Policy Entrepreneurs

Traditional neoclassical economic theory was silent about how new products and processes emerge in firms and markets. The theory of the entrepreneur who spots gaps in the market was developed to cover this lacuna. Similarly, there is a long-standing interest in why policies emerge at the times they do; one answer is they emerge through the activities of the policy (or political) entrepreneur. John Kingdon notes that such is the seeming unpredictability and fast-moving character of events that policy makers are often unable to explain in retrospect why a particular measure is put in place at a particular time. Scholars believe that while chance has a role to play, it is the influence of certain actors in the policy process who happen to be in the right place at the right time, who use their positions to advocate their preferred policy choice. The policy entrepreneur metaphor is now widely used in the study of public policy, in particular to describe how innovation takes place.

These people are entrepreneurs in the sense that they get a benefit from the policy being adopted, which pays them back for spending such a long time in the wilderness of lobby groups and advocates, where they do not get much reward for their efforts. Policy entrepreneurs can be from outside the institutions of the state, such as the heads of specialist lobby groups, or parts of think tanks, or even academics who develop a particular specialist interest or hobby horse. But they can also operate within institutions, as do bureaucrats and legislators, and even the outsiders tend to have official positions, such as sitting on expert committees. The common feature is that these people are not neutral—they have a position and they want to get it adopted.

The literature concurs that it is mainly luck that has to be on the side of the policy entrepreneur—a fortuitous combination of circumstances that allows the entrepreneur to put forward the preferred policy position and advance it on the agenda, so that the proposal in effect attains a momentum of its own through the process of positive feedback. What this means is that sometimes old policies are picked out of the garbage can almost at random, and the entrepreneur just tries to manage the choice so that his preferred policy is picked. In the lexicon of power, they are lucky rather than powerful. But skill does play its role, especially in the early stages. Policy entrepreneurs need to be adept at presenting arguments in ways that appeal to the current concerns of the moment: they need to know who to lobby and when. They must outwit their many opponents who also lack structural power. Most of all they must know when their time has come, when the window of opportunity has opened so they can push their case. Once they have done this and the upswing is in motion, they can sit back and reap the rewards of fame, official recognition, and even office. Thus, for the policy entrepreneur it is not “gaps in the market” that they spot, as much as the propitious [Page 487]times at which to try to get a policy on the agenda and through to legislation.

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