ABSTRACT
The study of cross-national policy convergence is a highly popular research area in political science. While first studies date back to the early 1960s, the academic popularity of the topic significantly increased during the 1990s. This development is closely related to an increasing research interest in the domestic impact of European integration and globalization. As a consequence, there is an ever-growing body of studies that investigate the occurrence and the underlying driving forces of cross-national policy convergence. Notwithstanding these enormous research efforts, it is generally acknowledged that we still have a limited understanding of the causes and conditions of policy convergence.
