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Controlling urban sprawl are the overarching challenges facing cities worldwide. This article delves into the pivotal role of policy entrepreneurship throughout the planning and implementation phases of compact city initiatives. Drawing insights from the experiences of Aomori City and Toyama City in Japan, this study scrutinizes the drivers behind the shift toward urban compactness and its consequent outcomes. The incorporation of policy studies theories into the realm of compact city development has been scant. To bridge this gap, the research leverages process-oriented theories from policy studies to dissect the decision-making processes guiding compact city development in these two pivotal municipalities. Through this investigation, it is revealed that the effective transition to compact urbanization in Japanese municipalities predominantly stems from policy entrepreneurship. The author posits that this achievement is primarily attributed to adept local mayors who possess the acumen to cater to specific local needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have paid little attention to the mechanisms of locally initiated national policy experiments. This article reveals why some lower-level governments in China can successfully promote bottom-up policy experimentation. With a historical case study of Kunshan, we find that local policy entrepreneurs effectively deploy the nexus of related strategies to attract the central attention. The persistent bottom-up policy experimentation is driven by the interaction between structure-level and actor-level factors through historical evolution, while local economic structure matters for sharping policy entrepreneurs' innovative abilities. This study contributes to unpacking the mechanisms of bottom-up policy experimentation under hierarchy by connecting policy entrepreneurship with experimental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study has been conducted to explore, understand and categorize policy entrepreneurship to achieve a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. The research strategy adopted was phenomenography, and the data collection instrument was the semi-structured interview. To select the participants, the maximum variation and snowball sampling methods were used. The sample size was determined through the principle of theoretical saturation, resulting in 20 participants. Consequently, 20 people were interviewed who had hands-on experience with policy entrepreneurship and their contributions to policy innovations in 11 policies. The results indicated that there exist six descriptive categories in policy entrepreneurship, namely "creating innovative ideas", "making the innovative idea understood", "promoting the innovative idea", "persuading the institutional structure", "mainstreaming based on the innovative idea", and "monitoring the implementation of innovative policy". Based on the identified descriptive categories, the outcome space of policy entrepreneurship was formed, and its hierarchical model was presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are bureaucrats' interactions with politicians, as well as with other government and non‐government players in the policy arena, linked with the bureaucrats' policy entrepreneurship tendencies? To investigate this question, we sought to identify the factors influencing bureaucrats' willingness to engage in policy entrepreneurship. We also explored the bureaucrats' motivations for doing so in order to better understand if policy entrepreneurship among bureaucrats is a desirable phenomenon. Using national survey data from Brazil, our findings indicate that politician–bureaucrat interactions have a positive relationship with bureaucrats' perceptions about policy entrepreneurship. In addition, there is a positive association between bureaucrats' motivations for engaging in policy entrepreneurship and their social values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of policy entrepreneurs has gained increasing attention in studies of policy change, including climate policy and governance. It foregrounds the role of agency in understanding policy change. However, agency of policy entrepreneurs in the policy process is political and conceals the power that shapes how public problems and policies are framed and defined. Thus, policy entrepreneurs should be confronted with the challenge of generating legitimacy, accountability, and justice in their actions and the implementation of their targeted policy change. Drawing on political–philosophical theories of liberal and deliberative democracy as well as environmental and ecological democracy this paper outlines a conceptual framework for critical analytical as well as normative research on strategies and impacts of policy entrepreneurs on democratic governance, primarily in climate policy but also more generally. Empirical research on the strategies and impacts of policy entrepreneurs in recent policymaking on climate change mitigation in the EU and Sweden identifies several deficits related to the democratic principles of legitimacy, accountability, and justice. It is found that policy entrepreneurs from different social spheres use cultural–institutional entrepreneurship to influence beliefs and perceptions on problems and policies. In addition, it is found that public sector policy entrepreneurs use structural entrepreneurship on ideological grounds to change existing power relations in climate governance. In all, the paper brings ideology and politics into research on policy entrepreneurs. It is suggested that not only the strategies used, but also the ideologies of the actors that use them, are decisive for the impacts of policy entrepreneurs, and thus, whether their advocacy will adhere to democratic norms and facilitate or hamper a just transition to climate neutrality and sustainability. The paper ends with proposals on how policy entrepreneurs can act more democratically, how to deal with populist policy entrepreneurs wanting to erode democracy, and conditions for climate justice movements to take responsibility and act in a more entrepreneurial way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What strategies are used to legitimize and enhance the popularity of the Reform marriage ceremony among Israeli Jews? Using a mixed-method grounded-theory technique, this study stresses that the strategies used to legitimize and enhance the popularity of the Reform marriage ceremony among Israeli Jews take place in two parallel realms: the organizational and the individual. At the organizational level, the Israel Reform Movement invests resources into institutionalizing the Reform marriage ceremony in Israel, using the judicial and the political strata to accomplish this goal. At the same time, at the individual level, Reform rabbis operate as street-level policy entrepreneurs by