Вестник РУДН, серия Государственное и муниципальное управление, 2015, № 3 ЗАРУБЕЖНЫЙ ОПЫТ УПРАВЛЕНИЯ INNOVATION, POLICY DIFFUSION AND DECISION-MAKING IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT: WHAT THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION CAN LEARN FROM THE UNITED STATES D. Schultz Hamline University Department of Political Science St. Paul, Minnesota, United States of America, 55105 Governments and its officials today face increasing pressure to innovate. <...> This bounded rationality may foster policy innovation, but in many cases public officials instead may seek to learn from other jurisdictions in the formulation of their policy options. <...> This paper examines how governments learn, innovate, and make decisions. <...> Using the United States as an example, this article contends: 1) There is often a significant gap between social science and scientific knowledge and the information governments use in making policy; 2) That in many cases public officials lack the capacity to digest appropriate information when making policy; and 3) That government decision making under the conditions of bounded rationality often produces less innovation and more similarly in terms of policy responses. <...> Overall, the article will generalize from the experience of the United States to indicate the implications for other nation states as they seek to formulate policies and learn from one another in global political-economic system. <...> Be it in the United States, China, the European Union, or the Russian Federation, one repeatedly hears demands from 54 Schultz D. Innovation, policy diffusion and decision-making in a global context… or to government officials to innovate [9; 20; 30]. <...> Operators of state owned enterprises (SOEs), regional or local government officials, and public administrators are constantly told or tell others that innovation is needed to solving pressing problems. <...> It may be the product of a lack of knowledge or simply of an inability to be able to secure the data necessary to make appropriate choices. <...> Or it may be that uncertainty is about the lack of time or other resources to gather the information needed to make appropriate decisions. <...> Such a convergence not only discourages genuine innovation but it also often leads to a repetition of policy failures or mistakes that may undermine the ability of actors in specific countries to respond adequately to unique <...>