Begin your policy research by finding existing policy analysis in secondary sources like scholarly articles, books, government reports, think tank publications, long-form journalism, etc. As you read them, note the names and/or citations to government policies in the text and reference lists or works cited so that you can then look for them.
Starting with secondary sources will give you a good background of the key issues and policies relating to your topic. It will also save you the time of compiling lists of policies that someone else has already identified.
Use secondary sources for your Background, Problem & Significance, Policy Landscape, and possibly Policy Options sections of your policy memo.
Nexis Uni contains thousands of full-text sources including newspapers, news wires, television news transcripts, newsletters, magazines, and trade journals. Business sources include company information, industry news, and biographical information. Legal sources include law reviews, legal reference works, and federal and state caselaw (court decisions), statutes, and regulations. Also includes select international court opinions and municipal ordinances. Coverage dates vary. International and U.S. sources.
1972-present. Lists print and electronic articles, books, and government publications on issues of public policy, including politics, government, economy, marine policy, law.
Includes a broad range of official and ephemeral information resources issued by federal agencies, individual officials and candidates, and other organizations from all branches of the U.S. Federal Government, and links that content to publicly accessible government documentation. Includes social media, official media releases, legislation, regulations, and a variety of government documents from Congress and the Executive branches. Textual data can be visualized in word clouds, tree maps, bubble graphs, and terms view graphs. Users who sign up for an account and agree to additional terms of service can download a small number of full documents; researchers and students with non-commercial, academic projects can apply with VoxGov for additional bulk data download credentials.
A few federal agencies are particularly are specifically tasked with creating policy analysis research.
A few California agencies are specifically tasked with providing policy analysis.
Select policy research and advocacy organizations. Searching across organizations with Think Tank Search, Nongovernmental Organizations, or California NGOs Google Custom Search engines above may be more effective.
On January 10, 2025, Governor Newsom’s administration presented its proposed state budget to the California Legislature. In this report, we provide a brief summary of the Governor’s budget based on our initial review as of January 12. In the coming weeks, we will analyze the plan in more detail and release many additional issue-specific budget analyses. For those additional analyses, please see our budget page.
