ABSTRACT
What explains the adoption of similar policy innovations, i.e. laws, policies, instruments and institutions, across different nations? An abundant and still growing body of literature mainly in comparative politics and international relations addresses this question or, more generally speaking, the puzzle of policy convergence and its sources. While this literature has generated a variety of theoretically informed hypotheses, its focus is often limited to the analysis of single mechanisms or classes of mechanisms through which policy convergence may occur and a systematic empirical illustration of how the different mechanisms of convergence actually work is still largely missing (see for state of the art Heichel et al. 2005; Bennett 1991b; Drezner 2001). In this article, we seek to address this gap by devising a systematic conceptualization of three analytically distinct classes of mechanisms that contribute to policy convergence and by applying this conceptualization empirically.
