Laboratories of Bureaucracy: How Bureaucrats Learn across States in Setting Early Childhood Education Standards

Making the national local: Specifying the conditions for national government influence on state policymaking

Kelly B Smith

Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 2022, vol. 52, issue 4, 553-578

Abstract: How and under what conditions might bureaucrats look to other states? Using a novel dataset of state early learning standards, I conduct dyad analysis to explain across-state citations in bureaucratic documents. Federal government programs can affect which states are looked to for ideas by defining which states are successful through competitive grant programs. Furthermore, the success of programs within the state affect whether bureaucrats look to other states. This article makes two important contributions to our understanding of policy. First, it explores how bureaucrats can participate in policy knowledge diffusion by looking to other states for information. Second, it sheds light on how we measure states as laboratories by marshaling an innovative dataset of citations within state documents. The article suggests states may not be limited to acting as laboratories through electoral institutions, but rather, they may also innovate as laboratories of bureaucracy.

Date: 2022
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