John W. Kingdon Quotes

Ideas come from anywhere, actually, and the critical factor that explains the prominence of an item on the agenda is not its source, but instead the climate in government or the receptivity to ideas of a given type, regardless of source.

The phrase "an idea whose time has come" captures a fundamental reality about an irresistible movement that sweeps over the politics and our society, pushing aside everything that might stand in its path.

A fair body of scholarship has come to challenge the view that elected officials reign supreme.

Setting the agenda and getting one's way, however, are two very different things.

People in and around government sense a national mood.

The opportunity passes if the ready alternative is not available.

Participants perceive swings in national mood, elections bring new administrations to power and new partisan or ideological distributions to Congress, and interest groups of various descriptions press (or fail to press) their demands on government.

It seemed to me that we knew something about how issues were decided, but that we knew much less about how they got to be issues in the first place.

Public policy changes in very large leaps, as in the New Deal of the 1930's, the Great Society of the mid-1960's, and the Reagan revolution of 1981. These spasms of reform are interspersed with periods of rest and stasis, as if the participants are exhausted from their exertion and catching their breath. But in any event, this does not look like Darwinian, gradualistic evolution.

Flowing along independently of the problems and policy streams is the political stream, composed of such things as public mood, pressure group campaigns, election results, partisan or ideological distributions in Congress, and changes of administration.

One goal of a senator or representative is satisfying constituents. Publicity is essential, and one way to get publicity is to push for new policy initiatives.

People are sometimes reluctant to take big steps. Apprehensive about being unable to calculate the political fallout, politicians shy away from grand departures.

Somehow, open heart surgery means more to most of us then the Alton, Illinois, Lock and Dam 26.

We still encounter considerable doses of messiness, accident, fortuitous coupling, and dumb luck.

Ideas become prominent and then fade.