ABSTRACT
Writing about policy incubation, Nelson Polsby in 1969 criticized his colleagues' simplistic view of policymaking:
It is a cliché of academic political science that, in legislative matters, it is the President who initiates policy, and Congress which responds, amplifying and modifying and rearranging elements that are essentially originated in the executive branch. Not much work has been done, however, on following this river of bills-becoming-and-not-becoming laws back to its sources. Where do innovations in policy come from before the President "initiates" them? (Polsby 1969: 65)
Polsby asserted that many of these policy ideas have "been around" for quite a while before the president discovers and makes them his own.