Policy Diffusion in Polarized Times: The Case of the Affordable Care Act

With increasing ideological polarization both within states and across states, policy makers face new challenges in developing and refining policies. This essay explores these challenges in the context of the spread of health policies across the states under the Affordable Care Act, highlighting key arguments and findings from the authors in this Special Issue. I discuss how common mechanisms of policy diffusion, the attributes of policies themselves, and the conditional nature of policy diffusion all play somewhat different roles during polarized times. In addition to new challenges to policy makers, polarization offers new opportunities for experimentation and learning that may be valuable to scholars and practitioners alike.