This dissertation examines various internal factors within a county and external factors outside the county that influence policy adoption. Particular attention is given to external factors, or the possible ways that counties respond to the policies of their neighbors. This study focuses on the multiple external processes involved that contribute to policy adoption. These include policy diffusion, lagged diffusion, and conditional diffusion. These processes are used to test hypotheses that will better explain how counties react to their neighbors' policy adoptions. Unlike most studies that examine only one process, multiple processes are tested to determine if they vary across different policies. This study explores Tax Incremental Financing districts, smoking bans, and the sales tax rates of counties in the state of Missouri. Missouri is politically, economically, and demographically similar to other states, therefore making it a sufficient case for this study. I find that different processes are involved in policy adoption, and that counties mainly react to one another through economic competition. I also find that certain county-level characteristics influence a county's likelihood of adopting policies. These findings will enable scholars to better determine the multiple processes involved in county policy adoption.

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This dissertation examines the factors influencing a state’s decision to adopt a local government investment pool (LGIP), the institutional arrangements used in managing them, and the effect of the institutional types on LGIP performance. The dissertation extends the policy adoption theory with insights from investment theory to demonstrate that management credibility influences the likelihood of a state’s LGIP adoption. The study finds that the quality of financial management, the quality of professional leadership, proximate state neighbors who have previously adopted an LGIP, and economic factors determine a state’s proclivity to policy adoption. The dissertation also describes the institutional arrangements used in managing LGIPs and develops typologies based on their institutional arrangements. The dissertation compares LGIPs depending on the risk aversion of their institutional arrangements. The research extends the risk-return tradeoff in investment theory to LGIP institutional arrangements. The empirical findings show that LGIP institutional arrangement that has greater risk report higher performance. The dissertation also finds that competition in the LGIP market due to multiple vendors, and periods of economic recession account for higher performance because of higher risk-taking behaviors associated with them. This dissertation promotes public funds investment laws that emphasize prudent management of government finances and guides managers of the public purse on the types of institutional choices that optimize returns with minimal risk.

As more and more governments have embarked on the e-government path, providing digital interaction with its citizens has boosted the demand for trusted electronic identity solutions that can ensure an official match between an online identity and a physical one. Along with this trend, the affordability and diffusion of mobile devices has translated into a strong push for governments to diversify e-ID channels by developing digital identification on mobile devices also known as Mobile e-ID. Mobile e-ID offers citizens legally binding identification, authentication and qualified electronic signatures and it has been already successfully implemented by some countries at a nation-wide scale. Extant research has investigated mobile e-ID from a technical oriented perspective focusing on potential deployment models, however little is known about the challenges a country is facing in making mID adopted by a wider number of users/ citizens. Addressing this, I run a case study on Republic of Moldova’s nationwide mobile e-ID solution to investigate the barriers to Mobile e-ID. Accordingly, I identify 18 barriers which are organised into 5 categories.

Ce travail contribue au champ d’études sur l’adoption de politique publique des États américains en étudiant quantitativement leurs réactions à l’enjeu du réchauffement climatique. Suivant l’approche des déterminants internes, des facteurs économiques, politiques et environnementaux sont utilisés pour expliquer la densité réglementaire étatique limitant la production de gaz à effet de serre. La variable dépendante constitue la principale contribution de ce travail puisqu’elle incarne une revue exhaustive des options législatives adoptées par les États américains et les regroupe en six catégories. Les déterminants internes identifiés permettent d’expliquer pourquoi certains États sont des instigateurs ou des retardataires dans le dossier du réchauffement climatique. Les principaux facteurs explicatifs sont la présence d’une population idéologiquement libérale et de groupes d’intérêts environnementaux forts. / This paper contributes to the state policy adoption literature by studding the legislative response of the American states to global warming. We quantitatively test hypotheses drawn from internal determinants models of policy adoption to explain why some states are leaders and other laggards in climate change. Our dependent variable is a grouping of all the important types of measures adopted by states to limit the production of greenhouse gases in six categories. To explain the number of measures adopted by each state, we include in our model economic, political and geographic variables that have an impact on the adoption of climate change policies. The results show that the strongest explanatory factors are the presence of an ideologically liberal population and of strong environmental interest groups.

Ce travail contribue au champ d’études sur l’adoption de politique publique des États américains en étudiant quantitativement leurs réactions à l’enjeu du réchauffement climatique. Suivant l’approche des déterminants internes, des facteurs économiques, politiques et environnementaux sont utilisés pour expliquer la densité réglementaire étatique limitant la production de gaz à effet de serre. La variable dépendante constitue la principale contribution de ce travail puisqu’elle incarne une revue exhaustive des options législatives adoptées par les États américains et les regroupe en six catégories. Les déterminants internes identifiés permettent d’expliquer pourquoi certains États sont des instigateurs ou des retardataires dans le dossier du réchauffement climatique. Les principaux facteurs explicatifs sont la présence d’une population idéologiquement libérale et de groupes d’intérêts environnementaux forts. / This paper contributes to the state policy adoption literature by studding the legislative response of the American states to global warming. We quantitatively test hypotheses drawn from internal determinants models of policy adoption to explain why some states are leaders and other laggards in climate change. Our dependent variable is a grouping of all the important types of measures adopted by states to limit the production of greenhouse gases in six categories. To explain the number of measures adopted by each state, we include in our model economic, political and geographic variables that have an impact on the adoption of climate change policies. The results show that the strongest explanatory factors are the presence of an ideologically liberal population and of strong environmental interest groups.

Environmental degradation is a coining issue of our time. Hardly any place in the world is spared from its repercussions. Governments on all administrative levels have begun to take action. It has been acknowledged that local governments are playing a key role in combating the sources and adverse effects of environmental degradation. However, there is considerable variation in the extent to which local governments adopt environmental policies and activities. This paper investigates the determinants of local government involvement in the Local Nature Conservation Program (LONA), a nature protection initiative in Sweden, by analyzing a panel data set covering all 290 Swedishmunicipalities from 2010 to 2019. The study aims to contribute to the longstanding debate in the field whether economic or political variables matter more for explaining local differences in environmental policy adoption. For that purpose, four hypotheses have been derived from four competing theories of urban politics - capacity theory; the economic imperatives model; pluralist theory; and regime theory. The hypotheses are tested by building four statistical models using Poisson fixed effects estimation techniques and including functional form transformations and interaction effects. The results found cultural diversity in the local polity, political interest in the constituency, and socioeconomic characteristics of the residents to be the strongest predictors of municipal LONA-involvement. Contrary to previous research findings, municipal administrative capacity and population size are found to have no effect. The influences of fiscal capacity and political orientation of the governing coalition are ambivalent. Hence, whether economic or political variables are more important for LONAinvolvement is inconclusive. Findings suggest that both matter but that their explanatory power seems more pronounced when considering their joint effects. It appears that fiscal characteristics function as opportunity constraints but that the way local governments manage these circumstances is causing the differences between municipal LONAapplication outcomes. Moreover, it seems that LONA has been successful in engaging smaller and fiscally strapped municipalities by helping them overcome the barriers usually associated with these constraints.

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