John W. Kingdon Quotes

There is nothing automatic about campaign pledges finding their way into public policy.

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

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.

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

The agenda, as I conceive of it, is the list of subjects or problems to which government officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention at any given time.

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.

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.