John W. Kingdon, 1984, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies
 

p. 90 (re the garbage can)

"Running through . . . organizations or decision structures are four separate streams: problems, solutions, participants, and choice opportunities. Each of the streams has a life of its own, largely unrelated to the others. Thus people generate and debate solutions because they have some self-interest in doing so (e.g., keeping their job or expanding their unit), not because the solutions are generated in response to a problem or in anticipation of a particular upcoming choice. Or participants drift in and out of decision making, carrying their pet problems and solutions with them, but not necessarily because their participation was dictated by the problem, solution, or choice at hand. As Cohen, March, and Olsen say, this kind of organization 'is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situation in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decision makers looking for work.'"

Quote is from: Michael Cohen, James March, and Johan Olsen, "A Garbage Can Model of Organization Choice," Administrative Science Quarterly 17 (March 1972): 1-25, p.2.
 

pp. 122-123 (re the policy primeval soup)

"Picture a community of specialists: researchers, congressional staffers, people in planning and evaluation offices and in budget offices, academics, interest group analysts. Ideas float around in such communities. Specialists have their conceptions, their vague notions of future directions, and their more specific proposals. They try out their ideas on others by going to lunch, circulating papers, publishing articles, holding hearings, presenting testimony, and drafting and pushing legislative proposals. The process often does take years . . . . and may be endless.

"Generating alternatives and proposals in this community resembles a process of biological natural selection. Much as molecules floated around in what biologists call the 'primeval soup' before life came into being, so ideas float around in these communities. Many ideas are possible, much as many molecules would be possible. Ideas become prominent and then fade. There is a long process of 'softening up': ideas are floated, bills introduced, speeches made; proposals are drafted, then amended in response to reaction and floated again. Ideas confront one another (much as molecules bumped into one another) and combine with one another in various ways. The 'soup' changes not only through the appearance of wholly new elements, but even more by the recombination of previously existing elements. While many ideas float around in this policy primeval soup, the ones that last, as in a natural selection system, meet some criteria. Some ideas survive and prosper; some proposals are taken more seriously than others."