Formalized Policy Entrepreneurship as a Governance Tool for Policy Integration

ABSTRACT

Policy entrepreneurs and their role for policy change, policy integration and cross-cutting governance has been thoroughly investigated. Here, focus is on a previously neglected aspect of policy entrepreneurship: the tendency to employ public bureaucrats with formal positions to act as policy entrepreneurs for policy integration. Based on 34 interviews with these actors in the Swedish local and regional government, three versions of this formalized policy entrepreneurship are identified: Informal compensation for formal vertical flaws, Making others do things and Integration in the vertical formal organization. These versions of formalized policy entrepreneurship brings a deeper understanding to the development of governance for policy integration, and also to the policy entrepreneurial role in the political-administrative organization.

KEY WORDS:

• Policy entrepreneurship
• policy integration
• governance tools
• cross-cutting governance
• public bureaucrats

Introduction

Policy entrepreneurs and their agency have rendered increased attention in policy studies, and their active role in policy change has become acknowledged (Mintrom & Norman, 2009). Agency has been signalled to be of major importance when policies for cross-cutting problems are integrated with one another (Candel & Biesbroek, 2016) because agents serve as boundary spanners and brokers between conflicting legitimacies in policy negotiation (Edelenbos & Van Meerkerk, 2015; Van Meerkerk & Edelenbos, 2015; Williams, 2012, 2013). The tools for a successful policy entrepreneur are thus skills of framing, communication and relational competence (Van Hulst & Yanow, 2016; Aukes, Lulofs, & Bressers, 2017; Hysing, 2014; see also Williams, 2012, 2013).

Cross-cutting governance, and policy integration of cross-cutting problems, are perceived as methods to improve the capacity of the vertically organized political-administrative organization to face complex societal challenges. Acknowledgement of policy entrepreneurship as an important aspect of policy change, cross-cutting governance and policy integration in both research and governance, has led to a tendency in public organizations to employ public bureaucrats with formal tasks of serving as entrepreneurs for policy integration. These formal policy entrepreneurs hold titles such as strategists, coordinators and developers, and can be found in various tiers of government. Mostly, they focus on policy integration of developmental policies for growth, social inclusion and the environment, but they can also be found in fields such as human resources, communication and quality.

This article focuses on a previously neglected aspect of policy entrepreneurship; the tendency to formalize the policy entrepreneurial action into explicit formal policy entrepreneur positions in public administration. This research gap is worth focusing on when examining the relation between policy entrepreneurs and policy integration for cross-cutting problems, in order to understand in what way formalization of the policy entrepreneurial action can contribute to integration and policy change and, in the wider perspective, can function as a governance instrument. Policy entrepreneurship has mostly been studied from a behavioural approach, and the conclusion shows us that policy entrepreneurial behaviour to a large extent includes informal (e.g. not explicitly formulated in job descriptions) characteristics, such as finding allies via networking and personal contacts; framing of topics to fit within various policy discussions; and outsourcing the advocacy to others, in order to strategically keep a consensus relation (Mintrom & Norman, 2009; Kingdon, 1984/2003; Hysing, 2014; Aukes et al., 2017). In contrast to informal behaviour, political-administrative behaviour is to a great extent characterized by formal structures, such as hierarchy, routines, and procedural fairness, and these aspects are also considered to be defining principles of the democratic system. The tendency to formalize policy entrepreneurial action as an instrument for policy integration is therefore likely to have implications for how actors with formal policy entrepreneurial positions take on their tasks, due to the intersection of informality in how policy entrepreneurial behaviour and formality is defined in the establishment of the policy entrepreneurial positions.

This article contributes to research on the policy entrepreneurial role and policy integration by analysing the stories of 34 formal policy entrepreneurs in Swedish local and regional government. The aim is to investigate how these actors undertake their formal positions and how they combine formal and informal strategies within horizontal and vertical governance arrangements. Thus, the article focusses on the interplay between the contextual factors and the strategists’ choices and ideas of how to work (Bevir 2004; Archer, 2003; Bevir & Rhodes, 2006; Bevir, Rhodes, & Weller, 2003; Bevir & Richards, 2009; Burkitt, 2016).

