Policy Learning Through Political Ambition.

In this paper we link political ambition and policy learning literatures to answer a simple question: Do members of Congress with state legislative experience bring their state policy experience to bear in a positive way in their policy activities in Washington? We hypothesize that they do. More specifically we hypothesize that Members of Congress with state legislative experience will be more likely to sponsor legislation that is state-friendly than those without that experience. Further, we hypothesize that Members representing states that have been policy innovators will be more likely to sponsor federal legislation in areas where state policy innovations have occurred. We test these hypotheses using data on House members serving on the four primary health committees between 1992 and 2006. The dependent variable is sponsorship of intergovernmental health legislation during that time period. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]