From Emergence to Output: Ideas in the Policy Process

In the last decades, scholars have successfully outlined the importance of ideas, learning, and policy advice for the political process. This paper contributes to the literature on public policy and politics in mapping how ideas travel in the policy process and end up in policy outputs. To achieve this goal, we proceed in two steps. Firstly, based on original data from a comparative European research project and secondary literature, we develop a map of the policy learning infrastructure, to determine places where policy ideas can originate, such as governmental research units, political parties, but also universities and other independent research institutes. The policy learning infrastructure is similar to policy advisory systems but has a more inclusive meaning as it includes also private actors and international organizations. Secondly, based on a systematic review of the theories of the policy process (notably the Multiple Streams Framework, Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, Policy Feedback Theory, Advocacy Coalition Framework, The Narrative Policy Framework, the Institutional Analysis and Development and the Social-Ecological Systems Frameworks, and the Innovation and Diffusion Models), we discuss systematically how ideas i.) emerge, and ii.) how they are moderated during the policy process. Our paper contributes to the public policy literature by providing a more precise way of how to conceptualize, utilize and capture the transformation of ideas in the policy process.