The following section presents a framework based on the concept of policy integration and the logics of formal and informal action in public administration. Thereafter, a brief section covers the contextual situation of the formal policy entrepreneurs, in order to clarify who and where they are in the Swedish administrative context. The section continues to describe the material and methods used in this paper. The result of the analysis is used to explicate the work of the formal policy entrepreneurs and reveals three distinct versions of formal policy entrepreneurship characterized by different combinations of formal and informal elements in the vertical and horizontal governance. Finally, some general conclusions are presented on the potential for, and dangers of policy integration, which can be discerned from the effects of the formalization of policy entrepreneur positions.

Formal policy entrepreneurs and strategies for policy integration

The policy entrepreneur concept refers to the actor working for policy by identifying and connecting streams of opportunities and by being persistent, convincing and knowledgeable (Kingdon, 1984/2003). The concept of policy entrepreneurship has been applied to various actors. This has led to criticism regarding usability of the definition due to its vagueness as to who the policy entrepreneur really is, and what the scope of the policy entrepreneur’s agency is in a non-rational policy process (Hammond, 2013; Mintrom, 2015; Mintrom & Norman, 2009). Although the subfields within research on policy entrepreneurs cover many aspects of policy entrepreneurship among public administrators, in terms of what policy entrepreneurs tend to do, i.e. behave and act (Hysing, 2014; Hysing & Olsson, 2011; Olsson, 2009; Olsson & Hysing, 2012; Petridou & Olausson, 2017), the impact of formalization of the policy entrepreneurial role as a governance instrument has not been investigated.

It can be argued that formalization of policy entrepreneurs in the political-administrative organization belongs to the development of cross-cutting governance as a governance approach, alongside policy integration as a practical approach, to policy formation. As with policy entrepreneurs, cross-sectorial and integrative governance is discussed under an extensive number of terms and in various fields of research: network governance (e.g. Koppenjan & Klijn, 2004; Stoker, 2006), holistic governance (e.g. +6 et al., 2002), joined-up governance (e.g. Bogdanor, 2005), whole-of-government (e.g. Christensen & Laegreid, 2007), horizontal governance (e.g. Bolleyer, 2011) and mainstreaming (e.g. Brouwer, Rayner, & Huitema, 2013; Pollack & Hafner-Burton, 2000; Squires, 2005). The overall development could be described as a response to the formal rigidity of classical public administration, and of the “pillarization” of the public sector which increased during the New Public Management era (Candel & Biesbroek, 2016; Halligan, Buick, & O ́Flynn, 2011; Stout, 2013). Cross-cutting/horizontal governance and policy integration thus hold a strong acknowledgment of the value of informal governance elements. Formality in organization generally refers to explicit rules, structures and responsibilities for how the unit should work. Informality in organization means the activities which are going on alongside the rule-based structures, by individuals and by networks between individuals. Formal and informal interaction orders are closely intertwined and fill important purposes; formality creates accountability and responsibility, and informality creates cooperative and flexible arrangements (Lundquist, 2011:81; Morand, 1995:834; Misztal, 2005; Stead, 2008; Hrelja,Robert, Jason, Tom, & Scholten, 2017).

Thus, there is an embedded tension in formalizing horizontal policy integration and cross-cutting policies into the vertically governed and organized public organization. This tension results in various strategies for policy integration, which combine the elements of formality/informality and verticality/horizontality in different ways (see Tosun & Lang, 2017; Cejudo & Michel, 2017). Thus, formalization of policy entrepreneurship holds two interconnected dynamics: formal and informal action, and vertical and horizontal governance logics.

