governments---have focused on policy adoptions. We shift the focus to an important but neglected aspect of this process: the issue-definition stage. We use topic models to estimate how policies are framed during this stage and how these frames are predicted by prior policy adoptions. Focusing on smoking restriction in U.S. states, our analysis draws upon an original dataset of over 52,000 paragraphs from newspapers covering 49 states between 1996 and 2013. We find that frames regarding the policy's concrete implications are predicted by prior adoptions in other states, while frames regarding its normative justifications are not. Our approach and findings open the way for a new perspective to studying policy diffusion in many different areas.
 
Subject Social Sciences
Policy diffusion
Federalism
Text data mining
Topic models
Natural language processing
Public policy
Smoking--Law and legislation
 
Contributor Gilardi, Fabrizio
 
Source Gentzkow, Matthew and Jesse M. Shapiro. 2010. “What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from US Daily Newspapers.” Econometrica 78(1):35–71.



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Pacheco, Julianna. 2011. “Using national surveys to measure dynamic US state public opinion: A guideline for scholars and an application.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 11(4):415–439.



Pacheco, Julianna. 2012. “The Social Contagion Model: Exploring the Role of Public Opinion on the Diffusion of Antismoking Legislation across the American States.” Journal of Politics, 74(1):187–202.