Contagious COVID-19 policies: Policy diffusion during times of crisis.

The COVID-19 crisis demanded rapid, widespread policy action. In response, nations turned to different forms of social distancing policies to reduce the spread of the virus. These policies were implemented globally, proving as contagious as the virus they are meant to prevent. Yet, variation in their implementation invites questions as to how and why countries adopt social distancing policies, and whether the causal mechanisms driving these policy adoptions are based on internal resources and problem conditions or other external factors such as conditions in other countries. We leverage daily changes in international social distancing policies to understand the impacts of problem characteristics, institutional and economic context, and peer effects on social distancing policy adoption. Using fixed-effects models on an international panel of daily data from 2020, we find that peer effects, particularly mimicry of geographic neighbors, political peers, and language agnates drive policy diffusion and shape countries' policy choices.

La crisis de la COVID­19 exigió una acción política rápida y generalizada. En respuesta, las naciones recurrieron a diferentes formas de políticas de distanciamiento social para reducir la propagación del virus. Estas políticas se implementaron a nivel mundial y demostraron ser tan contagiosas como el virus que deben prevenir. Sin embargo, la variación en su implementación invita a cuestionarse cómo y por qué los países adoptan políticas de distanciamiento social, y si los mecanismos causales que impulsan estas adopciones de políticas se basan en recursos internos y condiciones problemáticas u otros factores externos, como las condiciones en otros países. Aprovechamos los cambios diarios en las políticas internacionales de distanciamiento social para comprender los impactos de las características del problema, el contexto institucional y económico y los efectos de los pares en la adopción de políticas de distanciamiento social. Usando modelos de efectos fijos en un panel internacional de datos diarios de 2020, encontramos que los efectos de los pares, en particular la imitación de los vecinos geográficos, los pares políticos y los agnados lingüísticos, impulsan la difusión de políticas y dan forma a las opciones de políticas de los países.

Let sleeping bats lie: Analyzing institutional adaptation to environmental regulatory change through Adaptive Management theory.

Employing a case of a state transportation agency, we examine how complex institutions which integrate outsourcing within a bureaucratic process adapt to environmental regulatory changes. In 2012, two endangered species of bats were located outside of their established ranges in northern Georgia. These discoveries required the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) to comply with a new set of federal regulations relating to those species when developing its projects. This article examines how GDOT adapted to new and unforeseen regulations in the face of environmental uncertainty. Using archival and interview data, we describe how GDOT engaged in Adaptive Management (AM) to internalize environmental changes (i.e. sufficiently stabilize the situation so that the project can get back on track). We also examine the role of outsourcing in bureaucratic agencies as an avenue for AM and suggest extending the AM model to describe mediating actors in the adaptive process. Furthermore, we investigate the impact adaptation had on project outcomes by analyzing 81 bridge projects, which are most susceptible to these environmental shocks, from a sample of 429 transportation projects using multivariate regression. We show that GDOT engaged in initial decision-making, iterative learning, and collaboration through a multi-tiered communication structure. We then present evidence supporting the narrative that these strategies helped it mitigate the impact of subsequent environmental shocks and improve project outcomes over time through adaptation.