Policy entrepreneurship in Asia: the emerging research agenda

ABSTRACT

Policy entrepreneurs engage in collaborative action to promote broad societal changes. They distinguish themselves from other political actors through their willingness to promote policy innovations that are new within specific contexts. Research on policy entrepreneurs has burgeoned over the past three decades. In this special issue, we showcase new explorations of policy entrepreneurship in Asia. This overview essay reviews the concept of policy entrepreneur and then introduces the seven articles. The scholarship on display here confirms that future theory-driven research on policy entrepreneurs could do much to advance our understanding of dynamic change in contemporary politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy entrepreneurs
• policy innovation
• policy adoption
• policy change
• public sector reform
• comparative public policy

1. Introduction

Policy entrepreneurs are energetic actors who work with others in and around policymaking venues to promote significant policy change. Over recent decades, interest in policy entrepreneurs has grown exponentially. That interest has come both from scholars of public policy and from individuals working in and around government. Scholars of public policy have sought to better understand the roles that policy entrepreneurs play in policymaking processes. Their key concerns have been how and why policy entrepreneurship matters (Mintrom & Norman, 2009). For practitioners, the key concern has been how they might improve their own practice. They have looked to lessons drawn from the study of policy entrepreneurs to improve how they formulate and advance specific policy positions (Kalil, 2017; Mintrom, 2003).

Past investigations of policy entrepreneurs have explored their emergence and actions within specific policy domains and contexts. For example, various studies have considered efforts by policy entrepreneurs operating in and around sub-national government to promote policy innovations designed to reduce the release of greenhouse gases (e.g., Drummond, 2010; Kalafatis & Lemos, 2017; Mintrom & Luetjens, 2017; Rabe, 2004). Focusing on specific policy domains and contexts has worked well in terms of generating new insights regarding policy entrepreneurship.

We devised this special issue of the Journal of Asian Public Policy to serve as a forum for taking stock of the concept of the policy entrepreneur and the variety of ways that scholars have been exploring its relevance in the Asian context. Recent case studies from China indicated to us that considerable and important policy entrepreneurship occurs there (Hammond, 2013; He, 2018; He & Ma, 2019; Teets, 2015). Those studies have done much to signpost how further investigations might proceed. We were particularly interested in seeing how scholars working on public policy in Asia have applied the concept of policy entrepreneurship. As a result, we are able to showcase here seven studies that are diverse in the ways that they have used the concept of policy entrepreneurship. As we will show, there is also considerable theoretical coherence on display across these papers. Further, in their various ways, the authors have done much to advance conceptual understanding, investigating how our notions of policy entrepreneurship might be further stretched and revised. In combination, these papers provide many insights into how individuals and small teams of individuals gain efficacy in organizations and institutional arrangements established primarily to promote stability rather than change. As a result, these articles advance our understanding of the relationship between structure and agency. They serve well in establishing a new beachhead for research.

After discussing current conceptions of policy entrepreneurship and introducing the seven articles that follow, we present our thoughts on a fruitful research agenda for investigations of policy entrepreneurship in Asia. We see huge opportunities for new research projects to explore aspects of policy entrepreneurship in this fast-developing region of the world. We also believe that further research along these lines could contribute significantly to our understanding of contemporary political practices and how processes of dynamic change get started and gain momentum. The on-going study of policy entrepreneurship in Asia and everywhere provides an opportunity for advancing fundamental knowledge in the fields of policy studies, political science, and international studies. We hope that this overview essay and the seven articles that follow will encourage both emerging and established scholars to embark on new research on aspects of policy entrepreneurship.

2. The concept of the policy entrepreneur

John Kingdon memorably observed that policy entrepreneurs ‘could be in or out of government, in elected or appointed positions, in interest groups or research organizations. But their defining characteristic, much as in the case of a business entrepreneur, is their willingness to invest their resources – time, energy, reputation, and sometimes money – in the hope of a future return’ (Kingdon, 1984/2011, p. 122). Here, Kingdon asserted that policy entrepreneurs represent a distinct class of actors. They are different from typical elected politicians, typical appointed officials, typical interest group leaders, and so on. Since Kingdon made that observation, a fair degree of effort has gone into understanding what it is that makes policy entrepreneurs different from other actors in and around policymaking circles. That effort has produced a convergence of views on the distinctive characteristics of policy entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, no attempts have been made to discredit these claims that policy entrepreneurs comprise a distinct class of actors.

As researchers have sought to better define the notion of the entrepreneurial actor in and around policymaking circles, a significant amount of borrowing has occurred from studies of entrepreneurship in the world of business (see, e.g., Arieli & Cohen, 2013; Petridou, 2016). When introducing their studies, researchers typically note common attributes of policy entrepreneurs. Those attributes tend to include that policy entrepreneurs exhibit ambition, social acuity, credibility, sociability, and tenacity (Mintrom, 2020). Good reasons can be given for proposing a list like this. Yet it is also noteworthy that such attributes would serve anyone well who wishes to get ahead in life and have an impact on the world around them. Exhibiting these attributes, in and of itself, does not make someone entrepreneurial.