enhancing the visibility of the Reform marriage ceremony among Israeli Jews by advertising themselves and conducting as many ceremonies as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to other studies on policy entrepreneurship that address frontline officials' roles in formal legislative procedures, this case study focuses on how frontline officials promote policy innovation within inconspicuous administrative routines. Because frontline officials have no legislative power, they must overcome officialism by using bureaucratic skills and seeking consensus among multiple stakeholders. "Citizen agents" and "state agents" are both necessary roles. This case provides administrative details on how a deadlocked policy was gradually enlivened within undramatic administrative routines. The findings bridge the legislative–administrative gap and improve the understanding of the long-term effects of frontline administrative activities on policy innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The present research has investigated the role and role-making mechanism of policy entrepreneurs in governance with emphasis on some successful global experiences. Method: For this purpose, documentary method and qualitative content analysis were used; The statistical population is all previous researches in the field of policy entrepreneurship. The statistical sample consists of all the documents related to the role and role-making mechanism of policy entrepreneurs, which has been selected with a purposeful approach. In this way, the researcher searched for relevant keywords in domestic and foreign websites to extract authentic articles and reports in this regard. In this selection process, no time limit was considered for searching. In the search for internal articles, only articles published in journals that are in the list of valid journals of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology were considered. Duplicate documents were identified and removed. This stage led to finding 154 scientific documents in the field of "policy entrepreneurship". Then, in the last step of this stage, the extracted documents were screened. Finally, after screening, 49 documents were selected for review and further investigation. From among these documents, according to the geographical area of the countries, one or more countries from each continent were selected and analyzed, and finally 11 countries from the 5 continents of the world were selected for further investigation. Finally, the text of these documents was analyzed using open and axial coding. Results: The findings showed that policy entrepreneurs have certain characteristics and skills such as social intelligence, ambition, resistance and perseverance, personal, professional and ideological interest, strong motivation, resourcefulness, high energy, creativity, sociability, expertise in the relevant policy field, credibility. Social and having political awareness, managerial leadership ability and communication skills and abilities. The findings also showed that background factors are necessary for the role of political entrepreneurs in governance. Among these factors are social factors (including cooperation and companionship of citizens and elected officials and recognition of the effects and motivations of experts in policy making), political factors (including values related to democratic governance, shared governance, the government's understanding of political risk, conditions the opening of the policy window and interest of the stakeholders and being affected by the policy), institutional-structural factors (including the existence of intermediary organizations and institutions to help in the formation of the network, formal and informal operating procedure and special rules encouraging the process of policy development and media coverage) and also the existence Entrepreneurial ecosystem network relationships pointed out. In addition to contextual factors, entrepreneurs use strategies such as problembuilding, networking, persuasion, using media coverage and strategic information dissemination, group leadership, creating partnerships, research, evaluation and expert opinion, political activation, and resource mobilization to play a role in governance. Interacting with stakeholders and giving them more governance. Conclusion: In general, it can be said that if there are background conditions along with individual and social skills and entrepreneurial policy strategies, entrepreneurs will succeed in playing a role in governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how the European Investment Bank (EIB) influenced EU policymaking by promoting Green Bonds as an asset class. The article argues that the EIB has been instrumental in formulating the EU’s recently agreed Green Bond Standard. The EIB’s expertise and successful coalition building later allowed it to put Green Bonds on the EU’s policy agenda and develop a blueprint for the EU’s rules. The article concludes by drawing implications about the conditions under which the EIB might be able to engage in policy entrepreneurship more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agriculture (UA) is increasingly recognized in policy and academic discussions for its potential to promote sustainable food systems and reduce food insecurity. Due to their proximity to citizens, local governments are well-positioned to advance these initiatives. However, the factors that drive governments in densely populated cities to develop UA policies remain relatively understudied, especially in the Global South. To address this gap, we employ a comparative case study approach based on key informant interviews and documents to examine how local government actors pursue UA policies in the Brazilian cities of Recife, Rio de Janeiro, and Curitiba. We find that certain municipal bureaucrats act as “policy entrepreneurs,” emerging as pivotal figures in creating, maintaining, and adapting municipal UA policies in Brazilian cities. These policy entrepreneurs use a number of strategies to advance their policy preferences, secure resources, and legitimize their actions within the public administration. These approaches include collaborating with civil society, forging partnerships within and outside of government, framing their proposals within international policy guidelines, and leveraging media coverage and external recognition. In doing so, policy entrepreneurs shape UA policies by introducing new programs, making them resilient to changes related to electoral turnover, and diversifying initiatives from direct government support for gardeners to, for example, incorporating UA into urban planning regulations. This article thus provides valuable insights for policymakers and underscores the crucial role of local government bureaucrats, particularly those acting as policy entrepreneurs, in shaping policies that contribute to making cities sustainable.