In order to analyse the formalization of the policy entrepreneurship for policy integration, focus is on the strategies that the formal policy entrepreneurs apply to make sense of their work. Strategies should here be understood as sets of ideas for what is an efficient and legitimate course of action, founded in the various traditions of governance which formality/informality and horizontality/verticality constitute (Bevir 2004; Bevir et al., 2003). In order to capture this, a basic framework of strategies of formality/informality and horizontality/verticality is elaborated:

1) Formal-vertical strategies

The classical approach to public administrative work can be referred to as formal-vertical, where strategies for efficiency and legitimacy go via hierarchy and clear sectorization of knowledge and expertise (Peters, 1998). In the processual approach to policy integration, the formal-vertical organization is the target of integration, where cross-cutting policies are naturally integrated in the formal-vertical organization (Candel & Biesbroek, 2016; Howlett, Vince, & Del Rio, 2017). (Processual policy integration in the formal-vertical organization does not necessarily mean that the cross-cutting policies are formally addressed, but rather that the appropriate strategies for integration are considered to be the formal-vertical organization).

2) Informal-vertical strategies

The informal-vertical strategies can to a large extent be found in the classical approach to policy entrepreneurship. The legitimacy and efficiency for these strategies go via networks for vertical resource and interest allocation, and by referring to expert knowledge (Kingdon, 1984/2003, p. 3).

3) Formal-horizontal strategies

The formal-horizontal strategies can be traced to the initial attempts within cross-cutting governance. Here, the strategies for efficiency and legitimacy reside in formal horizontal organization attempts, such as projects, partnerships and joint collaborations for policy integration and knowledge sharing (Christensen & Laegreid, 2007; Halligan et al., 2011). These formal-horizontal strategies have been problematized in governance studies, from the viewpoint that they tend to exhaust the organizations (Fred, 2015; Fred & Hall, 2017).

4) Informal-horizontal strategies

Finally, informal-horizontal strategies resemble the approach within newer versions of cross-cutting governance, where legitimacy and efficiency are considered to reside in strategies for establishing common understanding, knowledge and inspiration via networks (Stoker, 2006; Tosun & Lang, 2017). This is often presented as an important foundation for policy integration when moving towards processual integration in the vertical organization (Candel & Biesbroek, 2016).

These four approaches constitute a frame for analysis of the interviews with formal policy entrepreneurs. In order to capture the intersection of strategies for efficiency and legitimacy, focus is on four areas: 1) how the level of formal-vertical policy integration is perceived; 2) how the policy integration strategies stemming from formal horizontal arrangements are perceived in relation to vertical formal arrangements; 3) how the formal policy entrepreneurs legitimize their role; and 4) how they address generation of common understanding and knowledge between actors in the vertical organization and the actors representing cross-cutting policies.

Context, research method and data

The formal policy entrepreneurs are public administrators assigned the task of monitoring, initiating, promoting and coordinating policy integration of a specific cross-cutting problem in the public organization. This study focuses on the formal policy entrepreneurs in the Swedish local and regional government organization. Sweden has widely embraced policy integration of cross-cutting problems as a governance method, and formal policy entrepreneurship as a tool to achieve it. The argument for the local and regional focus is that these governance tiers are responsible for an extensive part of welfare services and development policies, and also hold extensive self-governance in relation to the national level. The cross-cutting problems objects of policy integration and formalization of policy entrepreneurial work are closely related to the institutionalized welfare production, which takes place to a high degree in the local and regional government organizations (Montin, 2015). These levels also hold freedom to organize the administration in various ways, which leads to wide variation also in regard to how the formalization of policy entrepreneurship and policy integration is organized. Combined, these contextual factors make the Swedish local and regional government organizations an interesting context when studying the intersection of formality and informality, due to their variation in vertical and horizontal governance.

The interview study consists of 34 interviews with formal policy entrepreneurs for various policy areas in the municipal and regional administration, described in Table 1.¹ They are here all referred to as “strategists”; however, the titles could also include strategist, coordinator, development leader and developer. In general, the titles are not a reliable way to categorize the tasks of this group, because the title in a specific setting appears to have emerged in a rather ad hoc manner (Svensson, 2017).

Table 1. Respondents.

