John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen, "The National Origins of Policy Ideas" (Princeton UP 2014)

Summary

John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen are the authors of The National Origins of Policy Ideas: Knowledge Regimes in the United States, France, Germany, and Denmark (Princeton University Press, 2014). Campbell is the Class of 1925 Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College and professor of political economy and the Copenhagen Business School. Pederson is professor of comparative political economy at the Copenhagen Business School. Do policy ideas come from different places in different countries? Campbell and Pederson set out to unearth the policy generating infrastructure in four countries. They show that the US has a proliferation of competitive private policy organizations, France has a much more state-led system, semi-public organizations coordinate in Germany, and negotiation and consensus-building defines the system in Denmark. Campbell and Pederson rely on a trove of original interviews with key policy players in each country. The result is an original comparison of mechanics of how policy ideas are generated.

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