The media's central role in the policy process has long been recognised, with policy scholars noting the potential for news media to influence policy change. However, scholars have paid most attention to the news media as a conduit for the agendas, frames, and preferences of other policy actors. Recently, scholars have more closely examined media actors directly contributing to policy change. This paper presents a case study to argue that specific members of the media may display the additional skills and behaviours that characterise policy entrepreneurship. Our case study focuses on mandatory childhood vaccination in Australia, following the entrepreneurial actions of a deputy newspaper editor and her affiliated outlets. Mandatory childhood vaccination policies have grown in strength and number in recent years across the industrialised world in response to parents refusing to vaccinate their children. Australia's federal and state governments have been at the forefront of meeting vaccine refusal with harsh consequences; our case study demonstrates how media actors conceived and advanced these policies. The experiences, skills, attributes, and strategies of Sunday Telegraph Deputy Editor Claire Harvey facilitated her policy entrepreneurship, utilising many classic hallmarks from the literature and additional opportunities offered by her media role. Harvey also subverted the classic pathway of entrepreneurship, mobilising the public ahead of policymakers to force the latter's hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine public policy change at the local level of governance in the aftermath of an extraordinary event. Using the case study of a Swedish municipality after the sweeping forest fire of 2014, we contend that policy entrepreneurship, like its market counterpart, may under certain conditions take on a wider range of behaviors that are not underpinned by the proactive quest for opportunities. Rather, a sense of urgency and necessity, professional norms, and some keen technical skills make for a different kind of entrepreneurship, which we label reactive policy entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an account of how the European Union (EU), and notably the European Commission (EC), has become an actor in its own right in the field of the reform of administration and public services management in Europe, by developing an approach to support Member States in their initiatives to improve public administration and public services. We qualify this process – occurred over the period 2000-2021, with a tremendous acceleration in the second decade – as a twofold paradigmatic change: because (i) this is a novel field of action for the EU itself; and because (ii) the very logic driving the EU role shifted dramatically from a logic of conditionality (or compliance with aspects of the acquis) in the early phase to a radically different logic of enabling and facilitating administrative reforms, on the ground, in a later phase and prospectively. We interpret the paradigmatic shift that has occurred through a combination of theoretical perspectives: policy learning; policy entrepreneurship within the Commission; the opening of an opportunity window for policy change to occur; and the consolidation of a new policy sub-system in the field. We deem this change to constitute a step forward in the process of European integration. [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]

Can street-level workers from an ethnic minority in a divided society act as policy entrepreneurs and affect policy design? How their shared values with the homogeneous local government play a role in enabling policy entrepreneurship? Active representation refers to bureaucrats promoting the interests of the clients with whom they share the same characteristics or background. The assumption is that the behaviour of the bureaucrats—rather than their background, per se—affects citizens' responses. However, in such cases, although they are active, street-level workers are fighting to change outcomes within institutions established by others. With regard to Arab social workers in Israel, we provide a new perspective on how ethnic minority street-level workers in a divided society may go beyond active representation in an attempt to directly influence policy design as entrepreneurs. We also identify the conditions that drive policy entrepreneurship and the strategies used to accomplish these goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy entrepreneurship theory seeks to explain how actors, institutions, actions and interactions influence policy makers and policy outcomes; however, the role of citizens in this process remains largely unarticulated. Adopting a conception of policy entrepreneurship as a (distributed) pattern of agency rather than the actions of an individual, we analyse the development of local government climate emergency declarations (CEDs) (many of which visibly involved citizen advocacy). This analysis expands on the role of citizens in policy change and provides evidence of how citizen entrepreneurs interact collaboratively with more traditional forms of policy elites, in this case local elected representatives. Since 2018 hundreds of local governments in the United Kingdom (UK) have issued CEDs in a surge of expressions of local climate ambition. Whilst CEDs have attracted attention from scholars, the underlying dynamics and politics which drove the adoption of these policies, including the role played by citizens, remain unexplored in the literature. Interviews with councillors, council officers, and citizens reveal that citizens carry out a range of activities related to policy entrepreneurship, including problem framing, identifying solutions, networking and building coalitions, and seeking attention and opportunities. We find that they carry out these activities collectively with other citizens and collaboratively with elected representatives; whilst precise coalition‐internal dynamics vary, citizens frequently exploit opportunities to demonstrate the strength and breadth of public support for their cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are narratives as influential in gaining the attention of policymakers as expert information, including for complex, technical policy domains such as artificial intelligence (AI) policy? This pre‐registered study uses a field experiment to evaluate legislator responsiveness to policy entrepreneur outreach. In partnership with a leading AI think tank, we send more than 7300 U.S. state legislative offices emails about AI policy containing an influence strategy (providing a narrative, expert information, or the organization's background), along with a prominent issue frame about AI (emphasizing technological competition or ethical implications). To assess engagement, we measure link clicks to further resources and webinar registration and attendance. Although AI policy is a highly technical domain, we find that narratives are just as effective as expert information in engaging legislators. Compared to control, expert information and narratives led to 28 and 34 percent increases in policymaker engagement, respectively. Furthermore, higher legislature professionalism and lower state‐level prior AI experience are associated with greater engagement with both narratives and expert information. Finally, we find that policymakers are equally engaged by an ethical framing of AI policy as they are with an economic