scholarly journals A threat-centered theory of policy entrepreneurship

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwen Arnold

AbstractWe know relatively little about the conditions that encourage people to jump into the political fray as policy entrepreneurs, advocates who devote substantial time, energy, and resources to campaigning for a policy goal. This paper aims to fill that gap by investigating the catalysts of policy entrepreneurship in municipalities across the State of New York, where between 2008 and 2012, hundreds of local jurisdictions passed measures opposing or supporting high-volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking). These local policy actions were often enthusiastically encouraged and, in some cases, vociferously opposed, by enterprising advocates. I propose a threat-centered theory of policy entrepreneurship, emphasizing the role of loss aversion in pushing actors toward advocacy. The empirical analysis shows that oppositional advocacy within a polity draws would-be policy entrepreneurs into battle.

The Last Card ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 344-360
Author(s):  
Colin Dueck

This concluding chapter focuses on the role of George W. Bush himself, arguing that by 2006–2007, the president had become a more mature and assertive commander-in-chief who asked hard questions of his military commanders and pushed the policy process to deliver strategic alternatives. The president successfully related the policy advice he received to the political requirements and constraints he faced to fashion a new strategy for the Iraq War. His success in doing so might constitute the basis for a modest form of “Bush revisionism.” The chapter also defines the concept of policy entrepreneurship, including the ability to connect three distinct streams: problems, policies, and politics. It then analyzes these three streams as they existed regarding US policy in Iraq by mid-2006, and describes how and why Bush was able to connect the three streams.


2018 ◽  
Vol 236 ◽  
pp. 1088-1110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Jingwei He

AbstractPolicy entrepreneurs play a pivotal role in policy changes in both electoral democracies and authoritarian systems. By investigating the case of healthcare reform in Sanming City, this article illustrates how the fragmented bureaucracy in China enables and constrains local policy entrepreneurs, and how entrepreneurial manoeuvring succeeds in realigning the old institutional structures while attacking the vested interests. Both structural conditions and individual attributes are of critical importance to the success of policy entrepreneurship. Four factors and their dynamic interactions are central to local policy entrepreneurship: behavioural traits, political capital, network position and institutional framework. This study furthers theoretical discussion on policy entrepreneurship by elucidating the fluidity of interactional patterns between agent and structure in authoritarian China. The malleability of rigid institutions can be considerably increased by the active manoeuvring of entrepreneurial agents.


Author(s):  
Wendy J. Schiller ◽  
Charles Stewart

This chapter analyzes the role of the party as a gatekeeper to running for U.S. Senate and delves more deeply into the role of the political party as an organization in the state legislature. It measures the function of partisanship in structuring the organization of state legislatures as well as examines how partisanship influenced the dynamics of Senate elections. It explains the role of party caucuses in the nomination and election stages of indirect elections; shows how party leaders identified and rallied around Senate candidates; and identifies the set of incentives that party leaders used to pressure state legislators to back their preferred Senate candidate. Furthermore, it discusses how candidates for U.S. Senate tried to consolidate support among key party leaders, and how regional party factionalism made that task more difficult. To illustrate these behaviors, the chapter includes case studies from a range of years and states, including New York, Kentucky, Washington State, Florida, and Illinois.


Author(s):  
Carmen E. Lamas

This chapter explores the place of black Cubans in Cuba and the US during the 1880s and 1890s, as articulated through the life and works of Martín Morúa Delgado (1856–1910). The first black reader or lector in cigar factories in Havana, New York, and Key West, Morúa labored incessantly for worker’s rights on both sides of the Florida Straits. Reading Morúa’s life and works from the Latino Continuum allows the recovery of the political significance of this figure for literary and historical studies, especially since he interacted directly with José Martí—the founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Party in New York City. Juxtaposing Morúa’s and Martí’s literary works and translation choices allows us to understand more fully why Morúa was at odds with Martí regarding Cuba’s future and the role that Afro Latina/os had played and would continue to play in Cuba and in the Americas. While the translation of Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona (1884) by Martí and the publication of Martí’s novel, Amistad funesta/Lucía Jerez, speak to US expansionism and its effect on Native American populations, they did not engage Cuba’s most pertinent question at the time—the role of black Cubans in the upcoming wars of independence and in the future Cuban Republic. Morúa, aware of this absence, uses his two novels, Sofía (1891) and La familia Unzúazu (1901), to question the political intentions and social prejudices of Americanized Cubans like José Martí, Tomás Estrada Palma, and Cirilo Villaverde.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 26-39
Author(s):  
José Maurício Álvarez

This article examines the political participation of mythology and the imaginary and the role of the history of unexpected events. It demonstrates how the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, determined contextualization of the event and 'resymbolization.' Working with the concept of the state of cinema, this article explores the possibilities of constructing modern culture which, based on the action of images and the movies. We analyze the North American imperial discourse, and the fabrication of a picture of the world based on a cinematographic, symbolic, and media process was - in the duel against the bad guy, and the American hero.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 456-474
Author(s):  
Gary M. Walsh

This paper combines conceptual and documentary analysis to critique the recent introduction of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) in Scottish social policy, highlighting the role of the ACE-Aware Nation ‘movement’ and its positioning of the ACEs model through its campaigning activities. Consideration is given to the role of a sophisticated network of policy entrepreneurs and the commercial and political interests at play. Reflection is offered on the critical activist responses to this campaign that seek to highlight the socio-economic and political underpinnings of childhood trauma, which are largely absent in the ACEs model. The argument is that these policy developments amount to a recent turn to the ACEs model as a simplistic solution to complex social problems – a solution that is shown to be ultimately flawed in several respects. This analysis reveals the contradictions, conflicts and confusion that have emerged within the ACEs discourse, caused in the main by heuristic thinking and the conceptual inadequacies, misuses and misunderstandings of the ACEs model. The paper concludes that policy makers and practitioners should exercise caution in their appraisal of the ACEs model and the associated movement in Scotland.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Thomarat

This qualitative case investigation considers the historical, inter-provincial proliferation of university Crown foundations across Canada from 1984 to 1998. From the findings of over 40 interviews conducted between 2014 and 2017 and document analysis, this study uses a conceptual framework of policy entrepreneurship and institutionalism to provide evidence of Crown foundations’ policy engagement in post-secondary education and fiscal policy in Canada. The efforts to increase the availability of tax incentives to the system by policy entrepreneurs increased resources available to Canadian university Crown foundations, although the advantage to universities was only temporary.


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