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Tracing the Flow of Policy Ideas in Legislatures: A Text Reuse Approach

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  • John Wilkerson
  • David Smith
  • Nicholas Stramp

Abstract

This article proposes a new approach to investigating the substance of lawmaking. Only a very small proportion of bills become law in the U.S. Congress. However, the bills that do become law often serve as vehicles for language originating in other bills. We investigate “text reuse” methods as a means for tracing the progress of policy ideas in legislation. We then show how a focus on policy ideas leads to new insights into the lawmaking process. Although our focus is on relating content found within bills, the same methods can be used to study policy substance across many research domains.

Suggested Citation

  • John Wilkerson & David Smith & Nicholas Stramp, 2015. "Tracing the Flow of Policy Ideas in Legislatures: A Text Reuse Approach," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(4), pages 943-956, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:59:y:2015:i:4:p:943-956
    DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12175
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    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Xiaoli & Huang, Lucheng & Daim, Tugrul & Li, Xin & Li, Zhiqiang, 2021. "Evaluation of China's new energy vehicle policy texts with quantitative and qualitative analysis," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    2. John J Nay, 2017. "Predicting and understanding law-making with word vectors and an ensemble model," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(5), pages 1-14, May.
    3. Merz, Nicolas & Regel, Sven & Lewandowski, Jirka, 2016. "The Manifesto Corpus: A new resource for research on political parties and quantitative text analysis," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 3(2 (April-), pages 1-8.
    4. Goodman, Christopher B & Hatch, Megan E. & McDonald, Bruce D. III, 2020. "State Preemption of Local Laws: Origins and Modern Trends," SocArXiv u2f4x, Center for Open Science.
    5. Stefano Pagliari & Meredith Wilf, 2021. "Regulatory novelty after financial crises: Evidence from international banking and securities standards, 1975–2016," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(3), pages 933-951, July.
    6. Katherine H. Tennis & Rachel Sullivan Robinson, 2020. "Where Do Population Policies Come From? Copying in African Fertility and Refugee Policies," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 39(2), pages 175-205, April.
    7. Joshua Y. Lerner, 2018. "Getting the message across: evaluating think tank influence in Congress," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 347-366, June.
    8. Leonardo Baccini & Iain Osgood & Stephen Weymouth, 2019. "The service economy: U.S. trade coalitions in an era of deindustrialization," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 261-296, June.
    9. James P Cross & Henrik Hermansson, 2017. "Legislative amendments and informal politics in the European Union: A text reuse approach," European Union Politics, , vol. 18(4), pages 581-602, December.
    10. Hileman, Jacob D. & Angst, Mario & Scott, Tyler A. & Sundström, Emma, 2021. "Recycled text and risk communication in natural gas pipeline environmental impact assessments," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).

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