one. The findings advance efforts to bridge scholarship on policy narratives, policy entrepreneurship, and agenda‐setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do policymakers respond to crises? The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) answers this question by focusing on the contest over policy narratives. This paper focuses on the individuals constructing those policy narratives, conceptualizing them as policy narrators. Using a case study approach, we analyze seven counties located in a major oil and gas formation in Texas, which in early 2020 faced both an oil bust and the onset of COVID‐19. We explore four sets of propositions about how policy narrators source, synthesize, and share their policy narratives. We find that while their narratives vary, the structure of those narratives is similar; their backgrounds shape how they source narratives, and they tailor their levels of narrative breach to the action (or inaction) they hope for. They avoid casting other local actors as villains, place their audience as the hero, and situate themselves as either supporting or a member of that audience, stressing their common ties. From these findings, we put forward a working definition of policy narrators, identify how they fit into the NPF, and discuss how they relate to other types of policy actors, including policy entrepreneurs. [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.)

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.)

The re-establishment of border controls in the Schengen Area since 2015 and repeated contestation of the Common European Asylum System have made the policy sector of migration and asylum a topic of growing importance for European (dis)integration research. This article investigates differentiated disintegration and the factors that facilitate member states’ counter-projects to core-EU integration trajectories. Drawing on the concept of policy entrepreneurship and based on an analysis of policy documents, we use the case of Austria to examine how the government coalition, the Austrian People’s Party, and their chairman, Sebastian Kurz, have shaped European governance of asylum and borders in the aftermath of the 2015–2016 crisis. We first show how the Austrian government performed a shift towards bilateralism and multilateralism outside the EU framework by using transnational party alliances. Second, we outline a policy discourse that justified Schengen-internal bordering based on asylum politics, which eventually served to delegitimize Schengen’s enlargement in 2022. The article contributes conceptually to understanding differentiated disintegration in the sector of migration and asylum, and points to potential drivers of this development.

Despite increasing attention to street-level policy entrepreneurship, it remains unclear what strategies street-level bureaucrats employ during implementation or how their strategies impact policy outcomes. Using China's Targeted Poverty Alleviation campaign, we argue that street-level policy entrepreneurs construct collaborative arrangements with various local networks to devise innovative solutions. They collaborate with administrative leaders vertically or with citizens horizontally by adopting three strategies: defining mutual interests, building trust, and leveraging resources. Vertical collaboration contributes to effective policy outcomes and formal upward accountability, while horizontal collaboration improves public responsiveness. This study provides insights into collaborative behaviors of frontline bureaucrats that alleviate rural poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how an undercover sting that targeted men soliciting sex with other men around public park toilets in Fresno, California, led to an increase in resources for local law enforcement, including a surveillance system that stretched beyond the park and into poor Black and Brown neighborhoods. We use the literature on policy entrepreneurship to make sense of the power of police both to quell opposition to unpopular public safety initiatives and to make the case for administrative expansion. This case study demonstrates that creating panic about public same-sex erotic activity can be utilized without appearing homophobic or drawing the wrath of LGBTQ+ rights groups, especially when focusing on the dangers to children. We argue that the men arrested for lewd conduct were simply collateral damage and not seen worthy of defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their efforts to affect policy change, policy entrepreneurs employ a series of strategies, which have been well documented in the literature. However, little is known regarding the relationship between the types of strategies policy entrepreneurs use and the institutional contexts in which they operate. The Interreg Europe programme aims to promote policy changes and thus offers a space for policy learning and experimentation to policy entrepreneurs. Using a mixed methodology that includes a survey addressed to the sixty-five Interreg Europe projects in research and innovation during the programming period 2014–20 and twelve follow-up semi-structured interviews, this article explores the strategies used by policy entrepreneurs in different institutional contexts. The study, rare in the policy entrepreneurship scholarship with its quantitative aspects, highlights the most widely-used strategies by policy entrepreneurs in research and innovation policy changes. Findings suggest that the strategy of storytelling is more widely used in high-innovator regions than in low-innovator regions and in Northern European regions compared to Southern European regions. Moreover, policy entrepreneurs who employ the storytelling strategy find it easier to introduce a policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Introduction Success with highly active antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in developing countries has been attributed to collaborative North–South resource-sharing and capacity-building. Academic research and training programmes have contributed towards policy entrepreneurship in a manner that influenced capacity-building within health systems. However, the documented capacity-building frameworks rarely elucidate how such programmes can be designed and implemented efficiently and sustainably. Method We implemented the University of Zimbabwe (UZ)–State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) collaborative HIV clinical pharmacology capacity-building programme in Zimbabwe in 1998. We intuitively operationalized the programme around a mnemonic acronym, “RSTUVW”, which spells out a supportive framework consisting of “room (space), skills, tools (equipment)”, underpinned by a set of core values, “understanding, voice (clout) and will”. Subsequent to our two decades of successful collaborative experience, we tested the general validity and applicability of the framework within a prospective programme aimed at expanding the role of health professionals. Results and conclusion Based on this collaborative North–South research and training capacity-building programme which has been positively validated in Zimbabwe, we propose this novel mnemonic acronym-based framework as an extra tool to guide sustainable capacity-building through collaborative North–South implementation research. Its extended use could also include assessment and evaluation of health systems within resource-constrained settings.