How might we improve our confidence that the people we identify as policy entrepreneurs fit within a distinctive class of political actors? First, we must accept that all policy entrepreneurs will likely have other identities – elected politician, appointed official, business professional, interest group leader, academics, activist, concerned citizen. So we should not seek to identify a mutually exclusive class of political actors. Indeed, some exciting recent work has been explicitly exploring the overlaps in the identities of policy entrepreneurs and other classes of political actors. See, for example, Nissim Cohen’s work with colleagues on street-level bureaucrats and policy entrepreneurship (Frisch-Aviram, Cohen, & Beeri, 2018), Marijn Faling’s work with colleagues on policy entrepreneurs as boundary spanners (Faling, Biesbroek, Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, & Termeer, 2019), and Alex Jingwei He and Liang Ma’s work on private corporations acting as policy entrepreneurs (He & Ma, 2019). More such work could assist us in exploring what is unique to the identity of policy entrepreneurs.

3. Policy entrepreneurship in context

When Kingdon (1984/2011) discussed the work of policy entrepreneurs, he did so within a broader theory of the policymaking process. His multiple streams approach explicitly acknowledges the fundamental role contextual conditions play in filtering options for policy change. Recent and emerging political episodes provide one set of contextual filters. The emergence and discussion of problems provide another set. Conversations in and around policymaking circles provide more filters. Context is critical in shaping conditions for policy entrepreneurs, but room typically remains for policy entrepreneurs to influence the degree of their own success. For example, policy entrepreneurs with high levels of social acuity can often perceive windows of opportunity where others would not. They can also use their social acuity to figure out what kinds of arguments would work best in allowing them to bring their ideas for policy change to prominence on the broader political agenda.

Over the past few decades, research on policy entrepreneurs has become increasingly sophisticated in taking account of how factors in their operating contexts can influence the degree of success that policy entrepreneurs achieve as they work to promote policy change. At the most general level, studies of policy entrepreneurship should always seek to address three questions about context. First, what are the most significant political, social, and/or economic factors that have established this context? Second, what actors and interests tend to have most influence in this context, and why is that? Third, assuming no policy entrepreneurs were present, in what ways, if any, might the status quo have shifted anyway? Those studying policy entrepreneurs can gain many insights into context by interpreting them with reference to established theories of the policymaking process (Mintrom, 2020).

When beginning an investigation of policy entrepreneurship, elite theory sign-posts us to think hard about the constellation of interests present, and how that constellation evolved. This can lead to consideration of current institutional arrangements, the forces that shaped their development, and how those current arrangements advance the interests of some groups to the detriment of others. The theory of incrementalism leads us to consider dynamics within the current policymaking process, as does the theory of punctuated equilibrium. Both theories encourage us to think about policy change across period of time leading to the present. In this, they share a point of commonality with the Advocacy Coalition Framework, which likewise enjoins us to explore stability and change in relationships among relevant interest groups and policymaking communities over time. Looking ahead, much scope exists for those who study policy entrepreneurship to be more creative in their engagements with theories of the policymaking process. Theoretical treatments of policy processes are continuously evolving. Explorations of policy entrepreneurship should evolve with them. In that regard, there is considerable potential for studies of policy entrepreneurship to be informed by recent developments in the narrative policy framework (see, e.g., Kirkpatrick & Stoutenborough, 2018).

Beyond these considerations of ways to advance our understanding of policy entrepreneurs within policymaking processes, there are various ways that we could deepen our knowledge of policy entrepreneurship in context. Here, two possibilities will be discussed. They concern: (1) the steps in policymaking processes where policy entrepreneurs choose to be most active and (2) how policy entrepreneurs emerge and position themselves given the multiple levels upon which governments operate.

It has long been argued that policy entrepreneurs can operate from a range of positions in and around government. Many studies produced over the past three decades corroborate this view. However, now that our understanding of the work of policy entrepreneurs has evolved, there would be merit in considering more closely how specific contexts might serve to shape and constrain the kinds of actors who emerge as policy entrepreneurs in relation to specific policy issues. For example, we might anticipate that people with backgrounds in teaching or in serving as school principals might be found leading efforts to change specific aspects of education policy. Likewise, we might anticipate that medical specialists might sometimes become policy entrepreneurs in the arena of health policy. But surely it would be a surprise to find either an educator or a medical specialist playing a prominent role in policy debates regarding mechanisms for the distribution of water rights among farmers. Substantive knowledge gives participants credibility in policymaking processes. Therefore, we should be able to say more about how contextual factors serve to filter the kinds of people who emerge as policy entrepreneurs, and the skills and experiences they bring to policy debates. By the same logic, we should be able to give an account of conditions that favour the emergence of elected politicians as policy entrepreneurs, or senior bureaucrats, or interest group representatives. Equally, we should be able to account for why engaged citizens can emerge as policy entrepreneurs in some contexts but are rarely found in others.

