Policy Issue Networks

This article analyzes an overlooked influence on state policymaking, particularly the early phases of "agenda setting" and interstate diffusion of policy innovations. This influence is designated "policy issue networks." A recent review of the early stages of decision-making concludes that relatively little research on issue network has been conducted. Though an extensive literature on policy communication, diffusion of innovations, and networks theory exists, there are scant empirical data concerning the role played by state policy issue networks. Little is known about the character­istics of these networks or their impact on specific types of policy issues. Nor does any study focus on the interaction of different state political cultures and these issue networks.

The initial phases of public policy are directed toward stimulating government to consider a problem. It is difficult, however, to isolate the sub-parts or stages of the agenda-setting process as "identifiable, one-time, discrete events." The article defines agenda setting as active and serious consideration of a concrete and specific issue by state policy­ makers. How state policymakers are stimulated actively and seriously to consider a set of policy issues across a set of U.S. states constitutes evidence for enlarging existing concepts of the process. While the study does not analyze whether these agenda items became law, it does focus on the rapid interstate diffusion of the same new policy issue.

The sweep of numerous major state educational reforms during the 1970s was not caused by the traditional role of the "iron triangle." Such rapid diffusion of an issue could also not be credited to alternative perspectives on how and why issues appear on a given state's policy agenda. The state policy issue network has many attributes of an interest group, but does not fit into any of the conventional definitions. Salisbury mentions these interest groups: political movements, voluntary organizations of members recruited through the selective use of incentives, and institutions like universities. The article examines the nature of these policy issue networks, and concludes with their interaction with specific state political cultures.

This article was originally published in the Policy Studies Journal by Wiley-Blackwell.