Free-Riders or Competitive Races? Strategic Interaction across the American States on Tobacco Policy Making

Abstract

This article contributes to our understanding of policy diffusion in two ways. First, by explicitly focusing on the competition mechanism of diffusion, I consider how policy externalities contribute to free-rider dynamics or competitive races across the American states. The second contribution is the focus on the interdependence of the early stages of agenda setting as well as policy enactments. Using a unique dataset on four different types of tobacco policies that are introduced and eventually enacted in the states from 1990 to 2010, I find evidence that states engage in free-riding dynamics and that strategic interaction exists in the early stages of agenda setting. There is also evidence that states respond to legitimate policy threats in neighboring states. Overall, the results stress the importance of scholars to explore the conditional nature of policy diffusion dynamics by focusing on variations in policy content and stages of the policymaking process other than policy enactment.