Free-Riders or Competitive Races? Strategic Interaction across the American States on Tobacco Policymaking

Abstract: The majority of research on strategic interaction among the American states makes two assumptions. First, we assume that strategic interaction induces competitive races whereby policy adoption in one state increases the probability of adoption in another. Yet, strategic interaction need not be positive. Instead, states may engage in free-riding dynamics if policies in neighboring states are associated with positive externalities. A second assumption is that strategic interaction occurs during the policy enactment stage. If states are strategic actors, then they are not only influenced by the policies that are enacted in neighboring states, but also by policies that are being introduced in neighboring states. Using a unique dataset on four different types of tobacco policies that are introduced and enacted in the states from 1990-2010, I find evidence that states engage in free-riding dynamics and that strategic interaction exists in the early stages of agenda-setting as well as during policy adoption. Overall, the results stress the importance of scholars to explore the conditional nature of policy diffusion dynamics by focusing on variations in policy content and stages of the policymaking process other than policy enactment