Is Policy Entrepreneur Research Headed in the Right Directions?
Policy entrepreneurship explores how individuals and organizations navigate political and institutional landscapes to advance policy change. Professor Arnold’s work examines the strategies these actors use to shape environmental policy, from building coalitions to leveraging windows of opportunity. Her talk will provide insights into what we currently understand about effective policy entrepreneurship in environmental science and policy.
—Mark Buntaine, Professor, Bren School
View a recording of this seminar here
ABSTRACT
We present preliminary results of a systematic literature review of policy entrepreneurship scholarship published since 2000. Previous recent reviews of this literature, most notably Aviram et al. (2020a, 2020b), tend to focus on substantive questions, like whether policy entrepreneurs act as individuals versus in collectives, or what strategies entrepreneurs most often employ. We focus on different, unexplored questions around the methodological rigor of this literature or lack thereof. By examining more than 400 scholarly works, we demonstrate that policy entrepreneur research often lacks clear standards for distinguishing policy entrepreneurs from other policy participants and lacks consistent application of standards that may exist; typically employs qualitative methods and does not explore generalizability across large samples; often fails to examine cases of entrepreneur absence, preventing scholars from understanding whether policy entrepreneur activities actually impact outcomes; and gives short shrift to the question of what motivations policy entrepreneurs. We also offer one of the first systematic explorations of policy entrepreneur motivations, finding that entrepreneurs are most commonly motivated by public service ethos and career priorities. If time, the presentation may also overview preliminary results nearly 30 interviews, exploring the motivations of policy entrepreneurs who have sought to influence policies concerning unconventional oil and natural gas production.
BIO
Gwen Arnold is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at University of California, Davis. At UC Davis, she co-directs the Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior and leads the undergraduate Environmental Policy and Planning major. She is also Associate Editor and Short Articles Editor with Policy Studies Journal and a member of the executive board for the APSA Section on Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy. Her current research examines how communities navigate energy transitions and how policy advocates try to influence local governance around energy and environmental issues. Outside of work she volunteers at a local dog rescue and spends time with her husband, 3 dogs, 3-4 cats, 2 fish, and 3 children; the children are the most feral of them all.