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Cities are increasingly presented as key sites of effective climate action. However urban climate governance is suffering from an implementation gap, and a democratic deficit associated with its technical focus and difficulties to address social climate justice issues. Philanthropic foundations have been heavily involved with climate issues, contributing to the positioning of cities as key actors on this front. Yet, their role in transforming urban climate governance from within is still little studied. We propose a conceptual framework to specify their contribution in solving or reinforcing the challenges of urban climate governance, and investigate their effects through a qualitative in-depth study of the processes of urban climate governance at the stages of plan making and implementation. Considering certain benefits in terms of effective field-building, but drawbacks for equity, democratic legitimacy and accountability, we argue that philanthropic foundations are urban climate policy entrepreneurs whose impact on urban governance is ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reevaluates contemporary Ishin by comparing two policy entrepreneurs – managerialist guru Ōmae Ken'Ichi, and former Osaka governor Hashimoto Tōru. It argues that Ōmae's and Hashimoto's policy entrepreneurship put contemporary Ishin on a managerialist and neoliberal trajectory and fashioned it into a policymaking template for anti-establishment political reformers (kaikakuha). Despite using nationalist and anachronistic 'Ishin' terminology with his Heisei Ishin no Kai (Heisei Restoration) political movement of the early 1990s, Ōmae adapted ideational innovation and coalition building strategies from his experience in McKinsey & Company to diffuse managerialist and neoliberal policy ideas through the broader political system. Some two decades later, Hashimoto's Ōsaka Ishin (Osaka Restoration) politics reified many of Ōmae's ideas and practices through a form of 'technocratic populism', in which a seemingly incompatible pairing of anti-establishment populism and the reliance on technical 'experts' underpins the governing process. Using the 'policy entrepreneur' analytical framework', the first two sections of this article pinpoint the critical juncture where Ōmae inverted Ishin's state-building logic into an anti-establishment, neoliberal platform. The final section outlines Hashimoto's personalisation of the executive offices of local government and offers a novel look at populist governance in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Kingdon’s Multi-Stream Framework sheds light on the foundational conditions under which public policies get formulated and implemented. The coupling of the Problem, Policy, and Politics streams along with efforts by Policy Entrepreneurs opens the Opportunity Window for policy realization. Interpreting Kingdon’s MSF, a rich scholarship exists, which found evidence in support of this framework. Some instances of the opening up of multiple windows are found in MSF. However, two aspects remain unclear. First, what happens when multiple windows open, some of them could be opened by the opposing side simultaneously to the policy window? Second, no literature exists that discusses the application of multiple windows of the MSF. In this context, this paper takes the idea of multiple windows seriously along with illustrations from Delhi, India where we find that although a window of opportunity existed for the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi, it could not privatize water supply. Our argument is that multiple windows opened up, some by the opposition that thwarted water privatization attempts of the state government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines which institutions, ideas, and interests have shaped the position of Bangladesh in creating the norms of the United Nations (UN)'s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Bangladesh's contribution to the SDGs norms creation process is examined in two distinct stages: drafting a position paper (June 2012–June 2013) and participating in UN Open Working Group (OWG) negotiations (March 2013–July 2014). Findings reveal how a small cohort of policy entrepreneurs played a key role in both stages. They gave prominence to ideas such as poverty alleviation, global inequality, and migrants' rights in structuring the SDGs agenda. In the final round of OWG negotiations, Bangladeshi delegates calculated that active participation in the norms creation process would best serve the interests of the Global South by challenging the Global North which wanted to impose its interests. This paper offers an important insight into the norms literature by showing convergence and divergence of interests and agendas of global and local actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the elite and expert interview approaches, the article situates the city mayor of a highly urbanized city in the Philippines as a policy entrepreneur championing sustainable development based on Mintrom and Norman's (2009) four essential qualities of policy entrepreneurs, namely, social acuity, problem-solving, leading by example, and team-building as supported by the narratives and discourses culled from an elite interview and reinforced by relevant literature, documents, independent sources and scholars. More importantly, the article seeks to discover the policy-entrepreneurial qualities of the city mayor on sustainable development, analyze the sustainable development issues and challenges the city mayor encounter, and synthesize how the city mayor addresses such issues and challenges as a problem-solver. Finally, the article implies the necessity of exploring policy entrepreneurship as a potential research thrust in the context of sustainable development particularly at the local government which is the level of governance closest to the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains welfare chauvinistic policy reform, that is, targeted exclusion of non-citizens from welfare? Existing research suggest that contextual factors like far-right party success, perceived immigration pressures, party ideologies and institutions could spur such reform, but the processes behind reforms remain understudied. This article draws on public policy literature to call attention the critical role of agency and institutions in welfare chauvinist reform. It focuses on a law excluding migrant EU citizens from social assistance in Germany. Through process tracing and inductive reconstruction of the policy process, based on political documents, interviews, media reporting and descriptive statistics, we show that the policy proposal originated from German city administrations; that the city of Hamburg was key in pushing for exclusions; and that Hamburg's success in doing so crucially depended on the city's mayor. Several comparable German cities (in terms of party politics and levels of immigration) were equally concerned with 'welfare immigration' and complained about problem pressure, but only Hamburg had a