LIST OF PANELS

In the past two decades, there has been an explosion in interest in political/policy entrepreneurship (PE) which has resulted in substantial advances in literature.  Originally a structural component of Kingdon’s (1984) Multiple Streams, the entrepreneurial actor is now considered an element in all policy process theories (Mintrom and Norman, 2009). Political/policy entrepreneurs are special actors, embedded in the socio-political fabric, who are alert to the emergence of entrepreneurial opportunities and act upon them; they seek to affect change and they are team players (Mintrom, 2015; Petridou, Narboutaité-Aflaki and Miles, 2015). At the same time, policy entrepreneurship has been evolving as an actor-based perspective in its own right, aimed at examining the agency of individuals at the micro level with a view to understanding dynamics of policy change at the meso and macro levels. For the PE perspective to further evolve, contextual components that foster or hinder entrepreneurship in the polis have to be examined closer. What is more, if PE is a team sport (Mintrom, 2014), how do policy entrepreneurs interact with their teams and what strategies do they employ in order to affect change? We seek papers that develop contextual factors influencing the emergence of PE as well as papers that open interdisciplinary dialogues with, for example, foreign policy, resilience, crisis management and international relations. We welcome examining PE from a critical perspective, addressing issues of democracy and accountability and the cui bono question as well as comparative studies. Kingdon, John W.  1984/2003.  Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies.  Boston: Little and Brown. Mintrom, Michael, 2000. Policy Entrepreneurs and School Choice. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Mintrom, Michael and Philippa Norman 2009. “Policy entrepreneurship and policy change.” Policy Studies Journal, 37: 649–67. Mintrom, Michael, Chris Salisbury, and Joannah Luetjens.  2014.  "Policy Entrepreneurs and Promotion of Australian State Knowledge Economies."  Australian Journal of Political Science 49: 423-38. Mintrom, Michael. In press, January 2015. “Policy Entrepreneurs and Morality Politics: Learning from Failure and Success” In Entrepreneurship in the Polis: Understanding Political Entrepreneurship, eds. Inga Narbutaité-Aflaki, Evangelia Petridou, and Lee Miles. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Petridou, Evangelia. 2014. “Theories of the Policy Process: Contemporary Scholarship and Future Directions.” Policy Studies Journal 41 (S1): 12-32 Petridou, Evangelia, Inga Narbutaité-Aflaki, and Lee Miles. In press, January, 2015. “Unpacking the Theoretical Boxes of Political Entrepreneurship.”  In Entrepreneurship in the Polis: Understanding Political Entrepreneurship, eds. Inga Narbutaité-Aflaki, Evangelia Petridou, and Lee Miles. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

In the past two decades there has been an explosion in interest in political/policy entrepreneurship (PE) which has resulted in substantial advances in literature.  Originally a structural component of Kingdon’s (1984) Multiple Streams, the entrepreneurial actor is now considered an element in all policy process theories (Mintrom and Norman, 2009). Political/policy entrepreneurs are special actors, embedded in the socio-political fabric, who are alert to the emergence of entrepreneurial opportunities and act upon them; they seek to affect change and they are team players (Mintrom, 2015; Petridou, Narboutaité-Aflaki and Miles, 2015).  Though their actions affect public policy, they may work in the public, quasi-governmental or private sector; they may just be interested citizens. At the same time, policy entrepreneurship has been evolving as an actor-based perspective in its own right, aimed at examining the agency of individuals at the micro level with a view to understanding dynamics of policy change at the meso and macro levels. Indeed, PE has suffered from conceptual imprecision because research is as much about the process (entrepreneurship) as it is about the single actor (entrepreneur).  A recent review (Petridou, 2014) has shown progress in policy entrepreneurship scholarship whereby issues such as policy change failure and success are taken up as well as substantive sectors such as EU policy and foreign policy are used as case studies for PE. What is more, etridou, Narboutaité-Aflaki and Miles,  (2015) point out that a major area for further research lies in the interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars of policy entrepreneurship, foreign policy analysis and international relations.   However, more research is needed in order to understand the motives, strategies, and actions of these exceptional actors as well as the contextual factors, including institutional constraints, enabling or hindering political entrepreneurship. The theoretical advancement of the relationship between structural components and the political entrepreneur will contribute to the development of the perspective of PE as a holistic lens of understanding change. Finally, methodological issues need to be teased out in PE research: most research consists of case studies with few comparative elements (see, however, Mintrom, 2000, Olausson, 2015) A distinctive feature of this panel proposal is that it brings together scholars interested in PE from political science, public policy, crisis management studies and foreign policy analysis. We therefore propose three sessions for this panel: first, we seek papers examining policy change (or failure to change) through the actions of policy entrepreneurs in any substantive policy sector. Second, we welcome papers focusing on contextual factors fostering or hindering the emergence of policy entrepreneurship in diverse contexts as well as comparative papers. Third, we endeavor to include papers that seek to demonstrate how policy entrepreneurship is engaging with other related fields, such as in resilience, crisis management and foreign policy analysis in order to explore the potential and real cross-cutting utility of PE approaches. Kingdon, John W.  1984/2003.  Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies.  Boston: Little and Brown. Mintrom, Michael, 2000. Policy Entrepreneurs and School Choice. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Mintrom, Michael and Philippa Norman 2009. “Policy entrepreneurship and policy change.” Policy Studies Journal, 37: 649–67. Mintrom, Michael, Chris Salisbury, and Joannah Luetjens.  2014.  "Policy Entrepreneurs and Promotion of Australian State Knowledge Economies."  Australian Journal of Political Science 49: 423-38. Mintrom, Michael. In press, January 2015. “Policy Entrepreneurs and Morality Politics: Learning from Failure and Success” In Entrepreneurship in the Polis: Understanding Political Entrepreneurship, eds. Inga Narbutaité-Aflaki, Evangelia Petridou, and Lee Miles. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Olausson, Pär. In press, January 2015. “Regional Autonomy and Political Entrepreneurship.” In Entrepreneurship in the Polis: Understanding Political Entrepreneurship, eds. Inga Narbutaité-Aflaki, Evangelia Petridou, and Lee Miles. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Petridou, Evangelia. 2014. “Theories of the Policy Process: Contemporary Scholarship and Future Directions.” Policy Studies Journal 41 (S1): 12-32 Petridou, Evangelia, Inga Narbutaité-Aflaki, and Lee Miles. In press, January, 2015. “Unpacking the Theoretical Boxes of Political Entrepreneurship.”  In Entrepreneurship in the Polis: Understanding Political Entrepreneurship, eds. Inga Narbutaité-Aflaki, Evangelia Petridou, and Lee Miles. Burlington, VT: Ashgate.