The Structural Context of City Adoption of War on Poverty and National Flood Insurance Programs

A theoretical formulation is presented that represents an abstract and parsimonious conception of public policy adoption at the subnational level. The formulation consists of two components: the principle that social phenomena exist in contexts with which they are compatible, and several distinguishing attributes of subnational collectivities and public policies. Taken together, these statements lead to the conclusion: if there is a match between attributes of a policy and those of a collectivity, then the probability increases that the policy will be adopted by the collectivity. General hypotheses derived from the formulation appear generally consistent with findings of previous research. Specific hypotheses derived from the formulation regarding city adoption of War on Poverty and National Flood Insurance programs are tested with cross-sectional data for a sample of U.S. cities. Results of an ordinary least-squares regression analysis reveal support for derived hypotheses. It is concluded that the explanatory and predictive powers of the theoretical formulation are high.