Previous research on policy entrepreneurs has tended to focus on their efforts to promote policy innovations so that they gain prominence on government agendas. In such studies, the adoption of a new policy within a given jurisdiction is treated as the end point of advocacy efforts. But is it? Given the high degree of variation that has long been observed in the effectiveness with which public policies are implemented (Howlett & Ramesh, 2016), it would appear that many opportunities exist for policy entrepreneurs to be highly influential during policy implementation processes. For example, space exists in many systems for effective practices in one location to be emulated in others (Meier & O’Toole, 2001). Given the potential power of program evaluations to contribute to changing perceptions of policy effectiveness (Baumgartner and Jones 1993/2009; Mintrom, 2019), it is also reasonable to assume that some policy entrepreneurship might actually start with evaluation work. While there are certainly examples of policy entrepreneurs making their mark through policy implementation efforts (Arieli & Cohen, 2013), more research would be welcome here, including research on how policy entrepreneurs use program evaluations as tools for agenda setting. Ultimately, we could benefit from accounts of policy entrepreneurship that explain why, given specific contextual conditions, it made sense for policy entrepreneurs to start their advocacy efforts in the ways that they did.

Functional reasons can readily be found to explain why national governments tend to take charge of foreign policy, trade, and defence arrangements, while local governments focus on public transport, traffic, and trash. Yet, we also know that many areas of public policy defy simple functional classifications. In federal systems of government, it is common to see national, state, and local governments all weighing in on policy discussions regarding public schooling, public health, and aspects of environmental policy. This is true for many other areas of public policy as well. Studies of policy entrepreneurship have explored the pursuit of policy change at all levels of government – national, state, and local. However, only a handful have explored the dynamics between these levels of government. For example, Mintrom (1997) considered the state-local nexus in policy innovation. The focus there was on how policy entrepreneurs might promote change at the local level as a way to encourage state legislators to adopt similar changes on a broader scale. Similarly, Mintrom and Luetjens (2017) noted how policy entrepreneurs worked at the local level to promote climate change mitigation strategies. In a similar vein, Rabe (2004) demonstrated how state governors in the United States were promoting policies to mitigate climate change in the absence of such initiatives coming out of Washington DC. We believe that much could be learned from further exploration of the jurisdictions in which policy entrepreneurs choose to pursue specific policy agendas, and why those jurisdictions are chosen. Baumgartner and Jones (1993/2009) have referred to this as ‘venue shopping’. The logic of venue shopping among policy entrepreneurs deserves further examination.

4. Strategies of policy entrepreneurs

Thomas Kalil (2017) documented how he and others working in the White House emulated common strategies of policy entrepreneurship to good effect in advancing their proposals for policy innovation. His list is insightful. It would benefit anyone working in organizational settings. The bottom line is that if you want change to happen, you have to be pro-active on every margin. For example, there are typically things all of us can do to make it easier for others to agree with us and lend support to our proposals for change. Likewise, Mintrom (1993) has claimed that there are a number of ‘people skills’ that policy analysts can usefully deploy. Yet, an even better starting place would be to acknowledge the broad applicability of thinking strategically (see, e.g., Dixit & Nalebuff, 2008), and then explore the extent to which policy entrepreneurs deploy specific strategies that all rational actors could benefit from using. Taking that approach, we would avoid the trap of assuming that the set of strategies that policy entrepreneurs use is fixed. Rather, we could continually investigate what strategies policy entrepreneurs appear to use, and work to explain why they do so.

Over the past couple of decades, various research contributions have been made with the intention of further explicating specific strategies used by policy entrepreneurs. Consequently, we now know a reasonable amount about how policy entrepreneurs utilize problem framing, how they establish teams to advance their policy goals, their use of networks, and their place within advocacy coalitions. Looking to the future, additional contributions exploring the use of these specific strategies could advance our knowledge of policy entrepreneurship. While, to date, a fair amount of quantitative work has been done to explore the ways policy entrepreneurs operate within networks, most other common strategies have been explored through case studies. Many insights could flow from further efforts to systematically identify and compare the uses policy entrepreneurs make of strategies. What strategies do they use? When do they use them? Why, and to what effect? And how do their uses of particular strategies make them similar to or different from other actors in and around the policy making process? All of these questions are worthy of consideration. Sound research along these lines could contribute both to our knowledge of policy entrepreneurship and, potentially, to our broader awareness of how specific strategies are used within policymaking circles.

5. Assessing impact

Policy entrepreneurs appear in the literature as energetic actors who engage in collaborative efforts in and around government to promote significant policy change. Given that, it is appropriate to assess their impact by noting the relationship between their actions and subsequent legislative change. That has been a common analytical strategy in many contributions to the literature. Looking to the future, further research could illuminate more about the impact of policy entrepreneurs on policy change. Here, two matters are considered. First, there would be value in exploring the definition of impact. Second, new studies could further assess the uniqueness of the contributions that policy entrepreneurs make to producing policy change.