committed mayor with the right political networks and institutional resources to lobby for welfare exclusions at the federal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeking to derive lessons for future policy processes on how climate change concerns can be integrated into sectoral policies to expedite policy approval, we applied the Multiple Streams Framework to analyze the forces and dynamics at work in the policy process of Brazil's National Biofuel Policy (known as RenovaBio). Based on an analysis of 123 newspaper articles citing “RenovaBio” and eleven semistructured interviews with stakeholders from the fuel sector, the research findings suggest that attaching RenovaBio to the country's climate commitments helped to secure policy approval and decrease public opposition to it. On the other hand, having multiple objectives without a clear priority made policy direction more diffuse and vulnerable to criticisms. We also found that the existence of multiple policy entrepreneurs, in the different stages of the political process and with complementary skills, helped to speed the legislative process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature explains the diffusion of social protection policies and, in particular, cash transfer programmes throughout Africa since the early 2000s as a paradigmatic policy transfer process. Most contributions emphasise the central role of transnational development agencies in this process, which is typically characterised as 'donor-driven'. This article argues that individual agents, notably consultants who were commissioned by agencies to perform various roles in persuading African governments to introduce social protection, played a dual role insofar as many also shaped the positions of the agencies that hired them. They achieved both by deploying a range of influencing strategies associated with policy entrepreneurship, such as rhetorical persuasion, demonstration, and advocacy events. Other tactics, identified by the author from in-depth interviews conducted with 26 influential agents, include 'piggybacking', 'Trojan horse', and 'accelerator events'. Although these agents believe in the value of their work, some expressed concern about their role in driving policy changes in African countries that appear to reflect the ideas and preferences of the international community, rather than aligning with the policy priorities of national governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ibero-American supranational audiovisual policies were inspired by the EU media policy model and shared the idea of creating a regional audiovisual market to face Hollywood hegemony. The paper uses discursive media institutionalism and policy entrepreneur theory to assess whether the current discourse on digital media policies is largely history repeating itself or new ideas are being introduced. To analyze this crucial problem definition stage from a bottom-up perspective, the paper combines participatory observation in two film festivals and one industry event with qualitative document analysis and literature review. The findings reveal a combination of continuity and change where the policy transfer idea is still present, but the EU and its cultural discourse are no longer a reference. The overfocus on the economic perspective, and the inclusion of global players' discourse can threaten the development of cultural policies in the region, which are losing policy entrepreneurs support and space for debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flood risk management (FRM) is facing various challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity losses. Traditional structural FRM measures are now not always feasible as responses to these challenges. One answer might be the use of policy experiments to promote innovation. This paper aims to assess and to explain why innovations in FRM are rarely implemented. We analysed seven innovative strategies across Austria that combine several different approaches. Each is concerned with risk reduction systems designed to save space, time and possible rising costs. The research used 76 qualitative standardised semi‐structured interviews with key FRM experts conducted between 2012 and 2021 in order to examine transition pathways through time. The results show that there exist numerous drivers and barriers to debating, designing and implementing FRM innovations. The capture of transition pathways nevertheless shows the system shift from a more traditional understanding towards a transformative path, which created new understandings of the role of the different actors in FRM as well as new institutional settings. However, these policy experiments were still led by the relevant public administrations as they are the main funders, the principal actors in the planning and implementation phases in the realisation of many of these innovations. Flood risk management (FRM) is facing various challenges, such as climate change or biodiversity losses. One answer might be the use of policy experiments to promote innovation. This paper aims to assess and to explain why innovations in FRM are rarely implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature on the role of agency in the policy process, relatively little attention has been devoted to how agents define policy problems. This article helps to address this gap by asking when and how policy entrepreneurs are successful in defining problems. The article rests on a framework that shows how policy entrepreneurs holding specific ideas and given a propitious socioeconomic context are able to define problems, translate those problems into new frames, and draw on those frames, while using their personal skills and political and institutional resources, to help build supportive coalitions in favor of policy change. Illustrated by a puzzling case in the field of European mobility policy, the article offers a new perspective on the role of ideas at the problem definition stage of the policy process, while providing a richer understanding of the policy entrepreneur as a driver of policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An impending talent deficit caused by declining working age population and surging need of professionals pose a severe threat for the knowledge-intensive countries like Finland. Competence-based immigration can partially remedy the situation if supported by appropriate policy making and governance. Through multiple-streams framework (MSF) approach this intrinsic case study analyses the construction of the national macro talent management framework during the last two decades. By examining the policy change through MSF, the article demonstrates how the issue of competence-based migration was moved out of the 'immigration periphery' and bridged to the economic policy. The results show that despite the obvious need for strategic planning only trivial policy changes were made until recent years. This changed when a group of 'policy entrepreneurs' created a new narrative on immigration, defined a new policy arena, and firmly placed international talents on the policy