The Role of Agenda Setting in Policy Innovation: An Event History Analysis of Living-Will Laws

In this article we link theoretically and empirically the process of agenda setting to the diffusion of innovations across the American states. We use independent variables that reflect both agenda setting and the specific state context, and we hypothesize that a combination of these variables affects the likelihood of policy adoption in the various states. Employing event history analysis of pooled cross-sectional time series data on the adoption of living-will laws, we find that the best model of living-will adoptions includes both agenda setting and state context variables. Our findings demonstrate the importance of linking agenda setting with internal state characteristics to reach a more complete explanation of state policy making.