Legislative change is the most public evidence that policy settings have been adjusted. Given this, the focus on legislative change as a measure of impact of policy entrepreneurs offers a plausible and objective measure of change. At the same time, as a range of studies of policy entrepreneurship have attested, other kinds of change can have important impacts and are worthy of further study. Arieli and Cohen studied how policy entrepreneurs assisted in the implementation of cross-border cooperation after the peace treaty had been signed between Israel and Jordan (Arieli & Cohen, 2013). Shpaizman and her colleagues studied how policy entrepreneurs could push for change – and the impact it had – even when policy settings seemed stable. Their study illustrated how impact can happen beyond legislative change and how it can serve both to undermine current legislation and force broader policy adjustments (Shpaizman, Swed, & Pedahzur, 2016). In her historical institutional study of changes in health care policy in Brazil, Falleti showed how coordinated action across local jurisdictions could transform policies during implementation and, in the process, lay the foundations for adoption of changes in national-level policy settings (Falleti, 2010). The three studies mentioned here all offer evidence of policy entrepreneurs having significant impact that would not have been noticed if attention had been restricted to legislative change as the measure of impact. This indicates the merit in thinking more about the definition of impact and how it might shift from context to context and across points in time.

We know that a policy change, such as the introduction of charter schools in the states in the US, can range from restrictive to permissive (see, e.g., Vergari, 1999). Looking to the future, there would be merit in research on policy entrepreneurs that incorporated more nuanced ways of capturing variation across jurisdictions in the scope of policy change attained. Seeking to explain that variation with reference to the actions of policy entrepreneurs could generate new insights into the relationship between the strategies used by policy entrepreneurs and the impact of those policy entrepreneurs as judged by relevant policy changes.

6. Seven new explorations of policy entrepreneurship in Asia

This special issue presents seven new explorations of policy entrepreneurship in Asia. The contexts are diverse, with contributions focusing on policy change in China, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. All of the articles assess the agency of policy entrepreneurs within broader structures that present them with both opportunities and constraints. The order in which we present the articles highlights the value of interrogating the interplay of agency and structure. The movement through the articles also takes us from an emphasis on structural shifts to studies of specific strategies of policy entrepreneurs. As we read through the articles, we see a growing emphasis being placed on novel practices deployed by policy entrepreneurs as they pursue their policy goals in often challenging circumstances. Here, we introduce each article in turn, showing how each links to and advances the broader research agenda concerning policy entrepreneurs and policymaking. Following this overview of the individual articles, we reflect on the broader contribution. In combination, these articles indicate the wealth of research possibilities that lie ahead for scholars interested in exploring policy entrepreneurship in Asia.

6.1. Policy entrepreneurs and broad health system change in India

Dayashankar Maurya and Michael Mintrom use the case of social health insurance adoption in India to explore how policy entrepreneurs can serve as catalysts of broad system change. It is clear that broader structural and institutional factors always establish the context for policy change. However, pointing out those structural and institutional factors in itself does not constitute an explanation for policy change. Indeed, Maurya and Mintrom use historical evidence to clarify that the conditions for adoption of social health insurance were ripe in India for decades and that there had even been prior experimentation with social health insurance there. Indian politicians had acknowledged that lack of access to health care for the majority of Indian citizens was a serious problem. A workable policy solution was available to address it. The missing ingredient was political will and the determination to take a workable solution and get it broadly implemented. This is where the work of two policy entrepreneurs, working independently of each other, became vital.

In the space of little more than a decade, the work of these policy entrepreneurs prompted rapid expansion of social health insurance across India, with coverage increasing more than three-fold. Today, almost a fifth of India’s population is covered by social health insurance, a remarkable outcome that has stemmed misery and the fear of impoverishment for hundreds of millions of people. Maurya and Mintrom suggest that more research is required to understand the drivers of broad, system changes like this. Micro-level strategies of policy entrepreneurs can be decisive. When policy entrepreneurs reframe problems, or when they make careful arguments to harness the support and capabilities of others, they can do much to promote policy changes that might otherwise not have occurred, or would have occurred much more slowly. The research approach presented in this article and the lessons drawn could assist other researchers as they seek to explore and explain the conditions under which broad, system changes can happen in many other areas of public policy, in many other countries.

6.2. Policy change in Singapore higher education

J.J. Woo explores two recent initiatives to prompt policy change in Singapore’s higher education system. The study is notable for three reasons. First, Woo focuses upon individuals whose efforts to drive policy change were confined almost entirely to exploiting the organizing power of social media. Second, Woo deliberately applies Kingdon’s (1984/2011) multiple streams approach to explain how efforts were made in each of these cases to create and exploit windows of opportunity for policy change. Third, Woo contrasts a case of successful advocacy for policy change with another where success was illusive. This leads to more discussion of why it might be that two individuals, each engaging in forms of policy entrepreneurship in the same place, at around the same time, and in the same policy area could see their efforts produce different results.

Aside from testing the merits of applying the multiple streams approach and the concept of the policy entrepreneur to the context of policymaking in contemporary Singapore, Woo’s cases are valuable for the insights they provide on the interactions of structure and agency. His first case explores how student Monica Baey successfully advocated for policy change to stop on-campus sexual predators from conducting themselves with impunity. The swift legislative response to Baey’s campaign is rightly contextualized in the broader, global #MeToo movement, which gained local traction among younger Singaporeans. As such, we see how broader political forces can shape the climate within which local politics happens. Without Baey’s advocacy, the agenda-shifting power of the #MeToo movement might not have been harnessed to promote policy change in Singapore. That said, the other side of the coin is that without the broader agenda-shifting power of the #MeToo movement, Baey’s advocacy might not have gained much traction.