makers' agenda. Political changes and external trends fortified the favourable circumstances. With systemic approach and a clear mandate from the government, the window of opportunity for the economically and societally significant immigration policy making is now finally open. However, recruiters and the public need to embrace the ethnic and cultural diversity to reap the benefits of the renewed policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies on environmental policy implementation in China have largely been focused on the inadequacy of environmental policy implementation at local levels and the adversarial campaign‐style enforcement used to remedy it, while overlooked other approaches to addressing environmental issues. We present a case in which a consensual approach was used to control water pollution and identify key factors contributing to the adoption and success of such an approach. The research unit is the process of water pollution control in Shandong Province from 2002 to 2011. During the case period, the pulp and paper industry (the leading polluting source) was regulated with gradually tightened water pollution discharge standards which were made and implemented in a consensual way, surface water quality was greatly improved, and the economic output of the regulated industry grew rapidly. Key factors contributing to the adoption and success of such an approach include the presence of a capable policy entrepreneur who played an important role in policy innovation, forging consensus building in policy making and facilitating consensual policy implementation; the deep and wide involvement of the regulated firms in the policy making process which allowed them to share know‐how and express preferences; and the strong political support from provincial higher‐ups which signaled strong political wills. The findings enrich our understanding of environmental policy enforcement in China by adding a set of internal factors to a literature pool focusing more on the the influence of such external factors as institutional incentiveson policy processes and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Policy Analysis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

[Objective] The transformation of local experiences into national policies is an important topic in China’s public policy research. The existing research mainly focuses on the transformation and diffusion of economic and social policies, and lacks the investigation of the whole process of multi-attribute policy innovation and diffusion. [Methods] From the perspective of policy innovation and diffusion, this study focused on the ecological product value realization policy with dual economic and social policy attributes, built an analytical framework for such policy innovation and diffusion, and conducted an in-depth investigation on the complete process of policy innovation and diffusion of ecological product value realization in Lishui City of Zhejiang Province, as China’s first pilot city of ecological product value realization. [Results] The results show that: (1) The existence of dual economic and social attributes created a compliance space for the innovation and diffusion of policies of ecological product value realization, thus presenting a special innovation and diffusion mechanism under the two-way promotion of the central and local governments. (2) The local innovation of ecological product value realization was shaped by the internal driving factors of the needs for economic and social development, policy entrepreneurs, as well as natural resources endowment, and the external influence of vertical environment and horizontal experience in the policy network. (3) The transformation of ecological product value realization policy showed a spiral rising mechanism. The formal bureaucratic system and the semi-structured system shortcut were the two core structures embedded in this mechanism. [Conclusion] Based on this, the role of policy entrepreneurs in the innovation and diffusion of local experience in realizing the value of ecological products in the future must be valued. Local governments should seize and create opportunities for communication horizontally and vertically in the policy network according to local conditions, and strive for seeking the support of formal bureaucracy, in order to achieve the goal of reducing reform costs and promoting the construction of ecological civilization.

Abstract Background Thailand has achieved global acclaim for its response to HIV/AIDS. However, the success of some of the country’s most well-known initiatives was by no means a foregone conclusion. Policy entrepreneurs on the periphery of power had to achieve buy-in from stakeholders in state and society to scale and mainstream their ideas. This paper offers a comparative and historical understanding the process by which three of the country’s most well-known initiatives came into being: a civil society campaign to promote condom usage; a Ministry of Public Health program that aimed to prevent the spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) by targeting high-risk populations (the 100% condom program); and a universal Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT) program. Methods The research relied on existing literature and interviews with high-ranking ministerial officials, representatives from international and non-governmental organizations, professors, and philanthropic organizations, in addition to a review of the existing literature. Taking a comparative and historical approach that is common within political science and sociology, we analysed the in-depth qualitative interviews in relation to the literatures and used an inductive cross-case analysis aimed to draw out critical features that the initiatives shared in common. Results Common factors in HIV/AIDS prevention that cut across the three key cases include policy entrepreneurs who championed the programs, successful demonstration projects that produced a credible evidence base for policy adoption, and a diverse set of institutional partners that played critical roles in helping to mainstream their initiatives into national HIV/AIDS policy and scale programs nationally. The findings from this comparative research project have implications not only for the building of understanding related to one single project, but for broader theoretical understanding related to the mainstreaming of health policy from peripheral spaces of power. Conclusions This analysis draws out the role that demonstration projects played in building a credible evidence base for policy adoption and the role that a diverse set of institutional partners played in elevating the profile of policy entrepreneurs’ ideas and helping to scale them nationally as state policy. Success was contingent on entrepreneurs first identifying and then taking advantage of different political opportunities that arose during each of the historical periods. Over time, these initiatives have evolved from vertical programs into an integrated program, in parallel with the evolution of the HIV/AIDS landscape at the global level.

