1st Edition
Entrepreneurship in the Polis Understanding Political Entrepreneurship
Dynamics of entrepreneurship have attracted growing attention from scholars of political science, policy studies, public administration and planning, as well as more recently, from the realms of international relations and foreign policy analysis. Under the banner of political entrepreneurship, this volume considers and maps out conceptual approaches to the study of entrepreneurship drawn from these fields, discusses synergies, envisages new analytical tools and offers contemporary empirical case studies, illustrating the diverse political contexts in which entrepreneurship takes place in the polis. Drawing upon an international cast of senior academics and cutting edge young researchers, the volume takes a closer look at key aspects of political entrepreneurship, such as, defining political entrepreneurs, how it relates to change, decision-making and strategies, organizational arrangements, institutional rules, varying contexts and future research agendas. By highlighting the political aspects of entrepreneurship, the volume presents new exciting opportunities for understanding entrepreneurial activities at regional, national and international levels. The volume will be of particular relevance to scholars and students of political science, policy studies, public administration, planning, international relations and business studies as well as practitioners interested in the nexus and utility of entrepreneurship in the modern-day political world.
1 Unpacking the Theoretical Boxes of Political Entrepreneurship 1
Evangelia Petridou, Inga Narbutaité Aflaki, and Lee Miles
2 The Networks of Political Entrepreneurs: A Case Study of Swiss Climate Policy 17
Karin Ingold and Dimitris Christopoulos
3 Policy Entrepreneurs Meeting Mediators—a Conceptual Extension 31
Elin Wihlborg
4 City Planners as Political Entrepreneurs: Do They Exist; Can They Exist? 43
Dimitri Ioannides
5 Setting the Policy Agenda: A Policy Entrepreneurial Perspective on Urban
Development in the Netherlands 55
Simon Verduijn
6 The Role of Policy Entrepreneurs in Regional Governance Processes 73
Michael Böcher
7 Political Entrepreneurs and Institutional Change: Governability, Liberal Political
Culture, and the 1992 Electoral Reform in Israel 87
Assaf Meydani
8 Policy Entrepreneurs and Morality Politics: Learning from Failure and Success 103
Michael Mintrom
9 Regional Autonomy and Political Entrepreneurship 119
Pär M. Olausson
10 Political Entrepreneurship as Painful Choices: An Examination of Swedish
(Post)-Neutrality Security Policy 133
Lee Miles
11 How Do Entrepreneurs Make National Security Policy? A Case Study of the
G.W. Bush Administration 151
Charles-Philippe David
12 Innovators for the Public—How Norm and Social Entrepreneurs Fulfill the
Promises of Democracy 171
Lena Partzsch
13 The Opportunity Structures of Cambodian French Institutional Entrepreneurs:
A Study on Returnees’ Contributions to Transformative Change 191
Gea D.M. Wijers
14 Political Entrepreneurship Redux: Looking to the Future 205
Inga Narbutaité Aflaki, Evangelia Petridou, and Lee Miles
Biography
Inga Narbutaité Aflaki is a senior lecturer at Karlstad University in Karlstad, Sweden. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Karlstad University. Her research focuses on implementation studies within Public Policy field and policy entrepreneurship processes especially using bottom up approach. Evangelia Petridou has a background in public administration and Ancient Greek. She received her MPA from Missouri State University and is currently a PhD student in Political Science at Mid-Sweden University in Östersund, Sweden. Lee Miles is Professor of International Relations (IR) at Loughborough University, UK and also holds a Professorship in Political Science at Karlstad University, Sweden. Lee has written extensively on the foreign policies of the Nordic Countries, the politics of European integration and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA).
’With contributions from established and emerging scholars, this volume meets all the requirements of research excellence. It is original, devising a concise model for explaining the role of political entrepreneurship in policy change as well as factors that potentially influence political entrepreneurship. This study is also rigorous, covering, in some depth, domestic and foreign policy case study topics ranging from stem cell research to the pre-emptive strike of the US against Iraq. Above all, this is a significant book offering fresh insights into political entrepreneurship and the relationship between agency and structure. I cannot recommend this volume highly enough.’ Gordon Cumming, Cardiff University, UK ’In this path-breaking work, three scholars, Inga Narbutaité Aflaki, Evangelia Petridou and Lee Miles, revive the important and often forgotten concept of political entrepreneurship, and apply the concept to a broader political context. Taking a comparative approach, the authors utilize political entrepreneurship to better understand policy change, exploring various outcomes of entrepreneurial actions and strategies. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in political leadership, public policy, and comparative leadership. The authors do a great job defining the concept of political entrepreneurship and showing its relevancy in the twenty-first century.’ José de Arimatéia da Cruz, Armstrong State University, USA
