Street-level policy entrepreneurship

Abstract

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.

Policies that Succeed and Programs that Fail: Ambiguity, Conflict, and Crisis in Greek Higher Education

“…Second, despite its applicability, MSA does not provide explicit mechanisms linking implementation and policy formation apart from general strategic effects of ambiguity (e.g., Baier, March, & Sætren, ; Zahariadis, ; but see Ridde, ). Although the literature (including MSA) typically explores the role of entrepreneurs in agenda setting or policy formation, we show coalitions pursue entrepreneurial strategies during implementation that have consequential effects (see also Arnold, ).…”

Searching for managerial discretion: how public managers engage managerialism as a rationalization for increased latitude of action

“…This trend includes the increased focus of cost-cutting (Pollitt 1993;Pollitt and Bouckaert 2000), a focus on efficiency (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011) and working in a more entrepreneurial manner (Osborne and Gaebler 1992;Arnold 2013). Managerialism furthermore entails ideas and reforms about competitiveness of the public sector while maintaining a publicly funded base (Megginson and Netter 2001).…”

“…In the public sector, this has come to manifest itself as, e.g. entrepreneurial thinking (Osborne and Gaebler 1992;Arnold 2013) where managers are expected to have generic knowledge about governance and organizations (Lapsley 2008(Lapsley , 2009Pollitt 2000;Hood 1991). Together with dominant ideas about separating policy and administration (Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman 1981;Frederickson et al 2012), it has created disaggregated (Rhodes 1994;Milward, Provan, and Else 1993;Frederickson 1999b) and complex political organizations (Lapsley and Skaerbaek 2012;Lapsley and Knutsson 2017) where performance measurement (Arnaboldi, Lapsley, and Steccolini 2015;Speklé and Frank Verbeeten 2014), accountability, and discretion have become key factors (Kaboolian 1998;Hood 1995).…”

Policy entrepreneurs and agenda setting

“…Recently, Arnold (2015) has suggested that these types of policy entrepreneurs may even be from the street level. Hence, they concentrate on enhancing their status through a pragmatic approach of contributing to various reforms and improving the quality of life for society.…”