Street‐level bureaucrats are often grassroots officials, and they are regarded as passive practitioners of policy with no authority to change policy or innovate, while policy entrepreneurs are usually high‐level officials. Based on observations of China's responses to two national crises, this study found that the times do make a hero. When acting as innovative frontline technocrats, major transboundary crisis practitioners, and management savvy operators within the top‐down bureaucracy, street‐level bureaucrats can become policy entrepreneurs. To innovate and drive policy change, street‐level policy entrepreneurs will adopt innovative strategies. They will make efficient use of their expertise and discretion, integrate various resources, strive for attention from superiors, consolidate their achievements, and expand their influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies put forward the argument that local policy experimentation, a key feature of China's policy process in the Hu Jintao era, has been paralysed by Xi Jinping's (re)centralization of political power – otherwise known as "top-level design." This narrative suggests that local policymakers have become increasingly risk-averse owing to the anti-corruption campaign and are therefore unwilling to experiment. This article, however, argues that local governments are still expected to innovate with new policy solutions and now will be punished if they do not. By introducing the analytical framework of "experimentation under pressure" and drawing on an analysis of over 3,000 local government regulations and fieldwork data related to foreign investment attraction policies in two localities, Foshan and Ganzhou, the authors highlight new features developing within current experimental policy cycles. Local cadres now have no choice but to experiment as the political risk of shirking the direct command to experiment may be higher than the inherent risk of experimentation itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scholars conceive policy integration (PI) as a top-down process steered by governmental bodies and consider the formulation stage to be the decisive step for achieving PI. Adopting a different stance, this article hypothesizes that PI can also occur throughout the implementation stage thanks to "integration entrepreneurs" who are able and willing to bring together policies that were designed in silos. I test this hypothesis by analyzing the evolution of federal legislation intended to curb urban sprawl in Switzerland over four decades (1980–2020) and investigate three major urban renewal projects that concretely reduced urban sprawl in the cities of Zurich, Bern and Geneva. In line with my hypothesis, these urban renewal projects succeeded thanks to an ex post integration of several policies that occurred during the implementation stage. This integrative process was an unintended outcome of the transformation of the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) from a federal government institution into a state-owned company. Since then, the SBB has become an "integration entrepreneur" who brings together three federal policies that were previously poorly integrated: the spatial planning policy, the railway policy and the agglomeration policy. Case study evidence thus shows that PI can also happen unintentionally, namely through coordination mechanisms that were not foreseen by policymakers at the formulation stage. This finding challenges the top-down sequential approach of the policy process that is dominant among PI studies and calls for more research on the role and the strategies of "integration entrepreneurs" throughout the implementation stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article draws on Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework to examine the policy entrepreneurs that emerged, the windows of opportunity they identified, and the strategies they used to advocate for mass vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article indicates that politicians, public figures, and governmental and non-governmental organizations played the role of policy entrepreneurs. The article asserts that the problems of high morbidity, mortality, and economic challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic have social equity implications. Although COVID-19 vaccines are available, there is low political support for vaccination. The article draws attention to the problems, politics, and challenges of asserting COVID-19 vaccination policies. It reports on windows of opportunity policy entrepreneurs identified, and what strategies they used to advocate COVID-19 vaccination, and offers policy implications for addressing social equity concerns and other challenges facing the U.S. economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift towards sustainable development is argued to be achieved by a circular disruption triggered or supported by circular economy (CE) policies. CE policies can pressure the disruption of currently predominant linear socio‐technical systems across sectors towards a circular paradigm. Knowledge on how these policies appear on the agenda is essential to accelerate the circular disruption. Several works highlight the importance of policy entrepreneurs as agenda setters. However, they were not explored by the scholarly community on CE yet. Therefore, this article analyses the characteristics and strategies of CE policy entrepreneurs in Portugal as a circular frontrunner in the European Union (EU). Two groups of policy entrepreneurs were distinguished based on their different characteristics and strategies. Successfully driving the adoption of national CE policies required ambitious, tenacious and perfectionist CE expert(s) who create a CE vision, derive concrete solutions and gather support for their ideas, the CE initiator. Influencing CE implementation and evaluation required politically savvy CE implementers who openly and tenaciously develop projects and secure the continuous development of the policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Hepatitis C virus (HCV) represents a significant public health burden. When new HCV drugs arrived in 2014, the disease became curable, but the administration remained reluctant to address this