The President as Policy Entrepreneur

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.

Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
John C. Morris

The role of the policy entrepreneur in the policy process forms an integral part of our understanding of the formulation and implementation of policy in the United States. For all its theoretical importance, however, little work has been done to develop or test the propositions of entrepreneurship offered by Kingdon (1984). By examining the life of Ansel Adams (1902-1984), this paper explores more fully the concept of policy entrepreneurship and seeks to develop a more robust concept that accounts for the long-term, diffuse series of activities that precede Kingdon’s “stream coupling” in the policy process. The analysis suggests that such an approach offers some promise for capturing a broader spectrum of policy activity.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evangelia Petridou ◽  
Pär M. Olausson

AbstractCentral to policies relating to risk governance at the regional and local levels is the interaction between the public and private sectors also referred to as networked governance. At the same time, the role of political actors in general and policy entrepreneurs in particular, in terms of policy change, has gained considerable traction in recent policy scholarship. The purpose of this study was to investigate the change in governance arrangements resulting in the formation of a coordination network in regional flood risk management-the first of its kind in Sweden. Our research is guided by the following questions: first, would the policy change (the establishment of the networks)have taken place if a policy entrepreneur were not part of the policy transfer process? Second, what is the role of policy entrepreneurship in the implementation of the policy after its nationwide adoption? Third, what other factors played a role in the variation of the results in the implemented policy that is, the enforced networks? We find the role of a policy entrepreneur key in the policy transfer from the regional to the national level. In order to investigate the resultant networks, we draw from B. Guy Peters (1998) and his conceptualization of factors which affect the politics of coordination. In addition to the presence of a policy entrepreneur, we compare: (i) pluriformity of network members;(ii) member interdependence; (iii) redundancy of structures, and (iv) degree of formality (in terms of meetings). Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs contribute to the variation in the functionality of the enforced river groups, though other factors play a significant role as well.Most importantly, perhaps, we did not identify entrepreneurs in any of the river groups which were not functional.


Author(s):  
Sergey Sergushkin

The article focuses on the role of A. E. Evert, the commander-in-chief of the armies of the Western Front, in the events of the February Revolution. Russia's top military leadership took a consolidated position on the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II from the throne, but the unity regarding the fate of the Empire's future was only an appearance. This is made clear through a detailed examination of the decisions made by Evert during the last crucial days for the Russian Empire and of his motives. The author pays particular attention to the period after the emperor’s abdication when, in the political vacuum, the commander-in-chief of the armies of the Western Front changed his line of conduct and proposed the bold project of transferring the country's real political power under military control. The methodological basis of this study is the principles of historicism, systematicity and scientific objectivity, while also using the comparative and historical-genetic methods.  Evert considered the constitutional monarchy with Mikhail Alexandrovich on the throne as a worthy alternative to the forceful suppression of the revolution in the rear, which cannot be said about his view on the Provisional Government and the prospect of elections to the Constituent Assembly during the war. In this regard, the commander-in-chief of the armies of the Western Front hoped, with the support of his colleagues, to impose his will on the rebellious capital. However, his project did not receive the necessary support, and his disloyalty to the Provisional Government led to his early resignation.


Author(s):  
Michael Foley

This chapter examines the U.S. foreign policy process which encompasses the executive, Congress, and intelligence. It first considers American foreign policy as a primary agency of government adaptation before discussing the role of the executive as the lead agency of systemic evolution in response to foreign policy needs, taking into account the executive prerogative and judicial recognition of inherent executive power. It then describes the political and technical difficulties experienced by Congress in matching the executive in foreign policy. It also explores the ramifications of 9/11 and the war on terror for American foreign policy and concludes with an overview of U.S. foreign policy under Barack Obama.


Author(s):  
Annelise Russell ◽  
Maraam Dwidar ◽  
Bryan D. Jones

Scholars across politics and communication have wrangled with questions aimed at better understanding issue salience and attention. For media scholars, they found that mass attention across issues was a function the news media’s power to set the nation’s agenda by focusing attention on a few key public issues. Policy scholars often ignored the media’s role in their effort to understand how and why issues make it onto a limited political agenda. What we have is two disparate definitions describing, on the one hand, media effects on individuals’ issue priorities, and on the other, how the dynamics of attention perpetuate across the political system. We are left with two notions of agenda setting developed independently of one another to describe media and political systems that are anything but independent of one another. The collective effects of the media on our formal institutions and the mass public are ripe for further, collaborative research. Communications scholars have long understood the agenda setting potential of the news media, but have neglected to extend that understanding beyond its effects on mass public. The link between public opinion and policy is “awesome” and scholarship would benefit from exploring the implications for policy, media, and public opinion. Both policy and communication studies would benefit from a broadened perspective of media influence. Political communication should consider the role of the mass media beyond just the formation of public opinion. The media as an institution is not effectively captured in a linear model of information signaling because the public agenda cannot be complete without an understanding of the policymaking agenda and the role of political elites. And policy scholars can no longer describe policy process without considering the media as a source of disproportionate allocation of attention and information. The positive and negative feedback cycles that spark or stabilize the political system are intimately connected to policy frames and signals produced by the media.


1965 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 408-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avery Leiserson

Alan T. Waterman (retired Director of the National Science Foundation and past president of the A.A.A.S.) recently insisted that there is a considerable difference between observations and perceptual images of scientists' behavior in governmental and policy-making situations when made by scientists and when they are made by persons “outside of science.” Waterman went on to say that most natural scientists would prefer to write on “science” rather than “scientists” in policy-making. Reflection on the implications of these distinctions raises several fascinating questions. In what senses may there be a political science of science? Are only natural and biological scientists equipped to investigate and interpret the behavior of scientists in non-laboratory, public policy-formulating situations? Is it necessary to have separate “natural-scientific” and “social-scientific”—to say nothing of any number of “humanistic”—views of the political role of science? What does it mean to say that the proper focus of study is the representation of science, rather than scientists in government?


1995 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio M. Radaelli

ABSTRACTThe author presents an empirical study of the direct corporate taxation policy process in the European Union. The study links three public policy literatures that are usually considered somewhat distinct and independent: the literature on the politics of tax reform, the literature on policy change and the political role of knowledge, and the literature on European integration. The examination of these literatures leads to a series of hypotheses which are used for addressing the analysis of the policy process. The conclusions assess the hypotheses and draw implications for the study of knowledge utilisation, policy change, and policy types.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Hornung ◽  
Nils C Bandelow

Do biographies of policy elites make a difference for the policy process and output? Leading theories of the policy process focus on other explanations that mostly have been derived from peculiarities of American politics. This article transfers a French approach to the study of policy processes in German health policy. It emphasizes how this French perspective presents an added value in the form of the programmatic action framework. At its core, the programmatic action framework proposes that programmatic elites in policy sectors form on the basis of shared biographical intersections and connect to a joint program. Applying the programmatic action framework to the German case of a programmatic elite in health policy that dominated the last quarter-century of major reforms, the analysis reveals the explanatory power of the programmatic action framework in other political contexts. A transfer of the programmatic action framework to other countries and policy issues, however, must respect the specificities of the political system and policy subsystem. In Germany, the specific role of self-governance enhances the analytical categories of the programmatic action framework, moving beyond the traditional conflict between custodians and austerians of state.


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.


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