The role of individual agents in promoting peace processes: business people and policy entrepreneurship in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

ABSTRACT

Are individual businesspeople who operate as policy entrepreneurs willing and able to influence peace processes in conflict areas? The literature on businesspeople as policy agents shifts when talking about peace processes, focusing on group level activities and ignoring the effect of individual agents. We argue that rather than regarding businesspeople as a traditional interest group, we should consider the approaches to promoting change that strongly motivated individuals adopt as policy entrepreneurs. Based on interviews with senior Israeli businesspeople and decision-makers, we demonstrate how strongly motivated Israeli businesspeople promote peace as policy entrepreneurs. We identify their motivations, goals, challenges, and the strategies they use. The findings indicate that although motivated by economic profits, businesspeople undertake activities that may prove very beneficial to both themselves and society as a whole.

KEYWORDS:

• Public policy
• policy entrepreneurship
• businesspeople
• conflict
• Israeli–Palestinian peace process
• peace initiatives

Notes on contributors

Niva Golan-Nadir is a Doctoral Candidate in Political Science at the University of Haifa in Israel, and an Israel Institute Doctoral Fellow. Her research interests include Comparative Politics, Institutional Theory, Public Policy, State-Religion Relations and Identity Politics

Nissim Cohen is a member of the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Haifa in Israel. His research interests include Public Policy, Public Administration, the Welfare State, Social Policy and Health Policy.

Additional information

Funding

This research is a part from a wider project on Policy Entrepreneurship in Israel which is supported by a grant from The Israel Science Foundation (ISF)