Finding, distinguishing, and understanding overlooked policy entrepreneurs

Gwen Arnold (), Meghan Klasic, Changtong Wu, Madeline Schomburg and Abigail York
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Gwen Arnold: University of California
Meghan Klasic: University of Minnesota
Changtong Wu: University of California
Madeline Schomburg: Colorado State University
Abigail York: Arizona State University

Policy Sciences, 2023, vol. 56, issue 4, No 2, 657-687

Abstract: Abstract Scholars have spent decades arguing that policy entrepreneurs, change agents who work individually and in groups to influence the policy process, can be crucial in introducing policy innovation and spurring policy change. How to identify policy entrepreneurs empirically has received less attention. This oversight is consequential because scholars trying to understand when policy entrepreneurs emerge, and why, and what makes them more or less successful, need to be able to identify these change agents reliably and accurately. This paper explores the ways policy entrepreneurs are currently identified and highlights issues with current approaches. We introduce a new technique for eliciting and distinguishing policy entrepreneurs, coupling automated and manual analysis of local news media and a survey of policy entrepreneur candidates. We apply this technique to the empirical case of unconventional oil and gas drilling in Pennsylvania and derive some tentative results concerning factors which increase entrepreneurial efficacy.

Keywords: Policy entrepreneur; Policy entrepreneurship; Fracking; Oil and gas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1007/s11077-023-09515-4

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