1. Romney’s health care plan may also serve as a model for the federal government and any potential changes it might make to its health care structure. In an article printed in the Lincoln Journal-Star on August 27, 2007, potential Senate candidate Hal Daub cited the “Massachusetts plan” for providing health care as a possible legislative proposal in the Senate (Walton 2007).

2. There is a broad body of research that has studied the diffusion of policies across the states. Much of the literature focuses on the political and economic variables that are related to the diffusion of policy (for more recent examples of this research, see Mossberger 1999; Mooney 2001; and Boehmke and Witmer 2002), but very little has been done to examine the ways in which state institutions affect the diffusion of policies across states. In particular, very little, if any, research has examined how governors are responsible for policy diffusion. Although it is possible to study the ways state-level executives can influence policy diffusion, this topic will not be taken up in this work.

3. It is my view that this branch of the NGA provides an additional place to study governor’s influence on policy. This is because The Center for Best Practices has the potential to assist governors in diffusing policies across the nation; this might involve studying a policy that has been introduced and adopted by a number of states at the same time, or it might involve studying a policy introduced and adopted by a single state, before slowly being adopted by a number of other states over a long period of time. Though the NGA is not typically thought of as an avenue that facilitates policy adoptions across the nation, I believe it holds the potential to provide additional insight into the diffusion of state-level policies and that it should be pursued as a research project.

4. President Theodore Roosevelt encouraged the nation’s governors to convene in 1908 in order to discuss environmental policy with federal decision makers. For a thorough description of the organization’s founding, see Brooks (1961).