Where Do Policy Ideas Come From? A Study of Minnesota Legislators and Staffers
通过调查明尼苏达州立法者和工作人员，研究政策想法在问题识别、政策制定和颁布三个阶段的信息来源，发现立法者主要依赖自身和选民经验，而智库等新来源影响很小。
In this article we will examine the origin of policy ideas in a state legislature. Using data from a survey of Minnesota legislators and from a survey of staffers, we compare the sources of information used in each of three stages of the policy process: problem identification, policy formulation, and enactment. We compare the importance of traditional sources to the influence of think tanks, foundations, and newspaper editorials. We find that legislators rely primarily on their own experiences and those of their constituents. When they are compared to all other sources, the new “idea factories” have little influence in the policy process. There are few differences between policy stages in terms of the information that the legislators and staffers rely upon