Diffusion and Reinvention of a Spatially Targeted Economic Development Program in Florida

This dissertation describes the nature of and causes of urban economic decline and highlights government policy strategies to address this problem. It reviews the policy adoption, policy tools, and policy reinvention literature. It develops a theoretical framework that incorporates tenets of each body of literature. This research integrates the policy innovation diffusion framework with the policy tools framework in order to test explanatory factors of why urban local governments in Florida adopt enterprise zone programs. In addition, the integrated framework allows for the assessment of the explanatory factors of policy tool adoption as well as changes in program incentives across adopting governments through a period of diffusion. With this, the framework provides a means to answer the following research questions: 1) What factors influence a government's adoption of an enterprise zone program; 2) What factors influence the adoption of specific types of policy tools as part of an enterprise zone program; and 3) What factors influence enterprise zone program reinvention? This research addresses these questions using four explanatory factors including: 1) Economic Need; 2) Institutional Arrangements; 3) Political Demand; and 4) Regional Diffusion. Further, it describes methodological approaches to test explanations for why and under what conditions an enterprise zone program and its various policy tools may be adopted and reinvented by Florida's local governments. This dissertation provides empirical support for some theoretical explanations of program adoption, policy tool adoption, and program reinvention. In particular, measures of fiscal stress, conservatism, and governmental locus of development decision making were found to positively influence enterprise zone program adoption. Relative to policy tool adoption, higher percentages of black residents were associated with grant and tax expenditure adoption. In addition, the adoption of grants was positively associated with their adoption by other regional governments. Research findings also suggest that fiscally stressed unreformed governments, fiscally stressed governments that make their own development decisions, and those governments with higher levels of median family income are associated with the provision of fewer local enterprise zone incentives. Local governments that adopt enterprise zone programs late in the diffusion process are associated with the provision of more incentives.