A Case Study of a “Nonevent”

Since the adoption of Georgia’s HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally) scholarship program, seven additional Southeastern states have adopted similar merit-based financial aid programs, most of which are also funded by state lotteries. This study examines why North Carolina after adopting a state lottery in 2005 did not allocate its proceeds for a merit schol-arship program. This in-depth case study considers the explanatory power of a revised multiple streams model and the integrated diffusion model by ana-lyzing data collected through elite interviews and archival documents. The study findings suggest that internal determinants, such as North Carolina’s educational and economic context, trumped regional diffusion trends and that the multiple stream model’s “black box ” influences, such as political tactics and gamesmanship, provide the most conceptually compelling explanation for why merit aid became a “nonevent ” in North Carolina. Indeed, by con-sidering decisions and nondecisions, researchers may capture a broader array of state-level characteristics that influence policy adoption. Keywords: politics of higher education; public policy process; student financial aid During his first two years in office, Georgia’s governor, Zell Miller, advocated for the adoption of a state lottery with proceeds allocated to fund education programs, including the HOPE (Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally) scholarship program. In 1992, the voters approved a statewide referendum to create the Georgia Lottery for Education and within two years the state began awarding HOPE scholarships that pro-vided full-tuition grants to “B ” average students. Within a decade, a dozen additional states adopted similar merit-based scholarship programs and the federal government implemented the HOPE tax credit as part of President Bill Clinton’s reelection platform targeted on middle-class tax relief (Lederman, 1997). Furthermore, in past decade, the proliferation of thes