Several of the most respected policy scholars, including H. Simon, J. W. Kingdon, G. Peters and M. Howlett, have observed a long time ago that decision makers often form their views on policy solutions irrespectively of concrete policy issues, and that their views on policy means often “chase problems.” This proposition labeled in this article as “autonomy of policy instrument attitudes” (APIA) claims that individuals have stable attitudes toward policy instruments that are relatively independent of their perspectives on given policy problems and policy goals. Despite its growing popularity, the APIA literature is fragmented and lacks coherent theoretical framework and review of available empirical evidence. First, APIA is conceptualized in terms of attitudes and differentiated from similar concepts. Second, the core theoretical literature on APIA is summarized with emphasis on its possible explanations. Four distinct individual-level mechanism of APIA is then distinguished: beliefs-based, values-based, heuristics-based and affect-based. The paper concludes with an overview of available empirical evidence and with some recommendations for further research.

几位最受尊敬的政策学者，包括H. Simon，JW Kingdon，G。Peters和M. Howlett，很久以前就已经观察到，决策者常常对政策解决方案形成看法，而与具体政策问题无关，在政策上通常意味着“追逐问题”。在本文中被标记为“政策工具态度的自主权”（APIA）的主张主张，个人对政策工具持稳定态度，这些态度相对独立于他们对特定政策问题和政策目标的看法。尽管APIA文献越来越流行，但它们是零散的，缺乏连贯的理论框架和现有经验证据的综述。首先，APIA是从态度上概念化的，并且与类似概念有所区别。第二，总结了关于APIA的核心理论文献，并着重于其可能的解释。然后区分APIA的四种不同的个人级别机制：基于信念，基于值，基于启发法和基于情感。本文最后总结了可用的经验证据，并提出了一些进一步研究的建议。