Policy entrepreneurs are thought to be instrumental in agenda change, yet we lack knowledge of how legislators perceive their role in the agenda formation process. Using data from a national survey of state legislators, we examine whether entrepreneurs shape the legislative agenda on disaster preparedness and relief, which types of entrepreneurs are most influential, and what strategies they use in their interactions with legislators. The results indicate that legislators who report contact with policy entrepreneurs are more likely to have introduced related legislation, evidence of the important link between entrepreneurs and policy change. While entrepreneurs utilize a variety of different strategies, the analysis reveals policymakers are particularly receptive to entrepreneurs who provide new and reliable information. This finding suggests the influence of entrepreneurs lies not only in their ability to define problems and build coalitions, but also in their distinctive ability to provide information to elected officials, an important role that has largely been overlooked by existing literature.

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How does the state of American federalism explain responses to COVID-19? State-by-state variations to the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate the political dynamics of “kaleidoscopic federalism,” under which there is no single prevailing principle of federalism. In the COVID-19 pandemic, features of kaleidoscopic federalism combined with shortcomings in the public health system under the Trump administration, leading to fragmented responses to the pandemic among the states. Federalism alone does not explain the shortcomings of the United States’ response to the pandemic. Rather, the fragmented response was driven by state partisanship, which shaped state public health interventions and resulted in differences in public health outcomes. This has sobering implications for American federalism because state-level partisan differences yield different and unequal responses to the pandemic.

The multiple streams approach (MSA) emphasises that problem indicators, which refer to numeric measures of a problem, are an important determinant of policymaker attention. However, few studies empirically examine the relationship between indicators, agenda setting and policy change. This study fills this void by modelling the extent to which indicator change induces agenda activity in emerging disease domains. It shows that the rate of indicator accumulation – how quickly indicators amass – is a predictor of agenda activity. Although rapid accumulation almost always captures policymaker attention, policy change is more likely when indicators slowly amass and provide ample time for political mobilisation.

The multiple streams framework (MSF) hypothesizes changes in problem indicators or data documenting the scale and scope a problem help draw policymaker attention to previously ignored issues. We test this hypothesis by systematically analyzing agenda setting and agenda denial in the United States Congress in response to indicators of the opioid crisis, namely opioid overdose deaths. We confirm that changes in indicators can, in some cases, help facilitate agenda setting and policy change. However, we also show indicator politicization, which refers to the extent to which changes in a particular indicator threaten the economic and political interests of groups operating in the political stream, is inversely related to issue attention. We, therefore, suggest refining existing MSF hypotheses to allow for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between indicators and agenda setting.