BERGERSON, PETER JOHN; PHD

                         SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY, 1982

                         POLITICAL SCIENCE, GENERAL (0615)
 

                         Past innovation-diffusion research in political science has focused on the speed in which states adopt
                         numerous innovations. Walker and Gray established a research tradition within the field of comparative
                         state policy-making. Their research focused on states which first adopted new programs, and how new
                         policies spread among the American states. The present study builds on the research of Walker and
                         Gray. This study examined the diffusion of a judicial innovation--The Non-Partisan Court Plan--among the
                         American states. This study examined two aspects important to the innovation-diffusion process. First, it
                         established that emulation was important to the diffusion process. Second, diffusion of innovation was
                         the result of planned, coordinated actions of a change agent. The first set of hypotheses stated that early
                         and late adopted states emulated Missouri. The second set of hypotheses stated that early and late
                         adopters emulated Kansas. To test these hypotheses an emulation index was created using twenty
                         social, economic and political variables. The analysis revealed that early and late adopters did not emulate
                         Missouri. Contrary to conventional wisdom those states that adopted the Non-Partisan Court Plan did not
                         take their cues from Missouri, the policy innovator. This study suggests that Kansas was the state that
                         potential adopters emulated. This study also suggested the importance of the legal community as a
                         change agent in the innovation and diffusion of the Court Plan. The American Judicature Society played
                         a significant role in the creation, promotion and adoption of the Non-Partisan Court Plan among the
                         American States. This study concluded that Kansas served as a political model for adopter states to
                         emulate and the legal community presented a policy model to emulate in the diffusion of the
                         Non-Partisan Court Plan.

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