Policy field	Number
Gender equality	2
Diversity	4
Public health	7
Children and youth	3
Safety	3
Security	3
Sustainability	3
Tourism	7
Mixed	2
Total	34

The interviews were conducted between June 2012 and October 2013, and in the spring of 2018. They lasted between approximately one hour and two and a half hours. The respondents come from eight different municipalities and seven regions. Three of the strategists have a managerial function. The respondents consist of 24 women and 10 men, and the age of the respondents ranges from late 20s to retirement age, around 65. The time gap between the interviews could potentially have been a problem; however, it did not turn out to be a determining factor for variation between the respondents. The contextual variation could also have been a potential issue for distinguishing reliable variation in positioning between the respondents; however, this also does not appear to be a strong influential factor. Contextual factors such as organization size, geographic location and political governance are present in the stories of the respondents but appear to matter far less than the overall organizational logics and personal preferences of the respondents.

The municipal respondents have been identified based on an initial mapping of cross-sectoral work in the Swedish municipalities. The result of this mapping shows great variety in how the entrepreneurial work is organized. In some cases, there is almost no formal policy entrepreneurship work, and in other cases, there is a specific organizational unit of formal policy entrepreneurs dealing exclusively with entrepreneurial work. Based on this, eight municipalities with more explicit entrepreneurial work were selected, and the target has been to interview all or nearly all of the formal entrepreneurial working strategists in each municipality. Sampling was performed by locating one strategist in the chosen municipality, usually the one who was the first contact during mapping, and asking this strategist for more names.

The tourism strategists work in the regional organizations and have been located by searching through the web pages of the regions (see Svensson & Larsson forthc. 2019).

The interviews had a semi-structured character, based on an interview guide consisting of eight general questions (Table 2). These questions are intended to target aspects potentially important for variation in policy entrepreneurship: level of vertical formal arrangements (policy integration); perspective on horizontal formal arrangements vs. vertical formal arrangements; the role of the strategists with formal policy entrepreneur position; and form of knowledge generation.

Table 2. Interview guide.

1. How would you describe your formal position defined in terms of mission, directives, target group, budget, organization, etc.?

2. How do you know what to do in your job?

3. What kind of knowledge and skills does your job require?

4. How would you describe an average work day in terms of practical work?

5. What would you say characterizes horizontal and strategic work?

6. How do you perceive your relation to politicians?

7. How do you perceive yourself as a professional and expert?

8. What is the most important input when defining your work, in terms of policies and actors in the field?

These questions were complemented with follow-up questions which opened for elaboration. The interviews have been recorded, transcribed and coded according to which strategies respondents mention when describing and legitimizing the four themes: level of formal-vertical integration; perspective on horizontal formal arrangements vs. vertical formal arrangements; role of strategists; and form of knowledge generation.

Three versions of formal policy entrepreneurship emerge from the analysis. They are not mutually exclusive, but rather to be considered ideal-typical, in the sense that the focal point of the respondents resides in one of the versions, although elements from the others may still be present.

Three versions of formal entrepreneurship

The three versions of formal policy entrepreneurship are summarized in Table 3 and elaborated upon more extensively below. The Table shows the identified three forms of formal policy entrepreneurship according to the categorization of the four themes. It is complemented with a categorization of governance advantages and disadvantages that the respondents discuss as implications of their approaches to formal policy entrepreneurship.

Table 3. Summary of three versions of formal policy entrepreneurship.

Versions of formal policy entrepreneurship	Informal compensation for formal vertical flaws	Making others do things	Integration in the vertical formal organization
Level of vertical formal arrangements, i.e. policy integration	Symbolically low Practically low	Symbolically high Practically low	Symbolically high Practically high
Perspective on horizontal formal arrangements vs. vertical formal arrangements	Horizontal formal arrangements are proper additions to the vertical structure	Horizontal formal arrangements are tools to convince the vertical organization of the usability of the horizontal strategic topics	Horizontal formal arrangements are a waste of energy and resources
Role of strategists	Facilitating informal networks and horizontal initiatives	Persuade the formal vertical organization to integrate the horizontal strategic policy areas	Bridging the formal vertical organization and the horizontal strategic targets
Form of knowledge generation	Organic: vertical and horizontal actors create common understanding when they so desire	Constrained: the strategic knowledge and the vertical sector knowledge collide	Two-fold: strategic horizontal knowledge and vertical sector knowledge

Informal compensation for formal vertical flaws

In the first version, focus is on horizontal and vertical informality, to compensate for flaws in the vertical formal organization. The strategists consider it to be their job to facilitate these informal aspects, both by generating a common understanding and by actively working to allocate resources. In practice, it often takes the shape of project management, and as facilitating networks for resources and common understanding.

