ABSTRACT. In 1990, Elinor Ostrom proposed eight design principles, positing them to characterize robust institutions for managing common-pool resources such as forests or fisheries. Since then, many studies have explicitly or implicitly evaluated these design principles. We analyzed 91 such studies to evaluate the principles empirically and to consider what theoretical issues have arisen since their introduction. We found that the principles are well supported empirically and that several important theoretical issues warrant discussion. We provide a reformulation of the design principles, drawing from commonalities found in the studies.

Research on policy entrepreneurs typically identifies these individuals as high-level government officials or actors who lobby such elites, largely ignoring low-rung bureaucrats whose entrepreneurship concerns policy implementation. These lacunae may exist because street-level bureaucracy scholarship does not necessarily expect implementing bureaucrats to be entrepreneurial. This article argues the contrary. The existence of street-level policy entrepreneurship and its influence on policy innovations pursued by public bureaucracies is illuminated via two US state case studies. The cases describe efforts by state bureaucrats to adopt and entrench a science policy innovation for wetland management into regulatory practice.

Narratives are highly consequential in policy processes because they shape public perception of policy issues. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) seeks to predict the extent to which narratives are strategically used to influence policy outcomes. Its core hypotheses center around a winning vs. losing dichotomy, in which winning and losing narratives employ distinct sets of strategies. Due to the newness of the theory, there are few empirical tests of its components, and their results are inconclusive. We posit that the winning–losing paradigm does not accurately predict narrative strategy use. To test this hypothesis, we examine a policy dilemma where contextually similar jurisdictions adopted multiple different policy solutions over a common time period. From 2008 to 2012, more than 260 New York municipalities passed policies related to hydraulic fracturing (fracking). We analyze editorial content from two local newspapers in central New York whose distribution covers municipalities that adopted anti‐ and pro‐fracking policies. Our findings reveal that narrators consistently use narrative strategies that correspond to the side of the issue they support, regardless of whether they are winning or losing the policy debate. This suggests the NPF's winning–losing dichotomy may not be not well suited to predicting narrative strategy use or policy outcomes.

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.

Policy entrepreneurs—individuals who champion a policy and engage in intense advocacy to secure it—are most frequently characterized as political elites or individuals well connected to such elites. However, an emerging literature suggests that street‐level bureaucrats who deliver government services to the public can also prosecute policy entrepreneurship. There has been little investigation of how these actors differ from elite‐level policy entrepreneurs who focus on agenda‐setting and initial policy approval. Evidence from six case vignettes from US state wetland policy suggest that street‐level policy entrepreneurs are distinguished by defensive motivation, greater constancy of effort, recruitment of a less politically powerful network of supporters, and challenges associated with cultivating ties to external resource providers and intra‐governmental allies. Street‐level policy entrepreneurship helps explain policy innovation within bureaucracies and by bureaucrats, offering new insight into the motivation and behaviours of ground‐level officials whose day‐to‐day choices shape policy.

Well-resourced and well-connected individuals, or "policy entrepreneurs," often play an important role in advocating and securing the adoption of policies. There is a striking lack of inquiry into the ways that social networks shape the ability of these actors to achieve their aims, including the ways in which network ties may channel policy conflict. To address these gaps, we analyze data from an original survey and an original database of policies to assess the success of policy entrepreneurs (PEs) active in a highly contentious arena: municipal policymaking concerning high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) in New York. We use text-mining to collect social network data from local newspaper archives, then use those data to construct municipal HVHF policy networks. Municipal anti-HVHF PEs appear more successful when they operate in less cohesive networks, act as bridges to relative newcomers to the governance network, and have a larger number of network connections. Pro-HVHF PEs appear more successful when they can forge high-value connections to key decision makers. Policy entrepreneurs on both sides of the issue are more successful when they have a greater number of sympathetic coalition partners.

This article investigates the conditions under which government officials who implement policy integrate the best available science into regulatory practice. It examines the adoption of rapid wetland assessment tools, a type of science policy innovation, by street-level bureaucrats in six US Mid-Atlantic states. These bureaucrats operate in relatively opaque and discretion-laden institutional settings. The analysis of an original survey of state wetland officials shows that these officials are more likely to adopt tools when they have more opportunities to learn tool-related information and practice norms. Bureaucrats' adoption of this class of science policy innovations appears facilitated by peer communication via network ties, on-the-job experience and incentives and disincentives associated with bureaucrats' organisational contexts and operating environments.

Relatively little is known about when, why, and how some jurisdictions “double down” on policy priorities, rapidly adopting multiple measures tackling the same issue. Rapid policy expansion can emerge in fast‐evolving, uncertain, and contested policy arenas in which pressures for policy making are not satisfied, and even may be strengthened, by initial policy innovation. This article analyzes local government policy making on high‐volume hydraulic fracturing by New York State municipalities from 2008 to 2012. Policy path dependence, peer influence, and policy design appear to play a critical role in determining whether public officials respond to these pressures with policy expansion. Initial policy innovations can open windows for policy participants to secure additional measures that strengthen or enlarge the scope of action. Public officials and stakeholders seeking particular policy outcomes should take a long view of the policy process while simultaneously remaining alert for opportunities afforded by pressurized policy dilemmas.