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Policy Traditions In American State Politics, Robert L. Savage

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

An examination of the states across a wide range of policy innovations during three historical periods reveals policy traditions having distinctive geographic limits roughly conforming to major regions commonly recognized in American politics. Only two of these traditions, the "Southern Parochial" and the "Northeastern Bureaucratic," persist across time and even these have been weakened. This provides some evidence that while multilinear evolution along regional lines will continue to contribute to differences in policy values among the American states in the foreseeable future, sociocultural integration is the stronger dynamic in American political development, especially since about 1930.