In this version of formal policy entrepreneurship, the strategist is very dependent on the informal personal contacts with managers, politicians and others. Thus, although the strategist holds a formal position, the outcome of the formal policy entrepreneurship is almost identical to the outcome of activities of informal policy entrepreneurship, covered in previous research. It is almost entirely bound to the individual and his/her commitment, resources and capacities.

This approach also means a rather organic knowledge generation regarding the strategic topic, where there is an embedded openness to various framings of the strategic topics, and the strategists represent one of these voices.

Sometimes I work rather operatively. Maybe I should work more strategically. And it comes with the topic, for example when you work with associations, they do not have the same tool as the municipal units, and then they ask me, and get involved. But there is a political ambition related to this, that we should use the associations when possible. (…) I also have a seat on the council for crime prevention. It is really not my job either, but someone must do it. And in that setting, I also collaborate with the social services. And we have collaborations with the culture and leisure department, and a school project. (Children)

It does not, however, mean that the strategist reframes from the overall ambition and task to lobby for the strategic policy area.

We know quite well what to do. But I cannot say that it works very well with all the sectors. They often have other priorities and there is no money. (Security)

The dependency on contacts creates a space where the strategists can be either very recipient to the political voice regarding the topic at hand, or act as an independent renegade in the organization, which other actors may or may not appreciate.

There are disadvantages. Because every time I ask for something, they say: ”you will fix it”. That is how it often ends up. They believe that I have all the answers, but unfortunately that is not the case. Sometimes I need input. I am rather intense when I do things, and sometimes things move fast. And I sometimes do not have the patience to wait for decisions. (Diversity)

The advantage with this approach in relation to formal entrepreneurship as a governance tool in the political-administrative organization, is that framing the strategic work and the strategic topics is generated in an organic way, with room for various voices to be authentically heard, i.e. heard when they desire to participate. The disadvantage is that if neither the strategist nor other actors are active, the strategic topic may not get much attention.

Making others do things

In the second version, the formal aspects of the formal policy entrepreneurship are more acknowledged via an increased level of horizontal formality. The strategic topics are explicitly named as objects of horizontal formality, in terms of horizontal organizational arrangements, such as formalized networks and projects. There is also a rather high level of symbolic vertical integration, in terms of plans and policies for strategic policy integration, and symbolic acknowledgement:

It is hard because everyone placed in units is extremely stressed most of the time, and you do not have time to accept new missions and new thoughts, and you may not even have the education or understanding to listen to something new, and if you do not hear you will not do anything either. What I perceive as the most difficult, it must be time. When talking to people and describing why it is so important, it is rare that someone thinks you are wrong or says that “I do not agree at all about that”, or have another idea of how things should be done. It rarely happens – or has never happened to me. But it is this, that “well, now she is also coming”, so you shut down or listen and are polite and then you do nothing with it, so it is very much about selling and winning. And about selling, I think it’s said that if you pitch a hundred times, ten listen and one acts! (Safety)

On a practical level, the vertical policy integration is low, due to resistance in the vertical organization and rigidity in the formal vertical structure. The following quote from a security strategist illustrates the clashes between the horizontal formal initiatives and the vertical formal structure:

When we have a comprehensive project, no one is in charge. Let me borrow your pen. (Draws the organization tree). Here you have the city council. Under them, there is the city board. And under them is, in our case it is called the city office, which has the function of an administration unit. And the problem is that under the city board, you also find the political boards for Children and families, and Health and Social Care. And they have administrative units under them, each with a manager. This means that one manager does not have power over the other. There are no arrows between them in the tree. And you cannot take this question (about the alarms) to the city board, because this is a question in fact which has nothing to do with the city board, it just happens to be a comprehensive question. But the city council does not have any arrows to the other administrative units, unless it is included in a policy somewhere, that my manager has the mandate to make decisions about the work environment guidelines or something. But in my field, there is nothing like that. So, I do not have any mandate at all. (Security)

