Digital Commons Network^™

Laboratories Of Democracy? Policy Innovation In Decentralized Governments, Brian D. Galle, Joseph K. Leahy

Brian D. Galle

Innovations in government produce positive externalities for other jurisdictions. Theory therefore predicts that local government will tend to produce a lower than optimal amount of innovation, as officials will prefer to free-ride on innovation by others. As Susan Rose-Ackerman observed in 1980, these two predictions, if true, tend to undermine arguments by proponents of federated government that decentralization will lead to many competing “laboratories of democracy.” In this paper, which is aimed primarily at legal academics, we review and critically assess nearly three decades of responses to Rose-Ackerman’s arguments, none of which have been discussed in depth in the legal …