This dissertation's main claim is that foreign models shape domestic social policy decisions in important ways. Existing explanations of welfare state development focusing exclusively on domestic variables such as the balance of employer and employee power, electoral politics, and domestic institutions, are therefore partial and biased. International influences can be just as important as domestic forces, and are particularly important for countries that adopt policies late. This dissertation examines the development of health, family and anti-discrimination policy across OECD countries through quantitative methods, and uses qualitative techniques to study the development of policy at the EU level, and in Spain and Greece. Both the policy choices of other countries and policy models promoted by international organizations can influence domestic policy decisions through diverse mechanisms. Evidence of policy success can shape the diffusion of country-to-country norms, but only in issue areas where consensus over the meaning of success exists. Trade competitors sometimes copy one another, but only in policy areas that directly impact firm decisions. Across all policy areas examined here, a gravity model of policy prominence predicts diffusion patterns: countries emulate of proximate and high status countries, as trade partnership and foreign newspaper sales data indicate. In this gravity model, information is the mechanism of diffusion.
However, this information does not concern the technicalities of policy implementation or the likelihood of policy success, but only conveys the fact that proximate and high status actors have made particular choices. International organizations' influence on state policy does not correspond to the formal power these organizations have: international organizations with limited binding powers are often more successful in convincing governments to adopt their policy recommendations than international bodies with wide authority to intervene in national policymaking. As a consequence of the availability of foreign models, the politics of early and late adopters differ. Domestic factors account heavily for policy development in pioneer countries, but are less important in late adopters, where international factors matter more. Foreign models enter the domestic agenda forcefully in late adopters, and also change actors' evaluations of particular proposals. Supporters of a policy are strengthened if this policy has already been adopted by a high status, proximate country. More surprisingly, opponents a policy also consider and debate a policy they would otherwise ignore, because it has already been adopted by a high status, proximate country. The difference between the politics of early and late adopters has a domestic parallel in the diffusion of policy ideas across issue areas within the same country. That is, once one group has gained a benefit, other groups in the same country can gain similar benefits under less favorable circumstances.