Woo’s second case explores a journalist’s efforts to politicize the strong research culture in Singapore’s public universities, which some academics claim has resulted both in continuously shifting academic standards and the under-valuing of university teaching. While this issue also gained a fair degree of attention by policymakers, no change occurred in the episode Woo explores. Woo presents two plausible political explanations for why the problem, policy, and politics streams did not come into alignment in this instance. One is that university ranking systems do not capture public interest in the way that cases of sexual harassment do. Another is that the quiet workings of Singaporean ‘soft’ authoritarianism ensured that the university rankings matter soon lost political traction. Taking our cue from Woo, we might also note that the Singaporean political class is obsessed with status and rankings. The last thing members of that class want is for Singapore to be indistinguishable from Jakarta or Kuala Lumpar. Being able to claim that its universities are among the best in the world is vital to Singapore’s self-image in the world. Viewed in this way, we again see the power of global forces on domestic Singaporean politics.

Whatever agency policy entrepreneurs exhibit will always be shaped by broader structures. Crucially, Woo’s cases show that those broader structures are not simply the creature of national political institutions, culture, and history. Global movements also serve to determine the likelihood that policy windows of opportunity will open up, and the ease or difficulty policy entrepreneurs will experience as they seek to exploit them.

6.3. The evolution of policy entrepreneurship in China

Jessica Teets and Reza Hasmath have contributed an article that neatly rounds out our set of articles reminding us of the important role broader structural and institutional factors play in establishing the context for policy change. Their article explores the evolution of policy experimentation in China. In the process, this article also perfectly sets the scene for the closer explorations of local policy entrepreneurship in China provided by the authors of two additional articles in this collection, to be discussed shortly.

Most scholars suggest China’s successful economic reforms and continued authoritarian resilience can be credited to policy experimentation. Given the importance of policy innovation in China, Teets and Hasmath trace the evolution of policy entrepreneurship through the prism of understanding the varying motivations for policy experimentation, such as career incentives for policymakers, improving governance, and symbolic and factional politics. Despite the positive overall role of policy experimentation in the contemporary era, there has been a notable reduction in experimentation in the Xi Jinping era due to the recentralization of political power through ‘top-level design’ and an ongoing anti-corruption campaign. This has effectively created disincentives to innovate at the local level. Nevertheless, Teets and Hasmath point to remaining pockets of policy experimentation in contemporary China. They argue that these exist due to several factors including ineffective institutional incentives, the influence of peer groups, and variations in the individual personalities of policymakers.

The increased risk to undertake policy experimentation in China today reduces innovation, but not uniformly. Teets and Hasmath suggest certain types of local officials are more likely to experiment even in high-risk settings, and illustrate how substantial variation in local policy experimentation throughout China is determined by three different kinds of factors: individual level, group level, and institutional level. This article takes us a long way in thinking about how policy innovation can happen, even as broader political forces serve to discourage it. When read in combination with the other articles in this collection that explore policy entrepreneurship in the Chinese context, this article offers an optimistic perspective on how policy innovation can continue, even in the face of challenging broader forces that no individuals, groups, or governments of subnational jurisdictions can hope to change, at least in the short to medium term.

6.4. Collective policy entrepreneurship in post-disaster reconstruction in China

Na Tang, Li Cheng, and Changkun Cai have contributed an article that neatly complements Jessica Teets and Reza Hasmath’s assessment of opportunities for innovation in contemporary China. They do so through a study of collective policy entrepreneurship during post-disaster reconstruction in China’s Sichuan province. Sichuan province experienced a massive earthquake in 2008, which caused 69,227 deaths, 375,783 serious injuries, and severe damage across an area comprising more than 100,000 square kilometres. Direct economic losses were approximately 852 billion yuan (120 billion U.S. dollars). Tang, Cheng, and Cai place their focus on reconstruction efforts in Shuimo, a township located in a remote part of Sichuan province. Prior to the earthquake, Shuimo had many poor residents and a government with financial difficulties. The earthquake left Shuimo in ruins and subject to major industrial pollution.

The focus of this article is a group of officials from China’s economically developed Guangdong province who relocated to Shuimo after the earthquake. There, they formed into a working party to drive reconstruction. Tang, Cheng, and Cai note that lower-level bureaucrats with limited political capital are typically unable to integrate resources and seize opportunities to become policy entrepreneurs. However, recovery from the earthquake required exceptional action. Together, the officials from rich Guandong province helped reshape local industry in Shuimo, implemented sustainable development, and publicized their model of post-disaster reconstruction. Eventually, they turned this remote township into an award-winning international success story. The article provides a rich narrative of how these collective policy entrepreneurs achieved remarkable change in the post-disaster context. It offers useful insights into how, by pooling their capabilities with those of others, policy entrepreneurs can pursue innovation and success even in the face of environmental, economic, and political challenges beyond their control.