public health issue. However, the Swiss parliament recently decided to integrate HCV into the next national HIV programme. This study investigates how HCV came onto the political agenda in Switzerland and which actors and factors were influential in this process. Methods The data collection is based on document analysis and semi-structured interviews. The transcripts were coded by deriving the codes from the data in terms of content followed by the application of the multiple streams framework. Results Health authorities, unlike experts, did not see the HCV epidemic as a relevant public health threat. Due to cost-related restriction of access to treatment, the potential of the new HCV drugs could not be fully exploited. The administration’s position proved difficult to change, despite evidence to the contrary. For 30 years, authorities set the agenda in health policy regarding HCV, unheeded by politicians. But recently, a policy entrepreneur has for the first time successfully managed to put HCV on the political agenda. After years of education and lobbying, it used the window of opportunity in the form of the new edition of the national HIV programme. The parliamentary decision to include HCV in this programme broke the long-standing primacy of the administration in the field of HCV, which had long prevented a more active handling of the HCV field. Conclusions The case of HCV in Switzerland shows that evidence alone is not enough to bring about health policy changes. A policy entrepreneur is needed who overcomes resistance, brings together the three streams—problem, policy and political—and exploits the window of opportunity at the right time. To be successful, the policy entrepreneur must identify the indicators that map the problem, network and convince decision-makers, recognize policy windows and use them—as has been the case with HCV in Switzerland.

A growing number of political and policy scientists have utilized institutional theory to explain how the purposeful actions of agents shape and are shaped by structural, institutional, and agential factors. Most current studies, however, have conflated and/or combined the fundamental concepts of structure, institution, and actor, overlooking how their interactions shape policy and institutional outcomes. Furthermore, such research lacks an approach that allows a more comprehensive means to integrate the various dimensions of such interactions. By studying these distinct but interdependent causal factors through an integrative approach, we provide a richer, more comprehensive understanding of contingent conditions, agency, and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article illustrates an analytic eclectic value of structure, institution and agency (SIA) framework in comparative public policy. It engages and utilizes certain structural, institutional and agential perspectives from past literature to specify how elements of their causal properties coexist as part of a more complex argument. It argues that desired or preferred policy and/or institutional outcomes are most likely when multiple structural and institutional complementarities (from structures and institutions to agents) and multiple structural, institutional and agential enabling conditions accompany one another in motivating and empowering actors (from agents to structures and institutions) to engage in purposeful agential actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to balance the market and the government to promote local economic development and provide sufficient public services has always been a challenging issue for leaders, in face of the existence of varied interests and values of different stakeholders. Conflicting values between the market and the government are directly related to the competing logics between market orientation and bureaucratic/administrative dominance. Since China's transition from the planned economy or government dominance to marketization in 1978, a series of national and local innovations has been launched. Among those reforms, policy entrepreneurs played a critical role. Administrative licensing reform was one of key changes from the planned economy to the marketized economy. Through a local case in administrative licensing reform, this study explores how a policy entrepreneur at local level applied reform strategies to balance conflicting values and constrain the self‐interested bureaucracy to achieve the marketization reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After decades of policy stagnation, change is on the horizon for passenger rail in Canada, with the recent federal government's approval of VIA Rail's High-Frequency Rail (HFR) proposal within the Quebec-Windsor Corridor. This study applies the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) to analyze how HFR arrived on the federal government's agenda. Drawing on semi-directive interviews, three expectations based on the MSF are confirmed: evidence of (a) activity in the framework's three streams (problem, policy, politics); (b) a policy window opening because of changes in the politics stream; and (c) a policy entrepreneur who coupled the three streams within that policy window. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) has developed into one of the major theoretical lenses to explain policy change. However, it has been mostly used to explain policy formation whereas studies on policy termination remain scarce. This article addresses this gap. It combines the MSF and the literature on policy termination to study both the formation and the termination of one and the same policy. We explain why an algorithm-based university admission system in France, Admission Post Bac (APB), was introduced in 2008 before being abolished ten years later. While we find that the problem stream and the political stream were ripe and facilitated policy change in both cases, a policy entrepreneur coupling a policy solution with the open window could only be found for the introduction of APB. Instead, the termination was mainly characterized by enormous problem pressure. Our results contribute to theoretical refinement of the MSF and to empirical studies on political dynamics in the understudied field of algorithmic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As