This acknowledgement of the formality of the horizontal work leads to more direct clashes between the organizational forms than in embracing the informality, and the strategists direct their work to move around what they perceive as vertical formal obstacles, and as vertical informal resistance to the effects of the formal acknowledgement of the horizontal demands. In order to do so, the strategists apply a wide range of informal methods, such as reframing, keeping contacts warm and using the formal projects as a trampoline to reach further.

These clashes also apply to the political level, and the formalization of the horizontal work creates hesitation from the political governance on the extent to which the topics require further political stands. Also, the strategists are ambivalent about the role of politicians: they need the political legitimacy to enhance the horizontal arrangements, but simultaneously, they consider certain parts of the strategic work to be the object of expertise rather than politics.

The road to create an equal society is a bit different, more on the individual level on the centre-right side. And we notice that a lot in national politics. I can say that national politics are not really keeping up with what we are doing at the local level. And that is a bit of an obstacle for us, and we see this obstacle. All municipalities see it. In national politics, they focus a lot on living habits, and here we almost do not work with that at all. Because we think that these things are affected by how the structure looks; structural changes matter more for living habits than participating in an anti-smoking course or getting more exercise or whatever it may be. If you see it from a municipal perspective, it may be more about changing food in the schools than giving children or parents diet counselling. That is, make sure you give societal preconditions (...). All that is more important for us than trying to target pure living habits. (Public health)

The overall approach to the knowledge within this approach is that strategic horizontal work means making others, i.e. the managers in the sectors, do things, and in this making, merging the strategic expertise with the expertise represented in the sector.

The advantage with this approach in relation to formal policy entrepreneurship as a governance tool in the political-administrative organization is that it opens the discussion and action on the intrinsic collision between formality-informality and verticality-horizontality, both at the managerial and political level. The disadvantage is that the strategist may become a token in this discussion, and be sidelined as such, with very little mandate, as is illustrated by one diversity and one security strategist:

On the surface, the discretion might look very extensive. But if it is to have any effect, it is actually quite limited. Because I cannot do it myself. I constantly need to base it on having others who pick up, others who take initiatives and do their share. So, it is actually very limited if you have to wait for the municipality to figure out that this is what we want and what we should do.

I: Does it have any effect on the discretion that there is no clear definition of what you should do?

R: Yes, it is very limiting. If I knew exactly what was meant with the diversity council, I do not know, but at least it turns into action. It facilitates action. You can sit there and push pencils forever, and if the topic does not come up, you become a hostage. (Diversity)

Sometimes people say ‘you, who are responsible for security’. No, I am not; every manager is responsible for his/her own unit and the security in it. However, what I can do, is to provide good advice and make sure that they are in an environment which facilitates taking on that responsibility. (…) For example, if there is fire, the managers are actually accountable if pupils get killed. I am not accountable for anything, but a school principle is, and this is a major driving factor for me. That they should know what the legislation demands of them. Because they are accountable for it. And after, they can do whatever they want. But they need to know, and if you have not explained it to them, you can put a person in a terrible position. (Security)

Integration in the vertical formal organization

In the third version, the vertical formality is acknowledged as the major structural frame, into which the strategic horizontal topics should fit. The levels of both the symbolic and the practical formal vertical arrangements are relatively high, in terms of formal plans for policy integration and organizational arrangements for it, such as strategic units working towards the vertical organization. Because of this approach, the formal horizontal governance arrangements are considered to consume more time and resources than they generate, and the strategists are tired of them.

