Learning From Success: Are Successful Governments Role Models?

Abstract

Do local governments learn from their successful peers when designing public policies? In spite of extensive research on policy diffusion and learning, there is still a lack of studies on how success relates to learning patterns. We address this deficiency by examining which other governments local administrative units draw lessons from. More precisely, we investigate whether public managers learn from the experiences of local governments whose citizens are satisfied with government services. Using a large dyadic dataset on all Swedish municipalities from 2010, we find that senior public managers in local administrations learn from similar local governments and from neighbours. But we also find clear evidence that they learn from local governments whose citizens are pleased with local public services. This indicates that best practices are spread among local governments.

Learning Networks Among Swedish Municipalities: Is Sweden a Small World?

“…The analysis is presented in Table 15.2 and it reinforces findings in Lundin et al (2015): county is a very strong predictor of cluster membership. There are 21 counties in Sweden and when directed to detect 21 clusters, the community structure identified by the Girvan-Newman method is very close to the structure of counties.…”

“…Spatially proximate governments often share certain policy-relevant problems, conditions and experiences (Karch, 2007). It is also probably easier to develop a closer relationship with neighboring municipalities; the costs of searching for information from these governments might be lower than looking for information elsewhere (Lundin et al, 2015). Anecdotal evidence from our interviews indicates that municipal bureaucrats tend to circulate between positions in municipalities within counties.…”

“…In an analysis of dyads of municipalities by Lundin et al (2015) using the same data analyzed in this chapter, it is demonstrated that Swedish municipalities primarily learn from their local neighbors. 4 The analysis reveals that geographic proximity greatly increases the probability that a municipality will learn from another municipality.…”

City Learning: Evidence of Policy Information Diffusion from a Survey of U.S. Mayors

“…Our work thus links to others' studies of information in policymaking (e.g. Mooney 1991;Mossberger 2000) and to the small number of other works that study policy diffusion through early stage inputs rather than outputs (Karch 2012;Butler et al 2015;Lundin, Oberg, and Josefsson 2015).…”

Regional tailor‐made policy making in trade licensing administration—case of Slovakia

“…There is an assumption of spillover effect between territorial units. As Lundin, Öberg, and Josefsson (2015) argues based on their study: "best practices are spread among local governments". There are tendencies to adopt best practices.…”