2025/01/01 by Clare R. Brock · 1 voice
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Policy Transfer and Learning #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies #Social Policy and Reform Studies
paper · doi:10.1093/publius/pjaf041
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Green Rush is holistic and expansive in looking at the policy process by which medical marijuana has been adopted through the states. In the book, Daniel Mallinson and Lee Hannah highlight the relationship between political institutions, interest groups, and unique state-level attributes that shaped widely varying paths toward adoption, which they label a “defiant innovation” (Mallinson and Hannah 2024, 53). Their work bridges the research on federal and state interest group activity by illustrating the key role of interest groups in moving policy ideas across geographical and ideological lines. Mallinson and Hannah introduce the concept of medical marijuana policy as a defiant innovation, and in doing so, leverage multiple theories to explain how and when policy adoption occurs, including multiple streams theory, agenda setting theories, bounded rationality, diffusion theory, and implementation studies. While this hodgepodge of theoretical applications might have the potential to be confusing in another context, the book is structured around the stages of the policy process, which provides a useful organizing schematic. The application of multiple theories, all organized within the framework of the policy stages, allows the authors to delve into the mechanisms that facilitate policy adoption and explore why different states had different approaches and timelines for adopting medical marijuana policies; this is where state level characteristics, interest groups, and institutions intersect.