6.5. Cultural assumptions and policy entrepreneurship in Thailand

Pobsook Chamchong has contributed an article exploring cooperation among local councils, spare-headed by well-placed Thai policy entrepreneurs. While encouraging us to reflect upon how cultural and organizational conditions impact on policy entrepreneurship, the article also invites comparison with Na Tang, Li Cheng, and Changkun Cai’s case of collective policy entrepreneurship in China. Chamchong suggests that in many areas of contemporary governance, cross-jurisdictional collaboration is now commonplace in public policy development and practice. Therefore, more attention should be given to exploring the places, spaces and scales of such collaboration. He notes that in the Thai context unique cultural and organizational conditions play an important role in creating opportunities for policy entrepreneurship. They also influence the successful formation and implementation of inter-local collaborations. More specifically, the strong hierarchical social system prevalent in Thai culture can create relationships among local governments that might seem unusual to outsiders.

Chamchong offers two case studies, both focusing on cooperation among local governments in Thailand. She suggests that aspects of Thai culture led the mayors of powerful councils to help other local councils with limited resources to enhance their service-delivery capabilities. Thus, the more powerful mayors assumed entrepreneurial roles and formed local government collaborations. They then played important managerial roles to sustain and push those collaborations forward. One case demonstrates inter-local collaboration between six local governments in Lampang province, where formal-shared waste management services were established, building upon existing informal institutional relationships. Another case demonstrates how shared disaster prevention and mitigation efforts arose between five local governments in Roi-Et province.

The mayors of the powerful councils in these two Thai cases perceived themselves as benevolent agents, with responsibilities to help those with limited resources to enhance capabilities in service delivery. At the same time, the mayors of the weaker councils perceived themselves as ‘newborns’, lacking resources but holding the right to expect and to ask for help from these ‘older brother’ councils, who were more established and had greater resources. In both cases, the larger councils could have decided to terminate the loose, informal institutional relationship and work independently. They had no obligation to establish a formal, shared service. However, they chose to deepen institutional relationships because, on the one hand, they recognized that the problems that arose from the informal arrangement could be mitigated through a more formal agreement. On the other hand, in both cases, the hierarchical culture influenced the actions of the mayors of the larger, more established councils. Because of this combination of self-interest and altruism, the powerful mayors acted as policy entrepreneurs, pushing for the adoption of shared service agreements. These, in turn, led to significant change in both cases, in which shared landfill and waste services in Lampang and shared disaster prevention and mitigation services in Roi-Et were established.

The final two articles in this collection each focus on how the dual identities and boundary-spanning abilities of policy entrepreneurs can serve them well in advancing policy innovations.

6.6. Policy entrepreneurship among academics in public office in Indonesia

Ario Wicaksono explores how academics in public office in Indonesia have often served as policy entrepreneurs, driving administrative reform in the country. Indonesia has a tradition in recruiting university professors into public office for periods of time. They are sought out to contribute to public service due to their expertise in specific policy areas and their access to various forms of knowledge, social, and political capital. Often, these professors have been instrumental in leading and managing aspects of national administrative reform in post-authoritarian Indonesia (1998- onwards). Wicaksono labels these actors as Academic Administrative Entrepreneurs. The article explores patterns in how these actors have initiated reform agendas, the resources they invest, challenges and barriers they encounter, and their effectiveness in leading and managing change.

Wicaksono suggests that these academics working in government represent a subset of policy entrepreneurs. This is because they often exhibit good judgement in deploying their capabilities when the timing seems right. They can be especially adept at working with others to combine external expertise regarding reform ideas with internal political know-how (or ‘street-smarts’) that can help to secure their translation into new policy and administrative practice. That said, they do not always pursue ambitious change agendas. They have tended to be more effective in securing incremental change which contains little political risk. Of course, the broader structural background to their activities has been Indonesia’s transition to democracy, which has been vital for opening more space in the public service for these highly-trained professionals with valuable specialist knowledge. At their best, such actors work as boundary-spanners, joining academic knowledge and with public service capability in implementation. This can result in delivery of policy and administrative innovations that might otherwise not have been seen.

6.7. Implementation know-how and policy entrepreneurship in China

Hongmei Lu, Audrey L. Mayer, Adam M. Wellstead, and Shan Zhou, in the final article in this collection, have contributed a study of how the dual identity of the policy entrepreneur and the policy implementer might contribute powerfully to an actor’s success in driving policy innovation. They take as their focus the case of Li Li, a horticultural specialist who was instrumental in driving the successful adoption of vertical greening of buildings in Shanghai, China. Li worked in the Shanghai Botanical Garden and the Shanghai Station of Landscape Management for years before she was promoted to work for the Shanghai Garden Administration in 1998, where she stayed until her retirement in 2016. In almost two decades, she strategically drove the vertical greening policy agenda and saw it institutionalize in the law. While focusing on a different context, Lu and colleagues reinforce Ario Wicaksono’s message that policy entrepreneurs who can effectively join specialist knowledge, innovative thinking, and implementation street smarts can do much to secure policy innovation. Frequently, this requires working closely with others, drawing out various complementary skills. However, the capabilities and dispositions of the leading figure – such as Li Li, in the case of vertical green policy – matter greatly. Their unique blend of knowledge, experience, and interpersonal skill are what mark them out as policy entrepreneurs. Many others exhibiting similar ambitions for change would not be able to achieve what they achieve.