The re-establishment of border controls in the Schengen Area since 2015 and repeated contestation of the Common European Asylum System have made the policy sector of migration and asylum a topic of growing importance for European (dis)integration research. This article investigates differentiated disintegration and the factors that facilitate member states' counter-projects to core-EU integration trajectories. Drawing on the concept of policy entrepreneurship and based on an analysis of policy documents, we use the case of Austria to examine how the government coalition, the Austrian People's Party, and their chairman, Sebastian Kurz, have shaped European governance of asylum and borders in the aftermath of the 2015-2016 crisis. We first show how the Austrian government performed a shift towards bilateralism and multilateralism outside the EU framework by using transnational party alliances. Second, we outline a policy discourse that justified Schengen-internal bordering based on asylum politics, which eventually served to delegitimize Schengen's enlargement in 2022. The article contributes conceptually to understanding differentiated disintegration in the sector of migration and asylum, and points to potential drivers of this development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the question of how policy entrepreneurs influence the behaviour of social movements. It does so by presenting a new framework for analyzing social movements or collective action that emphasises the important role of individuals. In particular, it offers a systematic study of social movement leaders using the literature of policy entrepreneurship. We identify five areas that should be considered when assessing how policy entrepreneurs can foster policy or political changes in their society: (1) the motivations of policy entrepreneurs, (2) variations in their goals, (3) the characteristics and abilities of policy entrepreneurs, (4) their strategies and (5) the potential outcomes. We then place these changes on a 6-point continuum ranging from least extreme to most extreme. In testing our theoretical framework using the case study of Bulgarian protests against the First Borisov Cabinet, we develop theoretical insights that could be generalised to other social movements worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Athenaeum: Polskie Studia Politologiczne is the property of Faculty of Political Science & Security Studies Nicolaus Copernicus University 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.)

Inconsistent policy implementation has been widely observed in Chinese institutional reforms. The central government has experimented with policymaking in a strategic way against tensions between inherited regulatory deficiencies and ongoing development. And, despite the central government’s authority over local governments, the latter operate with a remarkable degree of discretion. By synthesizing policy experimentation theories and policy entrepreneurship, we consider the Wujin District government, as a policy entrepreneur that identified and acted within a “policy window” and explore how it interpreted and actualized policy tasks set by the central government in relation to the rural land reform. The central government designated 33 county-level administrations as testbeds for removing institutional obstacles to coordinated urban-rural land governance. The Wujin District was granted greater administrative autonomy pertinent to local reform initiatives. Further, the Wujin District reorganized its inter-governmental relations by delegating power downward to forge a reform coalition. Critically, Wujin succeeded in aligning local development priorities with central policy goals. Taking an agent-centric perspective, we also examine historical and contextual factors relevant for behavioral changes. The findings indicate that the Wujin District government acted as an effective policy entrepreneur and on this basis made crucial contributions to policy innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union-Japan political and international development dialogue is resurging through the Strategic Partnership Agreement recently agreed between the two actors. The current paper argues that in order for this agreement to deliver on its promises, the EU and Japan need to build on their similarities, but more importantly on their differences and lessons learnt through their distinct international experiences. While common values and norms have helped them to agree on such document, building on their differences will help both actors to make this bilateral dialogue more productive and strategic. Through the theoretical lenses of policy entrepreneurship used to consolidate knowledge for development on horizontal cooperation, the paper questions how sharing their experiences as international donors can be of strategic relevance for both the EU and Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Success with highly active antiretroviral therapy (ART) for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in developing countries has been attributed to collaborative North–South resource-sharing and capacity-building. Academic research and training programmes have contributed towards policy entrepreneurship in a manner that influenced capacity-building within health systems. However, the documented capacity-building frameworks rarely elucidate how such programmes can be designed and implemented efficiently and sustainably. Method: We implemented the University of Zimbabwe (UZ)–State University of New York at Buffalo (UB) collaborative HIV clinical pharmacology capacity-building programme in Zimbabwe in 1998. We intuitively operationalized the programme around a mnemonic acronym, "RSTUVW", which spells out a supportive framework consisting of "room (space), skills, tools (equipment)", underpinned by a set of core values, "understanding, voice (clout) and will". Subsequent to our two decades of successful collaborative experience, we tested the general validity and applicability of the framework within a prospective programme aimed at expanding the role of health professionals. Results and conclusion: Based on this collaborative North–South research and training capacity-building programme which has been positively validated in Zimbabwe, we propose this novel mnemonic acronym-based framework as an extra tool to guide sustainable capacity-building through collaborative North–South implementation research. Its extended use could also include assessment and evaluation of health systems within resource-constrained settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, many states have adopted policies to ensure students are reading proficiently by third grade. This kind of policy transfer across states is not a unique phenomenon; researchers have documented analogous proliferations of similar policies both in and outside the field of education. However, there has been little attention paid to how policy transfer happens in K-12 education policy, particularly