What explains the global wave of market-oriented policy innovations and transitions from dictatorship to democracy in the final quarter of the twentieth century? For the authors in this edited volume, the answer to this question lies not in the domestic arena—that is, a clustering of similar but wholly separate economic and political decisions taken by policymakers in a large number of states—but, rather, in an interrelated decision dynamic that ties policy agendas among states to one another and that speaks, as a result, to the impact of international diffusion on the cross-national spread of liberal economic policies and liberal political regimes. Moreover, the authors go the further step of concurring as well on the drivers of diffusion. While they discover less evidence in support of, say, the role of powerful international actors in orchestrating the adoption of similar political and economic changes in weaker states, they find much more support for two other mechanisms: cross-national emulation and competition among states.

The case made in this book for international diffusion is a compelling one—for several reasons. One is the rigorous methodology deployed by the authors, and another is the care they all take to sort out not just international versus domestic influences on the adoption of liberalizing innovations but also the relative explanatory power of the same four competing models of why and how innovations spread across national boundaries. A third strength, especially in view of similarities in the conclusions drawn about the role of diffusion and the processes that drive it, is the range of policies examined by the authors—in particular, international financial liberalization (Dennis P. Quinn and A. Maria Toyoda), public-sector downsizing (Chang Kil Lee and David Strang), privatization (Bruce Kogut and J. Muir MacPherson), bilateral investment treaties (Zachary Elkins, Andrew T. Guzman, and Beth A. Simmons), neoliberal tax policies (Duane Swank), democratic institutions (Kristian Skrede Gleditsch and Michael D. Ward), and cross-national adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (Christine Min Wotipka and Francisco O. Ramirez). The case for diffusion presented in this volume, in short, is subjected to a number of tough tests.

There are, however, some problems in this study—to be expected, given the relatively recent scholarly interest in diffusion and the inherent difficulties involved in assessing when and how innovations move across national boundaries. First, it is puzzling that despite the rich theoretical and empirical literature on the relationship between markets and democracy, the authors make few attempts to address the relationship between economic and political liberalization. Second, is it correct to treat domestic dynamics and international diffusion dynamics as separate and competing causal pathways? Here, one is reminded, for example, of the large literature on transnational forces in international diffusion, such as social movements, networks, and alliances, along with the important role of similarities among sites in encouraging demonstration effects and, more generally, the transfer of innovations from one site to others. Third, most of this book addresses the adoption of various types of neoliberal economic policies. This is ideal for the purposes of analyzing diffusion among states because there is little doubt about what the innovation in question is and the role of national-level decision makers in embracing new policies. However, in the case of the diffusion of democracy, it is unclear what is being diffused—for example, the idea of democracy, a set of political institutions, or innovative strategies adopted by oppositions and their allies that weaken authoritarians and empower democrats. At the same time, the formation of a democratic regime is far more about politics and far less about policy; it results from complex political dynamics that extend far beyond the world of incumbent policymakers; and the struggles for power that undermine authoritarian regimes usually have the effect, we must remember, of bringing new authoritarian leaders to power, rather than democrats.

The rise of democracy, in short, is a complex development, and it is better understood as one consequence (down the road) of a series of prior innovations, rather than the innovation itself. Put differently, it is a far more difficult proposition to trace the diffusion of new regimes among states than the diffusion of a particular public policy.

This critique leads to a final deficiency in this study. Largely because of the aggregate data the authors deploy, the picture that emerges of decisions taken by national policymakers to adopt similar innovations is a largely apolitical one. Where, for example, are the defenders of the status quo in these dynamics, why are they too weak to stop policy or regime change, and why do the advocates of innovation in general and these innovations in particular emerge victorious from this political struggle? This oversight would seem to be particularly problematic when the concern, as in this book, is with the uneven geography of diffusion and with decisions taken in a large number of states that are not just unusual in their ability to break with the status quo but also consequential. Changes in tax policy, privatization, and the very design of the political regime, for example, redistribute economic resources and political power. As a result, there are formidable obstacles to the adoption of liberalizing reforms and their spread across national boundaries, especially since players against change as well as for it are equally capable of learning from the precedents set in their neighborhoods. Emulation, in short, is Janus faced, encouraging mimicry but also a forewarning and thus forearming of opponents to change.