In July of 1997, Dallas area child protection activists appealed to local police and media broadcasters to launch the nation's first Amber Alert system, a crime prevention program enabling law enforcement agencies to activate regional emergency broadcast systems to announce missing children alerts. From these origins, the Amber Alert system evolved into one of the most successful interstate innovation campaigns in recent history. With strong support from child-protection and victim's-rights advocates, every state in the union adopted the Amber plan between 1999 and 2005. The Amber Alert proved to be such an appealing response to kidnapping that identical versions of the child protection law were soon adopted internationally. Between 2002 and 2004, every Canadian province adopted the Amber program. In 2006, the United Kingdom launched its own version of the Amber plan called the Child Rescue Alert.

Although the Amber Alert was exceptional in the sheer speed and scope of its implementation, such abrupt patterns of policy adoption are far from unique in American politics. The reenactment of the death penalty, prohibition, term limits, tax revolts, state auto lemon laws, English Only language legislation, “three strikes” sentencing guidelines, mandatory child auto-restraint requirements, and sex-offender registries stand as prominent examples of policy innovations that moved rapidly and extensively throughout the nation. Most of these innovations were championed by well-organized interest groups, and appealed broadly to voters across the states. In many cases, the innovation was adopted by more than 30 states in fewer than six years.