at the state level. To better understand how education policies spread across states, we turn to the case of Michigan's Read by Grade Three Law, which was adopted in 2016. Guided by the Multiple Streams Framework and the theory of policy transfer, we trace the policy process surrounding the Law's conception, development, and passage, relying on data from semi-structured interviews from 24 stakeholders involved in the development of the Law and supported by policy documents from all 50 states and D.C. We find that events in the problem and political streams opened a policy window that allowed for the passage of the Law. These findings contribute to policymakers' and other stakeholders' understandings of the development and passage of third-grade literacy policies—information that will be important as these policies continue to receive national attention in both the policy and research communities. Moreover, this study is one of few to focus on the critical role of policy entrepreneurs in joining together the multiple streams, while also providing a nuanced view of how policy transfer and policy entrepreneurship promote the convergence of ideas and solutions to particular problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To close an existing literature gap, we explore the conditions critical for the enactment of local energy transition and the shift to decarbonized renewable heating systems in the public sector of the most carbon-intensive European region of the Western Balkans. We select and then analyze the municipality of Priboj, which stands out among 150 municipalities in Serbia due to its effective promotion of local energy transition. The analysis provides a rich empirical illustration of a specific path that enables the local level to embark on a tailor-made energy transformation in an underdeveloped and path-dependent national policy framework. By linking a multi-level perspective of sustainability transitions to accounts of path dependency, we advance the understanding of the critical determinants and frameworks of local energy transition. Our analysis is enhanced with an investigation of the role of key actors and governance modes. A shared understanding of innovative solutions and existing local heating regime problems, and a shared vision of economically and environmentally viable opportunities based on available and unutilized local biomass, encouraged the local leaders to embark on a long and novel journey to decarbonize the local heating system. These observed factors coalesced with local political stability anchored in both the local- and national-level contexts. The effective coordination and cooperation across national- and local-level decision makers, financial institutions, and utilities was facilitated by a specific geographical and political context out of the reach of powerful gas network advocates. With these factors present, the synchronized entrepreneurial multi-level efforts served as the vehicles to develop and implement a shared vision of energy transition that became a learning platform for other regional actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mitigation of black carbon (BC) is a potent short-term measure for climate and environmental policy due to the short lifetime of BC particles in the atmosphere. Fewer BC emissions would decelerate warming especially in the Arctic and bring significant co-benefits particularly in populous countries owing to BC's negative public health, food security and socio-economic effects. However, scientific knowledge on BC remains uncertain regarding the measurement, monitoring and precise effects of BC while the respective global policy framework is fragmented. To address this situation, we scrutinize the science/policy nexus in BC mitigation on the regional level where some promising openings exist. For this end, our new analytical framework focuses on policy entrepreneurs, their interests and cognitive frames, and the structural environment. Utilising content analysis of expert interviews and document data, three cases are covered with significant policy entrepreneurship on BC. First, we examine Finland 's high-profile BC initiative, finding it to frame BC pollution as an Arctic climate threat. Second, Finland's research, development and innovation cluster, which has substantial expertise on air pollution, frames BC as a public health hazard, and scopes prospects for policy frameworks helping to open markets for mitigation technologies and solutions. Third, the Climate and Clean Air Coalition approaches BC with a wide multipollutant frame, driven by broad socio-economic and developmental interests. The Finnish initiative's potential is found to suffer from insufficient coordination with the RDI cluster. Both Finland's BC specific and the CCAC's wider multipollutant frame can in different ways contribute to abatement. • A new analytical framework to study policy entrepreneurs in emission mitigation. • We compare Finnish actors and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC). • Finland's official black carbon initiative focuses on Arctic climate interests. • Finland's initiative is insufficiently coordinated with the country's RDI sector. • The Finnish initiative can be combined with the CCAC's multipollutant frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon pricing is a key policy instrument used to steer markets towards the adoption of low-carbon technologies. In the last two decades, several carbon pricing policies have been implemented or debated at the state and federal levels in the US. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and the California cap-and-trade policy are the two regional policies operational today. While there is no federal policy operational today, several carbon pricing proposals have been introduced in Congress in the last decade. Using the literature on interest group politics and policy entrepreneurship, this article examines the carbon pricing policies at the subnational and federal levels in the US. First, the article explores the evolution of two main regional carbon pricing policies, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and California cap-and-trade, to identify how interest groups and policy entrepreneurs shaped the design and implementation of the respective policies. Second, the article details the federal carbon pricing policy proposals and bills discussed in the last decade. Third, it examines the factors that limit the prospects of realizing an ambitious federal carbon price for pursuing deep decarbonization of the US economy. The article finds that federal carbon pricing in the US suffers from the lack of any natural and/or consistent constituency to support it through policy development, legislation, and implementation. While interest group politics have been mitigated by good policy entrepreneurship at the subnational level, the lack of policy entrepreneurship and the changing positions of competing interest groups have kept a federal carbon pricing policy from becoming a reality.

