Elite Socialization Diffusion: A Theoretical Foundation and Research Agenda for Understanding Interstate Policy Networks

As diffusion scholars increasingly focus on the various mechanisms underlying the spread of policy innovations, it is important to establish clear theoretical foundations for each one. Elite socialization—innovations that diffuse because of the convergence of lawmakers and policy advocates around norms of appropriateness—is the most underdeveloped mechanism in the American diffusion literature. This is a critical oversight given the application of socialization in other contexts and the success of interstate policy networks in seeding policy cascades across the states. This article remedies this problem both by providing a theoretical foundation for elite socialization as an explanation for diffusion via interstate policy networks in the United States and differentiating this mechanism from four other common diffusion mechanisms. It offers testable core and peripheral assumptions and illustrative case studies of strict voter ID and organ donor law diffusion. Finally, it presents a research agenda for systematically testing socialization diffusion, which includes a discussion of methodological opportunities and challenges.