Policy entrepreneurship and institutional change: Who, how, and why?

Abstract

Summary In the past three decades, “policy entrepreneurship” has emerged as a key analytical concept helping to explain institutional and policy change. Despite this, however, the literature on policy entrepreneurship remains theoretically vexed, producing limited theoretical knowledge or explanatory models able to draw firm conclusions. Theory building on policy and institutional change, for example, how policy entrepreneurs institute and navigate change agendas, using what tools, strategies, resources, and capacities remains opaque. This is especially the case in developing country contexts, where most analytical investigation of policy entrepreneurship has addressed “first world” case examples. This special issue seeks to address this analytical gap in the literature, focusing on cases specific to developing country contexts, deepening our empirical knowledge of policy entrepreneurship in developing countries, but also exploring theoretical and conceptual debates as they relate to developing countries.

Welfare state and the social economy in compressed development: Self‐sufficiency organizations in South Korea

“…Policymaking is not necessarily a functional process of formulating solutions for meeting domestic needs but a result of policy learning (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000;Jarvis & He, 2020;Hall, 1993). Ebbs and flows of the trends of economic policies, be it the Keynesian welfare state, state-centered developmentalism, or neoliberalism, can be contingent on the policy actors (Hu et al, 2020).…”

Institutional reforms, control of corruption, and diaspora entrepreneurship: insights and perspectives on America's poorest economy

“…The fact that a poor country like Haiti is highly deficient in terms of public institutional capital, human capital, infrastructure and business capital (Mombeuil, 2020), remains a serious challenge for institutional reforms, control of corruption and entrepreneurship development. Thus, overcoming the obstacles to diaspora entrepreneurship necessitates large-scale reforms that are capable of breaking the current institutional arrangements and injecting new political bargains that facilitate social and economic demands (Jarvis and He, 2020). Challenges such as corruption and current institutional arrangements of Haiti also necessitate genuine coalitions among diaspora organization networks, NGOs and institutional entrepreneurs that can force institutional changes, curb corruption and market reform.…”

Socioeconomic determinants of the individual micro-entrepreneur (IME)

“…O empreendedorismo tem sido associado, na literatura sobre o assunto, a retornos socialmente desejáveis para a economia, em razão da sua influência sobre o emprego, a renda e os elementos relacionados a mudanças estruturais de produção (Aviram et al, 2019;Lundström & Stevenson, 2006). Isso pode ser observado na introdução da temática nas agendas de políticas públicas e na adoção de práticas voltadas ao avanço do empreendedorismo em vários países do mundo (Audretsch et al, 2007), sobretudo nos desenvolvidos, chamados de "primeiro mundo" (Jarvis & He, 2020).…”