Book Review: The democratic foundations of policy diffusion: how health, family and employment laws spread across countries

"The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion: How Health, Family and Employment Laws Spread Across Countries." Katerina Linos. OUP USA. April 2013. --- This book claims that laws spread across countries in very public and politicized ways. Katerina Linos argues that politicians choose to follow certain international models to win domestic elections, and to persuade sceptical voters that their ideas are not radical, ill-thought-out experiments, but mainstream, tried-and-true solutions. Whilst it is not new to discover that countries borrow and emulate policies, the original contribution of the book is in being able to empirically link this to elected politicians and voter behaviour, writes Louise Brown.