In this approach, the strategists generally have access to the vertical informal forums that are the target in the second version. The strategists consider themselves to be strategists, and their formal role to work for process integration. The political legitimacy is important, but is in this version rather established, via allocated money and a stronger mandate for the strategic work. The strategists consider it to be their task to explain this to other actors in the organization, illustrated by one gender equality strategist:

We are thinking about making one policy for the work environment, gender equality, equal treatment, and management. We want to make one plan for all of them, and one annual evaluation, so that we can see that everything is connected. I usually add financial goals, so you can see equal treatment work in the annual report. I try to facilitate the work of managers, so they will have fewer evaluations to hand in and a more comprehensive understanding of how things are going. (Gender equality)

In this third version of formal policy entrepreneurship, the responsiveness to political signals is both stronger and weaker than in the first and second version. Stronger, because the formal political acknowledgement is considered one of the most important factors for the formal practical integration in the vertical structure. Weaker, because the strategists in this third version consider the strategic work to facilitate democracy, rather than politics or expertise:

You need to be extremely competent in your field, with extensive specialist knowledge. And you have to be driven by a certain energy in terms of believing in the topics; I do not think you can work with this if you do not have an interest. You can mature into taking responsibility for a topic, but I think it is important that you see these topics as crucial for a comprehensive society. You need to be persistent, but not hard-headed. Patient but also able to stand up and say now it is time, but also understand what it is like to work in a bigger organization and have an understanding of the prerequisites of politics. You need to be rather flexible and fast, and be able to switch, because politics can change. It is like in the state departments, we could face the same development here, that politics would switch, and what would that imply for me as an administrator? Potentially, if the Sweden Democrats were to get 35 percent of the citizens’ votes, what would that imply for my work? A different political management would imply a lot, of course. And you have to have a personal preference for these topics, feel that you know, like, and master them. (…) Maybe it is wrong to say something like this, but I see my mission as bigger, to also enable the voice that the politicians are actually there to hear. I do not perceive myself as just the extended arm of politics. I see it as my role to show that this is what it looks like in society; you have to form an opinion on it, for us to provide proper material. Maybe that could be interpreted as an administrative regime, but I do not see it that way. (Sustainability)

The generation of knowledge is divided into two levels: the specific knowledge which each sector holds, and the strategic knowledge which is held by the strategists. This resembles the approach in the second version, with the distinct difference that the strategic expertise in the third version is not about making others do things but, rather, supporting others in what they do, to steer them into the strategic umbrella, but not necessarily to convince them about actual strategic targets, which the strategists know.

This means that the strategists frame their formal role differently depending on the counterpart, just as they did in the second version. However, the formal policy entrepreneurship in the third version thus takes the form of guarding the overall strategic target, rather than individual horizontal policy areas:

It is important to understand how it is all connected. Many others are in units which only have knowledge about their field. If we do not have the skill to generate knowledge and transform it so we can teach others, we cannot justify our existence. It is important to understand the strategic and theoretical, how everything is connected, what the needs are, the conditions and limitations.(…) when we work with companies, we work very operatively. (Tourism)

The advantage of this version in relation to formal policy entrepreneurship as a governance tool in the political-administrative organization is that the horizontal strategic work holds a stronger institutional foundation which permeates and is acknowledged by the vertical formal organization. The disadvantage is that the separation between the strategic level and the units of the vertical formal organization might lead to decoupling between the levels, and, in the long term, to lack of transparency, since this still resides in the vertical formal organization. In other words, policy integration is formally acknowledged as desired, which gives the formal policy entrepreneurs a stronger mandate to lobby for, and steer different actors towards, the overall strategic target of policy integration. However, this stronger formal mandate to uphold the strategic level by reframing, may also hide conflicts on resources and ideology which would have occurred if it were not for professional framing by formal policy entrepreneurs.

