Governing the States and the Nation: The Intergovernmental Policy ...

program that became the national model embraced by both the Republican Congress and President Clinton” (p. 12). Before the national government had even considered adopting a welfare policy similar to Wisconsin’s, states around the nation were already looking to the policy as a potential template for their own reforms: “[M]any other states have been watching closely and taking for their own some of what Wisconsin has done on welfare” (Perlman 1997). Although this is only one example of the ways in which governors influence policy through state-level innovation, it serves to illustrate the influence that state executives can exert on national-level issues (Haveman and Vobejda 1996).

Second, governors can devise successful policies in their home states that then diffuse to other states. Examples in recent years include the health care plan introduced in Massachusetts and environmental protection policies adopted in California. In Massachusetts, Governor Mitt Romney brought together a bipartisan coalition of individuals and groups to put forth a health care package at a time when health care in the nation had been declared a “crisis” (The Economist 2006). Diffusion of this policy across state lines became much more likely as other states perhaps began to look toward Massachusetts for guidance. Indeed, following the passage of his hard-fought legislation, Governor Romney touted his plan to a number of California health care managers in June of 2006, noting that “other states are going to learn from us” and that those other states will “take what we have done and do one better” (Darc 2006, C-1).¹ Though recent developments have shifted the health care debate from the state level to the federal level—thus, rendering state adoption of health care reform moot—it is notable that one state’s health care plan served as a model for other states and for the federal government while the debate over health care reform was taking place in the United States.