The government of the Netherlands actively frames the country’s delta planning expertise as a musthave solution for sustainable delta management in other countries. Texts that explain or promote the transfer of delta planning expertise tend to portray it as something that happens because of the intrinsic qualities of this expertise. The starting point of this paper is discomfort with this portrayal. This discomfort importantly stems from the hierarchy it assumes between the country of origin and the country of destination, with the former ranking higher in terms of degree of development and technological advancement. We mobilise insights from the sociology of translation and from the anthropology of development cooperation and scholarship on policy entrepreneurship to explore how the story of policy transfer can be told in ways that are more symmetrical and which recognise the contributions of all involved. Empirical material about the travels of the Dutch Delta Programme to Vietnam and Bangladesh reveals that policy transfer in these cases mainly consisted of two types of work: maintaining or developing alliances and creating political buy-in. The effectiveness of the actors involved in the work does not so much depend on the technical planning or water expertise for which many of them are hired; rather, it depends on their salespersonship, diplomacy, and skills in negotiation and dialoguing. Recognising that this is so provides a good basis for rethinking how capacities for effective transfer can be developed and nurtured, and how these are and should be distributed. It also supports more dialogical ways of writing and talking about transfer, ways that foreground the mutual learning that occurs between 'initiators' and 'receivers'.

This study explores the creation of the National Screening Mechanism (NSM) to classify forcibly displaced persons in Thailand, a non-signatory state to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol. It argues that the drafting of the NSM as Thailand's first refugee law resulted from policy entrepreneurship by officials in the Department of International Organizations (DIO), who promoted innovations in urban refugee management. The global refugee events of 2016 provided windows of opportunity for DIO officials to structure the need for creating the NSM and convince ruling generals to commit to new policy directions. However, bureaucrats in other agencies, who endorsed the status quo, leveraged their power to amend the initial conceptualization of the NSM and made it less progressive. Policy entrepreneurship offers another perspective for exploring changes in non-signatory states' refugee policies that can also be applied more broadly to the context of signatory countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how the transnational city network Eurocities engages in EU policies on migration and integration. Eurocities stands out from other cases through its autonomy and its clear objective to influence EU policies. To understand how the network operates as a policy entrepreneur, we analyse how cities and the Brussels-based secretariat collaborated in shaping the network's positions on migration and asylum – from the launch of the work on this dossier in 2001 to the 'Solidarity Cities' campaign in 2016. During this period, Eurocities' agenda developed, to some extent opportunistically, driven by institutional and thematic interests. We find that it had the highest impact during the refugee reception crisis, when the secretariat's facilitation work, technical exchanges between city representatives and the activism of local politicians converged creating a common narrative on how to tackle the crisis from a city-centred angle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aviation is a highly technical sector, but conversely policy regarding the security of it has historically been reactive and driven by human factors. Governance of aviation security is regulated and controlled by national governments, yet policy is primarily developed by international organisations. This article is concerned with what impact technological innovation has had on aviation security with particular focus on the effect of the developments in the cyber-sphere on the policy process. It will consider how cyber innovations have changed the aviation security threat picture and thus the policy process. Technology has become a critical enabler of those looking to subvert aviation. Yet until 9/11, an exogeneous shock to the policy area, the changing threat picture only impacted the content of aviation security policy rather than the policy process or the roles of those involved. This article will argue the industry is acting as a driving force for this legislative agenda nowadays indicating a clear role reversal. To analyse the response to the rise of the cyber threat as a determinant of the contemporary aviation security policy process, this article will use John Kingdon’s concept of policy entrepreneurs. It will argue that the industry has acted as a policy entrepreneur driving legislation due to its technical expertise in response to cyber-attacks becoming the primary threat.