What did Li Li do that was so exceptional, that would mark her out as a policy entrepreneur? Lu and colleagues note that Li was a proactive insider. Her efforts to promote vertical greening in Shanghai included giving speeches at important conferences, organizing demonstration-site field trips to show district-level officials how vertical greening worked, inviting researchers to conduct studies on foreign vertical greening policies, and compiling brochures to popularize the notion of vertical gardening with the general public. This aspect of Li’s efforts is given special attention in the article. Vertical greening’s esoteric nature meant that initially it was overlooked by the local government and almost invisible to the media and the general public. Li put it on the policy agenda. At the same time, she looked ahead to implementation and did whatever she could to remove barriers to adoption. All of Li’s political, technical, and publicity efforts were focused on streamlining the implementation of vertical gardening. Her efforts in Shanghai set an example for other cities in China, which have subsequently emulated this vertical greening innovation.

This contribution by Lu and colleagues is useful because of what it tells us about how implementation knowledge can be of high strategic value to policy entrepreneurs. In that sense, evidence in this article complements evidence provided by Dayashankar Maurya and Michael Mintrom concerning how specific policy entrepreneurs with a lot of practical experience in the health care sector promoted the rise of health insurance adoption in India. Beyond its insights on the value of implementer know-how for policy entrepreneurship, this article also supports the claim made by Jessica Teets and Reza Hasmath that pockets of policy experimentation continue in contemporary China, despite recent creation of disincentives to innovate at the local level.

7. The emerging research agenda

The articles collected here contain a wealth of insights into policy entrepreneurship. They illuminate processes of policy change in the context of several Asian countries. Yet they also present new ways of thinking about the role of policy entrepreneurs in policymaking contexts the world over. Based on our overview of the seven new explorations of policy entrepreneurship in Asia and our assessment of the broader state of research on policy entrepreneurs, we suggest further research might usefully explore three questions. These are: (1) How do policy entrepreneurs use crisis events? (2) What characteristics give policy entrepreneurs credibility? And (3) When can policy entrepreneurs make most effective use of media and social media? We discuss each in turn and how they might be studied.

7.1. How do policy entrepreneurs use crisis events?

Several articles in this special issue present cases where policy entrepreneurs took actions intended to assist communities recover from crisis events. The emergence of a crisis will often create conditions where policy innovations can be introduced and rapidly adopted. That is because political leaders know they must be seen to be acting decisively and effectively when communities of citizens face unexpected challenges. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, famines, and fires present classic crises for governments. Moving into a future where climate change will have more impact on many communities, we can expect more need for governments to both prepare for crisis events and act decisively when they occur. However, many other kinds of crises can arise. These include wars, economic recessions, and the emergence and spread of new diseases. It is also well understood that crises can emerge out of changing social conditions, such as shifting political sentiments, concerns about violent extremism, the rise of intolerance towards minority groups, or perceptions of corruption in previously respected institutions, such as the justice system or local police forces.

Policy researchers face many options when it comes to studying policy entrepreneurs and their use of crisis events. Among other things, they could make comparisons between events separated by a decade or more but in the same country. They could make comparisons around crisis responses across several jurisdictions hit by the same crisis. Many other possibilities exist. But in noting these two, we immediately see that scope exists for studying how policy entrepreneurs use crisis events via case studies, comparative case studies, and even quantitative methods. By studying policy entrepreneurs and crises, we could, for example, gain new insights concerning how governments select policy options in a crisis, how implementation of policy changes deviates or conforms to business as usual approaches, and how coalitions of support are held together under volatile circumstances. We could also trace the process by which policy entrepreneurs go from anticipating a crisis and the need for a crisis response to actually presenting their proposals for ways to move from crisis back to a more stable set of circumstances.

7.2. What characteristics give policy entrepreneurs credibility?

Throughout this special issue, we observe several instances where policy entrepreneurs gained influence in policymaking because of they had well-recognized credibility. The examples are highly diverse. They include a medical specialist who led initiatives to promote social health insurance, a victim of sexual harassment who lobbied for tougher sanctions on perpetrators, academics who applied their specialist knowledge to drive public sector reforms, and a horticulturalist with years of experience in shaping urban landscaping who drove vertical greening policy. In these specific cases, we can see an obvious link between expertise and influence. But is subject-matter expertise always necessary for policy entrepreneurs to gain credibility? And what are the limits of subject-matter expertise? We have long known that small teams of policy entrepreneurs that pool the knowledge and expertise of a diverse set of individuals can often attain success where the odds are slim that any one of them could have attained such success. Such a case is also presented in the articles to follow. But much more remains to be understood about how credibility is construed in policymaking processes and how policy entrepreneurs gain influence. In routine organizational settings, we know that people must exhibit the right ‘invitation credentials’ if they are to gain serious consideration for specific leadership roles, such as board membership or chief executive officer. In the world of politics, what constitute appropriate invitation credentials is far less clear. Given this, much room exists for researchers to explore how and why specific individuals operating as policy entrepreneurs come to have influence.

