The importance of policy entrepreneurs in developing countries: A systematic review and future research agenda

Abstract

Summary How and with what effect policy entrepreneurship occurs is a persistent and intriguing question for scholars of public policy and administration and political science. So far, the main interest has been on policy entrepreneurship in developed countries rather than developing countries, which largely remains a black box. Adopting a systematic approach to reviewing the literature, this article aims to fill this void. It investigates when, why, and how policy and institutional reforms in developing countries take place, with special reference to the role of policy entrepreneurs. It reviews selected articles published in the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Social Science Citation Index database from 1984 to 2018. It aims to show the current state of empirical and theoretical knowledge about policy entrepreneurship in developing countries and persistent knowledge gaps. The present review contributes to the body of knowledge on this topic in three main ways. First, we provide a comprehensive review of policy entrepreneurship in developing countries. Second, we consolidate existing research in the political science, public policy and administration, and politicial economy disciplines. Third, we establish connections between fragmented literatures, identify gaps between different research streams, and suggest promising paths for future research on policy entrepreneurship in developing countries.

Getting to the root of the problem: the international and domestic politics of junk food industry regulation in Latin America

“…These activities bolster an entrepreneur’s advocacy efforts and ability to persuade legislators by obtaining their trust and belief that a policy idea is attractive ( Petridou and Mintrom, 2020 ; Mintrom, 2019 ). The author’s conception of the ‘policy advocate’ also builds on those claiming that entrepreneurs in developing countries having access to international supporters of the entrepreneur’s ideas can provide additional enabling resources for the entrepreneur ( Bakir and Gunduz, 2019 ).…”

Educación empresarial en intenciones de emprender: validación de un instrumento en estudiantes de negocios en Tamaulipas, México

“…El tópico de emprendimiento es referirse a un tema relevante dentro del campo de la investigación científica, ya que en los últimos años se ha reconocido, tanto por la academia como por parte de los gobiernos a nivel mundial, la importancia del emprendimiento en el fomento de las actividades empresariales y su impacto dentro de la economía de la mayoría de los países (Bakir y Gunduz, 2020;Lin y Lasserre, 2015).…”

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

“…Policy entrepreneurs, they note, operate across all levels of government and across juridical spaces at the transnational and global levels. At the same time, both articles also note that there is insufficient theoretical development, with conceptual slippage, confusion, and an unstable theoretical grammar operating in the field-a process that they observe leads to conceptual stretching and methodological opaqueness (Bakir & Gunduz, 2020;Frisch-Aviram et al, 2020). More than one third of the studies in The contribution by Goyal et al (2020) by contrast seeks to make an important theoretical contribution.…”