How can activist bureaucrats unexpectedly influence policy outcomes? What strategies do these actors adopt in order to defend and implement public policies in institutional settings unfavorable to their ideas? How do the individual trajectories of activist bureaucrats influence their strategies and repertoires of action? Drawing from the literature on institutional activism, this article shows how bureaucrats worked as activists to create and institutionalize participatory arenas in slum upgrading projects, within an institutional setting adverse to popular participation. Our research was carried out through interviews with bureaucrats and local community actors, as well as participant observation. The main results of our study were: the identification of four distinct profiles of bureaucrats and four main activist strategies used by them, as well as the identification of bureaucrats’ profiles more associated with the adoption of certain practices – so that specific profiles of bureaucrats have influenced the policy-making process in different ways, according to their relational skills, previous trajectories, and worldviews. These findings suggest that the individual characteristics of bureaucrats are important to understanding the variations in bureaucrats’ activist strategies within the state, as well as how bureaucrats can influence policymaking in heterogeneous ways.

This article presents the results of the examination of the policy entrepreneurs’ strategies in the public policymaking atmosphere of Iran using DEMATEL technique. In line with the research topic, the purpose of this study was to identify and detect causal relations, estimate the effect size, and finally presentthe relational network of strategies that participants’ thought are used by policy entrepreneurs in the public policymaking atmosphere of Iran to offer policy innovations. The research method was descriptive, and 20 experts were selected through purposive/ judgmental sampling based on the maximum variation and snowball strategies. To this end, first the theoretical bases and concepts of policy entrepreneurship are expressed in order to identify the policy entrepreneurs’ strategies in the literature. Then, using DEMATEL technique, the strategies extracted from the experts’ interviews are prioritized in a structure based on the graph theory to identify the causal relations and then their relational network map is developed. Based on these steps, the relational network of policy entrepreneurs’ strategies in the public policymaking system of Iran is provided. Moreover, the most effective strategies are found to be “strategies of relational management, using the media, and persuading and convincing the audience through speech power,” while “changing the actors and stakeholders with the right to address the issue in order to remove the opponents” was found to be the most influenced strategy of the policy entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is policy change possible if policy entrepreneurs' cognition, rationality and identity are conditioned by the very policy institutions they wish to change? To solve this paradox of embedded agency, we must avoid either voluntarism that inflates the role of actors to change policies as by existing policy entrepreneurship applications, or determinism whereby policy changes are decided by contextual forces. Instead, drawing on institutional theory, critical realism sees structures, institutions, and actions that constitute policy dynamics as existing in separate yet intertwined reality domains: structures (e.g., social relationships), and institutions (e.g., formal rules and norms such as institutional logics) in the Real domain, enable and constrain policy actors' navigation of their social environments; the Actual domain represents the level at which events (actions) happen, as these actors constantly interpret varied institutions to adjust their structurally embedded actions when pursuing policy changes that can be observed in the Empirical domain. Put differently, structures and institutions are mechanisms in the Real domain that affect individual practices and events in the Actual domain, and only some of these events are realized in the Empirical domain as policy changes. We empirically illustrate this critical realist approach with a Chinese example on health care reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent times, the European Union's external engagement has expanded in originally internal policy areas. This process is particularly intriguing in areas where the EU possesses only supplementary competences. Examining the case of EU higher education policy, this contribution sets out to understand and explain EU external engagement in such areas. To this end, it employs an explanatory framework that argues that EU external action emerges when a structural policy window of external 'opportunity' and domestic 'presence' opens, which is exploited by 'policy entrepreneurs'. The contribution compares two pillars of EU higher education policy – the Tempus and Erasmus Mundus programmes – which it sets in relation to the emergence of external action in other EU higher education initiatives. Offering an explanation of why the EU engages externally in higher education, the contribution concludes by discussing the broader generalizability of its findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the diffusion of policy innovations can promote sustainability, how this process can be accelerated remains unclear. I address this gap by conceptualizing policy transfer and policy diffusion using the multiple streams framework (MSF) and developing hypotheses to connect them. I apply this theorization to explain the limited spread of the energy conservation building code (ECBC) in India by combining a process trace of policy adoption in the embedded case of Andhra Pradesh with a dyadic event history analysis of state‐level diffusion during 2012‐18. The data for this study are collated from official statistics, elite interviews, news reports, policy documents, and secondary literature. The qualitative analysis shows that policy transfer to Andhra Pradesh occurred when external influence and prior adoption elsewhere were used by a policy entrepreneur to exploit a window of opportunity and couple problem, policy, and politics in the state; the dyadic analysis demonstrates that policy diffusion was influenced by the interaction among the structural characteristics of the problem, policy, and politics streams. I conclude with the implications for research on policy diffusion and the MSF as well as the relevance of the findings for promoting policy innovation for a sustainable energy transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]