A citation-based research framework for exploring policy diffusion: Evidence from China's new energy policies

The citation-based approach has been applied extensively to explore the dynamic evolution and historical development of scientific research and technological advances, while it has rarely been used to analyze the dynamics of policy diffusion. Policy citations signify the flow of specific legislative knowledge in the legal sys-tem, which can provide traceable and measurable footprints for tracing the path of policy progress. To this end, this paper proposes a quantitative citation-based research framework for inspecting the patterns and evolution process of policy diffusion. First, time-varying policy citation networks at different stages are constructed by extracting citing/cited links of policies embedded in the textual content of policy documents. Pattern charac-teristics, topic dynamics, and historical trajectories of policy diffusion are then revealed by scrutinizing succinct structures of policy citation networks. An experimental study of large-scale new energy policies (NEPs) in China confirms the reliability of the citation-based approach in tracking policy diffusion. The introduced approach enriches the current methodology for policy research and provides valuable references for policymakers to judge their policymaking process.