Overview
The novelty, fast growth and high impact that define emerging technologies demand the attention of society and so of policy makers. Yet the uncertainty and ambiguity also characteristic of emerging technologies challenge the formation of appropriate sociotechnical governance responses, not least because many governance options are available. In the late 2010s, the seemingly imminent introduction of autonomous vehicles (AV) onto public roads created considerable uncertainty within well-established patterns of governance of state transportation systems. State governments must make long-term plans for infrastructure investments over decades. States authorize their Departments of Transportation to plan, design, and build infrastructure that can adapt to the evolving fleet of commercial and personal vehicles. Legislatures oversee the rules of the road and vehicle licensing. To prepare for something whose final form and arrival time were unknown, states needed to understand how quickly this technology would appear on their roads, how it would affect the efficient movement of people and freight, and how to adapt the rules of the road, vehicle and driver licensing, road planning, construction, maintenance, signage, and signaling systems. To meet this challenge, politicians and agencies in many (but not all) U.S states commissioned advice. In this project we seek to understand the policy advice system for an emerging technology at the state level in the U.S.
U.S. state autonomous vehicle policy advice system visible in state reports
Publications
- Hicks, H., Kingsley, G., Isett, KR (2025) Steering the Future: Expert Knowledge and Stakeholder Voices in Autonomous Vehicle Policy Reports, Policy and Society. https://academic.oup.com/policyandsociety/advance-article/doi/10.1093/polsoc/puae041/7951591
- Isett, KR, Hicks, D. Kingsley,G. (2025) Where you sit determines where you stand: Differential use of evidence in State level policy processes, a bibliometric analysis, forthcoming in Public Management Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2024.2448515.
Investigators
Professor Kimberley R. Isett – Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration, University of Delaware
Professor Diana Hicks – School of Public Policy (Georgia Tech)
Professor Gordon Kingsley – School of Public Policy (Georgia Tech)
Sponsor
U.S. National Science Foundation, Award # 2001455
For more information contact: Diana Hicks, dhicks@gatech.edu