EU security is an intergovernmental policy area, it has been assumed that the only relevant policy‐shapers are member states. However, more recent analyses show that supranational actors, like the Commission, have developed strategies to enhance their role in this traditionally interstate realm. This article endorses this reasoning and intends to cast some light on these strategies. Building on Kingdon's concept of the policy entrepreneur and using EU's cybersecurity policy as an empirical case, we analyse the Commission's initiatives to draft a European response to cybercrime, in order to answer one central research question: how has the Commission managed to secure a prominent role in a highly salient security issue? The findings suggest that the Commission, acting as a policy entrepreneur, purposefully explored a market–security nexus in order to influence an otherwise intergovernmental security domain. Ultimately, the Commission was a much more relevant player than expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the nation-wide lockdown announced on 24 March 2020, India came to a standstill. Despite substantial constraints, multiple initiatives by civil society actors in providing the much needed relief and assistance to vulnerable populations during the lockdown have emerged. Considering lockdown as a wicked policy problem, we examine the roles and strategies of two civil society actors in opening up policy spaces. Our focus is on the two most livelihood-intensive sectors of the economy (i.e. agriculture and forestry) during the first two phases of lockdown in India. The first case highlights the use of judiciary to reframe the problem for agriculture in the lockdown policy implementation at the national level. And, the second case shows change in policy implementation at the regional level, again using problem reframing for the well-being of forest-dependent communities using advocacy with policy-makers and sustained social media activities. Building on the two cases, we argue for the crucial role played by the larger civil society actors in bringing the issues of marginalized communities to the policy agenda by opening up diverse policy spaces, and thus contributing to the changes in policy implementation under unprecedented uncertainty during the lockdown in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know relatively little about the conditions that encourage people to jump into the political fray as policy entrepreneurs, advocates who devote substantial time, energy, and resources to campaigning for a policy goal. This paper aims to fill that gap by investigating the catalysts of policy entrepreneurship in municipalities across the State of New York, where between 2008 and 2012, hundreds of local jurisdictions passed measures opposing or supporting high-volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking). These local policy actions were often enthusiastically encouraged and, in some cases, vociferously opposed, by enterprising advocates. I propose a threat-centered theory of policy entrepreneurship, emphasizing the role of loss aversion in pushing actors toward advocacy. The empirical analysis shows that oppositional advocacy within a polity draws would-be policy entrepreneurs into battle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last two decades witnessed a significant rise in the use of behavioural insights in the design and successful implementation of public policies. This creative method of policy design and implementation, also known as "nudging", makes use of biases in individual decision-making processes to increase the success of policy interventions. As of 2021, there are more than 200 nudge units in the world, some located in governments. This is a detailed case study of the creation and development of the behavioural public policy/nudge unit in the Turkish government, which is located in the Ministry of Trade. This unit emerged as a result of a successful policy experiment via knowledge transfer from the United Kingdom's Behavioural Insights Team with help from the UK Embassy in Ankara. A detailed account of the creation process, organisational structure, activities, and future objectives of this unit is presented by using John Kingdon's multiple streams model, reviewing the literature, analysing official documents, and conducting in-depth interviews. Lessons drawn from this case study can be helpful to actors from the public policy community in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Australian Journal of Public Administration is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) represents a significant public health burden. When new HCV drugs arrived in 2014, the disease became curable, but the administration remained reluctant to address this public health issue. However, the Swiss parliament recently decided to integrate HCV into the next national HIV programme. This study investigates how HCV came onto the political agenda in Switzerland and which actors and factors were influential in this process.Methods: The data collection is based on document analysis and semi-structured interviews. The transcripts were coded by deriving the codes from the data in terms of content followed by the application of the multiple streams framework.Results: Health authorities, unlike experts, did not see the HCV epidemic as a relevant public health threat. Due to cost-related restriction of access to treatment, the potential of the new HCV drugs could not be fully exploited. The administration's position proved difficult to change, despite evidence to the contrary. For 30 years, authorities set the agenda in health policy regarding HCV, unheeded by politicians. But recently, a policy entrepreneur has for the first time successfully managed to put HCV on the political agenda. After years of education and lobbying, it used the window of opportunity in the form of the new edition of the national HIV programme. The parliamentary decision to include HCV in this programme broke the long-standing primacy of the administration in the field of HCV, which had long prevented a more active handling of the HCV field.Conclusions: The case of HCV in Switzerland shows that evidence alone is not enough to bring about health policy changes. A policy entrepreneur