LIST OF PANELS

Recent advances in policy process research have highlighted the empirical imperative and theoretical relevance of actor-centered approaches and the salience of agency in the policy process. Agency in social sciences has often been regarded as a residual variable to make sense of patterns of change and stability that do not fit with expectations coming from more general theories and structural approaches. While leadership studies, organizational theory, public management and sociology have studied agency both theoretically and empirically, public policy scholars tend to focus on how agency unravels in the policy process (Capano and Galanti 2018). Understanding how actors initiate, frame, support, legitimate, and implement change may provide the tools for driven policy actors to engage with the wicked problems of our time, including climate change and deep-seated social inequities, or more ‘mundane’ issues such as community development at the local level.
       Concomitantly, it is theoretically fruitful to explore actors in the policy process research, especially
as they relate to each other conceptually. The scholarship in policy process research has paid increased attention to a distinct kind of political actor, the policy entrepreneur (Petridou and Mintrom 2021; Mintrom 2020). Policy entrepreneurs are energetic actors aimed at affecting policy change and in doing so disrupt the status quo policy landscape. Policy entrepreneurial strategies are multidimensional and they include, inter alia, forming coalitions, developing convincing arguments, leading by example, and not only managing, but also developing networks. These are strategies that may be observed in leaders as well as brokers, who constitute political actors (and concepts) distinct to policy entrepreneurs (Christopoulos and Ingold, 2015). At the same time, policy leaders may show different goals, strategies or resources that impact on the policy process and shape patterns of change and stability, but have never been extensively theorized. All these agents have been discussed in some of the theories of the policy process such as the Advocacy Coalition Framework, the Multiple Stream Approach, and the Punctuated Equilibrium Framework (Weible et al. 2017) Although significant work has been done to conceptually disentangle the policy entrepreneur from the leader and the broker, often times these terms are conflated or used uncritically in the literature resulting in conceptual fuzziness and the perpetuation of a lack of a sharp distinction between policy entrepreneurship, leadership, and brokerage.
Therefore, this panel has a twofold objective. First, it aims at examining the theoretical differences and similarities that exist among the concepts of the policy entrepreneur, the broker, and the leader in the broader context of public policy making. It also seeks to highlight the empirical implications these theoretical convergences and divergences have in the way we understand policy change.

In this panel, the chairs welcome papers that develop the concepts of the policy entrepreneur, the leader, and the broker; starting from these broad research questions: What is the relationship between the concepts of policy entrepreneurs, brokers, and leaders in public policy making? What implications do they have for the policy making process? Do entrepreneurs, leaders and brokers adapt their roles, strategies and resources in the different phases of the policy process?
The panel will welcome theoretical papers aimed at disentangling the differences in the concepts of entrepreneurs, brokers and leaders also by looking at the different roles that these actors might play in the agenda setting, policy formulation, decision making, implementation and evaluation phases. Papers showing how the different concepts are conceptualized and discussed in established and new framework and theories of the policy process will be appreciated. Papers discussing the methodological challenges for the study of the different agency concepts will also be welcomed, with particular attention to process tracing, network analysis, the analysis of policy narratives. Though theoretical papers are more encouraged, also empirical papers are also welcomed. Particular attention will be dedicated to papers that try to apply these concepts to wicked problems and emerging issues, both in traditional policy fields (such as energy policy, environment policies, urban development, education policies),and in more integrated policies (such as crisis management, sustainable development, digitalization, smart cities, green and energetic transition, health and wellbeing, work-life-balance, migrations, food and agriculture, and others).