What defines a good policy, and why are they so rarely adopted when compared to their negative counterparts? Policy can be affected by political bias, electoral competition and coercion, or a policy’s simple lack of compatibility with current practices. In his new book, “Why Bad Policies Spread (and Good Ones Don’t),” Batten’s Craig Volden argues that in order for good policies to spread and bad policies to be pushed aside, states must learn from each other’s successes and failures by utilizing three components: observable outcomes, time to observe results and an incentive to learn from each other.