is needed who overcomes resistance, brings together the three streams-problem, policy and political-and exploits the window of opportunity at the right time. To be successful, the policy entrepreneur must identify the indicators that map the problem, network and convince decision-makers, recognize policy windows and use them-as has been the case with HCV in Switzerland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study explores the role of the think tank as an intermediary organization in the open innovation system. Think tank has contributed to the policy process as a mediator between government and public and as a symbolic entity of intellectual innovation to produce knowledge to the public. As the innovation system matures, one of the major challenges in research and practice is the openness and collaboration in the science, technology, and innovation system. While previous literature highlighted the think tank as the knowledge arbitrager transforming ideas into policy issues, few studies address the research questions: Is the conventional role of the think tank still persistent in the open innovation system? What are the demanding roles? This paper tackles these questions by reviewing the current role of the South Korean think tank in the science & technology sector. Based on the open innovation framework, we suggest that think tanks need to play a bigger role as policy entrepreneurs, crossing policy borders and interacting with other partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we seek to overcome the knowledge gap in street-level bureaucracy (SLB) literature on labour market policies, focusing on a specific public employment service (PES). In the context of active labour market policies (ALMP), PES are seen as strategic because they have a direct effect on reducing unemployment in both the short and long run and an indirect effect on reinforcing long-term training programmes. However, recent reforms of public employment services in many European countries have generated divergent trajectories in SLBs' practices. In this heterogeneous and unclear picture, to better grasp the different mechanisms influencing policy outcomes at a micro level it seems promising to merge street-level bureaucracy with the policy entrepreneur (PE) approach focused on the way caseworkers (conceived as policy entrepreneurs) influence policy design far beyond the resources they hold. In this article we consider if there are certain organizational configurations that favour the emergence of policy entrepreneurship among street-level bureaucrats. To test this hypothesis, the paper investigates an Italian public employment service. The Italian context is particularly interesting in that it underwent a process of decentralization followed by a more recent push towards re-centralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains the failure of two long‐term care (LTC) reforms attempted between 2005 and 2019 in Poland, and driven by policy entrepreneurs—individuals with a personal understanding of the challenges faced by LTC and determined to initiate policy change in the domain. The article inductively identifies the 'outsider policy entrepreneur' mechanism of policy reform. LTC in Poland is a negative case (or breakdown) of this mechanism, which occurs when a policy entrepreneur has enough political influence to initiate a formal reform proposal, but not enough to convince decision‐makers to adopt it. The article combines an examination of the role of policy entrepreneurs in social policy change with an analysis of their interactions with domestic and foreign epistemic communities. Through showing how 'foreign' policy models are used by policy entrepreneurs to pursue domestic reform, the study contributes to the literature on transnational policy diffusion/transfer. The analysis is based on document analysis and 16 semi‐directed expert interviews, which were used to process trace the explained outcome (failed reforms). The article concludes that the mechanism failures were due to the fact that involved policy entrepreneurs did not convince decision‐makers of the need to reform LTC. Specifically, the contribution identifies two features of the political context in illiberal post‐transition polities that interrupt the persuasion efforts of outsider policy entrepreneurs—the impossibility of inter‐partisan cooperation and continuity, and the declining role of Western policy models as catalysts for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a major policy change occurs, policy entrepreneurs—advocates who devote substantial time, energy, and resources to campaigning for a specific policy outcome—are often credited as critical influences. However, there has been a little quantitative, large‐n cross‐sectional study of whether policy entrepreneurship effectuates policy change, how policy entrepreneurs pursue their goals, and whether particular entrepreneur attributes are more or less facilitative to that end. This paper aims to fill that gap by investigating policy entrepreneurship in municipalities across the State of New York, where between 2008 and 2012 hundreds of local jurisdictions passed policies to ban or restrict high‐volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking), often encouraged by anti‐fracking advocates. It demonstrates that policy entrepreneurs have a consequential, positive impact on policy adoption; that their characteristics, strategies, and goals classify into distinct archetypes; and that archetypes vary in their policy impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kingdon's multiple streams framework (MSF) is very influential, but problems exist with its application. Most applications neither fully use the MSF's problem stream, policy stream, politics stream, policy entrepreneur, and policy window concepts nor all their subcomponents. These trends indicate a lack of shared language and understanding of the policy process necessary for the MSF's theoretical development. Most applications employing the concepts identify subcomponents but disregard their operationalizations. Moreover, research overwhelmingly cites Kingdon's 1984 publication while neglecting studies contributing to new MSF understandings. Using the Obama administration's No Child Left Behind waiver policy, this article applies the MSF concentrating on its contemporary understandings, the focus concepts, and the concepts' subcomponents while operationalizing them. This allows an enhanced analysis and MSF's policy process understanding, identifies the MSF's strengths and weaknesses, notes nuances, offers new insights, and recommends future research. Related Articles: David, Charles‐Philippe. 