Studying what characteristics give policy entrepreneurs credibility could be done both qualitative and quantitatively. The credibility question can only be answered through the making of careful comparison between the credentials of different people weighing in on specific policy issues. Such work could be done most easily through analysis of players currently involved in a policy issue. However, it could also be done – especially for comparative purposes – through historical analysis, in much the same way that political biographies are constructed.

7.3. When can policy entrepreneurs make most effective use of media and social media?

Use of media and social media to draw attention to the issue of concern to them is discussed in several articles in this special issue as a strategy used by policy entrepreneurs. It features centrally in the discussion of efforts to make changes in Singapore’s higher education system. Likewise, the policy entrepreneur who promoted vertical greening in Shanghai is reported to have used all the possible media resources, including television, websites, and social media to publicize vertical gardening in a positive way. Beyond these accounts, we are told in another article of how policy entrepreneurs leading post-disaster reconstruction in China publicized the outcomes of their work. This led to considerable attention for their work from across China and globally. Indeed, this publicity appears to have spurred a significant amount of emulation of the approach taken here to disaster recovery. Here, then, we see two distinctive uses of media and social media. One is to raise initial interest in an issue and promote public support. Another is to spread the news on a good policy outcome, one goal of which is to encourage innovation diffusion.

While traditional media outlets like newspapers, radio, and television have long played a crucial role in politics and policymaking, it is clear that social media is increasingly being used in a myriad of ways to promote and spread specific political ideologies and policy ideas. Future studies of policy entrepreneurship could contribute important insights concerning contemporary politics by carefully analysing when, how, and to what effect policy entrepreneurs in specific contexts make use of media and social media. A range of research methods could be used, including methods borrowed from the study of media and politics.

The three questions discussed here certainly do not exhaust the set of important questions that will drive the on-going research agenda for the study of policy entrepreneurship. But they do connect to a range of issues emerging in the contemporary world that has sometimes been characterized as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (the VUCA world). As we seek to advance the study of policy entrepreneurship, it is essential that we keep the ‘So what?’ question in mind. That is to say, we should be consciously assessing how a new study of policy entrepreneurship will advance broad disciplinary knowledge. By doing so, we will avoid falling into the ho-hum rut of simply confirming what is already known, or just applying current analytical approaches to new policy contexts or issues. Being ambitious in the research questions we ask a way to keep the study of policy entrepreneurship fresh, relevant, and transformative of how we understand contemporary politics, policymaking, and public management.

8. Conclusion

Research on policy entrepreneurs conducted over the past few decades has greatly advanced our understanding of this unique class of political actor and how these actors make change happen. That research has also laid the foundations for fruitful future work. This essay has reviewed the concept of the policy entrepreneur and the current state of research on how policy entrepreneurs drive policy innovation. It has then provided an overview of the seven new studies of policy entrepreneurship in Asia showcased in this special issue. Much scope exists for future research, and we have proposed an emerging research agenda. Future research could employ various methods including historical case studies, comparative case studies, quantitative time series, event history modelling, survey-based research, and network analyses.

There is value in curiosity-driven research, because it helps us to make sense of the political world. Yet, given the many challenges faced by jurisdictions from the local to the national in the contemporary world, there are also practical reasons why we might wish to study policy entrepreneurship. Doing so offers the prospect of improving the capabilities and effectiveness of those seeking to promote better economic, social, and environmental outcomes both in their local settings and more broadly. A fully-realized, theory-driven program of research on policy entrepreneurs could explain much about dynamic change. In the process, it could generate profound insights regarding contemporary politics. The articles to follow offer a terrific starting point for exploring how new research might advance our knowledge policy entrepreneurship and change processes everywhere, from the local to the national level in Asian and beyond.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Mintrom

Michael Mintrom is professor of Public Policy and Director, Better Governance and Policy at Monash University. He has written extensively on policy entrepreneurship, public policy, and policy analysis. His books include Policy Entrepreneurs and Dynamic Change (Cambridge University Press) and Public Policy: Investing for a Better World and Contemporary Policy Analysis (both Oxford University Press).

Dayashankar Maurya

Dayashankar Maurya is assistant professor at the Graduate School of International Relations, International University of Japan. His research is concerned with governance, policy implementation, inter-organizational governance, health, and social policy. He has published papers in journals such as Public Management Review, Australian Journal of Public Administration and Social Policy & Administration.

Alex Jingwei He

Alex Jingwei He is associate head and associate professor of the Department of Asian and Policy Studies of the Education University of Hong Kong. He specialized in public policy, social welfare, and health policy reforms. He has publishes extensively in leading international journals including Public Administration Review, Social Science and Medicine, Health Policy, The China Quarterly, and Social Policy and Administration.