Conclusion

The three versions of policy entrepreneurship distinguished in this study are not to be understood as expressions of a linear process where one version transcends into the next; they exist independently and hold distinct advantages and disadvantages as governance tools. However, the respondents sometimes refer to these various modes of working as a process of development, where they work towards integration in the formal vertical organization. They prefer not to work so much with formal horizontal activities, such as projects and partnerships, and they also somewhat reject the informal vertical work, i.e. networks to allocate resources. They still apply informal work, but as a method to achieve process integration in the formal vertical organization, rather than as a target in itself. The respondents are in these cases clear about what they see their task to be in formal policy integration. They see that the current possibilities to work according to this are a result of previous entrepreneurial work, where they worked according to informal compensation for formal vertical flaws and by making others do things. This could be understood as a stronger professional conviction of the formal policy entrepreneurial role; at its core, it is not about the personal agenda and personal capacity to convince others to do things, but to get the topics integrated in the processes of the political-administrative organization. In this sense the reasoning of the formal policy entrepreneurs lies close to the policy integration literature (Candel & Biesbroek, 2016; Howlett et al., 2017; Tosun & Lang, 2017)

This linear narrative is strongly present, but not unanimous. Some respondents express a more appreciative approach to formal horizontal arrangements, and some see compensation for vertical flaws to be the core of the work as a formal policy entrepreneur, even though the degree of policy integration in the formal vertical organization may be high. The respondents also express that they shift between different ways of approaching their role depending on the context, although they usually keep one of them as their personal motivation.

When analysing the versions of working formally informal, the general conclusion which can be drawn is that although the formal policy entrepreneurs express the ambiguities of formal informality as complicating factors, they simultaneously turn their “formal informality” into their most important source of success in their target of working strategically. The formality of their position provides them with symbolic legitimacy, which they can frame strategically as entrepreneurs when promoting their policy fields in the vertical formal bureaucracy. With this approach, formal policy entrepreneurs can be understood as a rational organizational answer to complex policy problems, and as a method to combine the advantages of formality and informality to reach policy change. Another approach to the formal policy entrepreneurs’ positions and the consequences of balancing between the formal and informal, could be that their extensive discretion and varying loyalties constitute a threat to the representative democracy for which the bureaucracy is considered a tool (see Poulsen, 2009; Sørensen, 2004).

Based on the result of this study, it can be argued that both of these approaches are valid: formalized policy entrepreneurship appears to be a pragmatic approach when aiming at integrating and highlighting different policy areas in the formal vertical organization. Based on the anticipatory approach which the formal policy entrepreneurs take towards politicians and the sectors in the formal vertical hierarchy, there is no argument to substantiate that their positions are a threat to democratic procedures. On the contrary, their ability to use their informal channels may improve it. However, this is based on informal choices of action made by the formal policy entrepreneurs. They usually make the choice to work anticipatory and to see the input from the formal vertical organization as an important source of information, but they have extensive freedom and methods to make other choices.

Thus, given that formal policy entrepreneurs have the intention of performing the balancing act between the formal and informal, and the horizontal and the vertical, and if they commit to handling the ambiguity which arises in this breaking point, their positions fill an important purpose in bringing together the positive aspects of both formality and informality, horizontality and verticality. However, a clearer acknowledgement regarding the meaning and purpose of formal policy entrepreneurship deserves to be made, both for the sake of bureaucracy as a democratic tool, and for development of governance for policy integration.

Publications

Svensson, Petra (forthc. 2019) Tvärsektoriell styrning. Lund: Nordic Academic Press

Svensson, Petra, och Syssner, Josefina (forthc. 2019) ”Destinationsstrategiskt arbete- att organisera platsskapande” i Ymer (eds. Heldt Cassel, Susanna & Wall-Reinius Sandra) Svenska Sällskapet för Antropologi och Geografi

Svensson, Petra & Larsson, Sebastian (forthc. 2019) Kunskapsstyrning i besöksnäringen. Regionala samordnares perspektiv på kunskap i destinationsutveckling. Centre for Municipality Studies

Svensson, Petra (2017) Cross-sector Strategists. Dedicated Bureaucrats in Local Government Administration. School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg

Carlsson, Vanja, Svensson Petra, Johansson, Vicki & Montin, Stig (2016) ”Handledare, vägledare eller kontrollant”. Utbildning & Lärande, 10(1): 20-39

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The interviews were conducted in two research projects: Cross-Sector Strategists 2010–2017 University of Gothenburg, and Knowledge management in tourism 2018–2020, Linköping University.