The Determinants of State Policy Innovativeness1

What determines an American state’s propensity for innovativeness, or their willingness to adopt new policies sooner or later relative to other states? Most studies focus almost exclusively on one policy area at a time at the expense of a broader understanding of innovativeness as a characteristic of states. Our study therefore departs from this tradition by simultaneously studying policy innovation across almost 100 different policies. We exploit this leverage to study the broad determinants of state innovativeness via a pooled event history analysis of all policies. This allows us to determine the internal factors that influence innovativeness in general and to more flexibly study external diffusion patterns via contiguity, geographic proximity in general, and ideological proximity.