2015. "Policy Entrepreneurs and the Reorientation of National Security Policy under the G. W. Bush Administration (2001‐04)." Politics & Policy 43 (1): 163‐195. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12106 Rawat, Pragati, and John Charles Morris. 2016. "Kingdon's 'Streams' Model at Thirty: Still Relevant in the 21st Century?" Politics & Policy 44 (4): 608‐638. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12168 Tanaka, Yugo, Andrew Chapman, Tetsuo Tezuka, and Shigeki Sakurai. 2020. "Multiple Streams and Power Sector Policy Change: Evidence from the Feed‐In Tariff Policy Process in Japan." Politics & Policy 48 (3): 464‐489. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12357 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do actors develop entrepreneurial activities to bring about policy change? To what extent do the contexts in which they are embedded shape their behaviors? Relying on three comparative case studies, we use the structure-, institution- and agent-based analytical framework to investigate the complex and dynamic interactions between contexts and actors in the process of policy change initiated by state actors in authoritarian China. We propose a conceptual framework, 'policy entrepreneurship under hierarchy', which highlights the influence of power domination during the policy change process. It allows us to offer a renewed definition of policy entrepreneur and to identify a pattern of successful policy entrepreneurship in contrast to the 'four central elements' suggested by Mintrom and Nomann. We conclude that hierarchical policy entrepreneurship in China is displayed through two kinds of relationship: the proposal-approval between policy entrepreneurs and their superiors; and the instruction-execution between policy entrepreneurs and their subordinates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policies are not static; rather, they change with the context and as consequences become known. We ask how city councils learn about the negative consequences of laws by evaluating the policy diffusion and decision-theoretic learning hypotheses using a case study of criminal activity nuisance ordinance repeals in several cities within one county. These laws as originally written designated properties as "nuisances" if emergency services were called too frequently, including in cases of domestic violence. The seven case cities repealed their laws so survivors of domestic violence would not risk a fine or eviction because they called for help. We argue neither theory is sufficient to explain the repeal of these laws and instead suggest a new variant of policy learning, the entrepreneur catalyzed learning hypothesis, to highlight the importance of policy entrepreneurs in facilitating policy learning and the repeal of unsuccessful laws at the city level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public administration, public policy, and political economy literatures are increasingly preoccupied with the role of agency in policy and institutional change, and the effects of institutions on the agency of individual actors. However, linkages between policy and institutional entrepreneurship in processes of institutionalization remain a black box. This article aims to fill this void. It contributes to our understanding of processes underlying the institutionalization of policy ideas in the public sector that have not been investigated adequately. Based on an exploratory case study of the introduction and institutionalization of macroprudential policies to contain macro-financial risks in Turkey, this article argues that policy and institutional entrepreneurship processes are inextricably intertwined and fundamental to the institutionalization of policy ideas: the institutionalization of new policy ideas that resolve conflicting institutional logics and facilitate cooperation and/or collaboration in inter-bureaucratic policy formulation and implementation is most likely when an individual agent with the requisite resources and capabilities builds coalitions through combining the policy and institutional entrepreneur roles while undertaking discursive and powering strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What factors influence the likelihood that a state will adopt a policy? Previous scholarship has examined economic, societal, and political factors, but has paid little attention to the value of the policy entrepreneur. Exploring the literature, I argue that the role of a policy entrepreneur is vital to policy innovation and eventual diffusion while accounting for other known factors. Performing Event History Analysis, I investigate the factors which led 30 states from 2011 to 2017 to adopt Erin's Law, a child abuse policy. The findings suggest that the states in which Erin Merryn, the policy entrepreneur, visited had a greater likelihood of adopting Erin's Law over states which were not visited. This discovery not only demonstrates the value of the policy entrepreneur but encourages further investigation of the policy entrepreneur within the diffusion process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patient advocacy and media coverage are important strategies for changing health policies. China is no exception. Through 31 interviews and content analysis of 1,136 news stories related to hepatitis B, this study revealed how members of Chinese health advocacy groups strategically built a coalition with the news media, actively played the role of 'policy entrepreneurs', and successfully affected the framing of hepatitis B. As a result, China's grassroots civil societies not only successfully attracted public attention to the previously ignored problem of discrimination against people affected by hepatitis B but also impacted on the state's rewriting of public policies on this disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]