Talk:Policy entrepreneur

Latest comment: 4 months ago by Analytical Baggage in topic Splitting proposal

Untitled edit

Policy entrepreneur refers to an individual who takes advantage of opportunities to influence policy outcomes to increase their self-interests. The term was first coined by American political scientist John W. Kingdon in his influential work Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies published in 1995. Kingdon created the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) which outlines that the policy process can be situated into problems, policy and politics. Political entrepreneurs are most active in the policy stream, creating solutions to potential problems and bringing them forth to the agenda setting process. The Multiple Streams Framework is a powerful tool to understand policy making and agenda setting. It was first created to analyze and understand agenda setting in the United States (Knaggard, 2015). Policy entrepreneurs are the most important actors in the Multiple Streams Framework, as they develop policy alternatives and couple them with problems to present solutions to policy makers at the right time. He himself describes them as "advocates who are willing to invest their resources - time, energy, reputation, money - to promote a position in return for anticipated future gain in the form of material, purposive or solidary benefits" (Kingdon, 2003). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Evan Collict (talkcontribs) 02:14, 30 March 2017 (UTC)Reply




Annotated Bibliography Beeson, M., & Stone, D. (2013). The Changing Fortunes of a Policy Entrepreneur: The Case of Ross Garnaut. Australian Journal of Political Science, 48(1), 1-14.

Stone uses the case of Ross Garnaut to explore the reasons why some policy ideas are enthusiastically taken up by policymakers, while others struggle to gain traction while being backed up by the government. Stone's piece provides potential answers to this by identifying potential factors that impact policy entrepreneurs. Drawing from John Kingdon's 'Multiple Streams' model of policy making, Stone offers some insightful answers to how the policy agenda is influenced. Offers a rather helpful distinction between 'policy entrepreneurs' and 'public intellectual', terms that can be easily confused but are very unique from each other.

Hopkins, V. (2015). Institutions, Incentives, and Policy Entrepreneurship. Policy Studies Journal, 44(3), 332-348.

Hopkins explores the gaps in our understanding of what motivates policy entrepreneurs. Specifically, the article investigates the relationship between incentives and institutional encouragement of innovation. Hopkins finds that incentives stimulate greater encouragement of policies and innovation. Using rational choice theory, Hopkins emphasizes the importance of material and non-material incentives in driving policy. This article is very detailed and useful in understanding the big role that incentives play in policy making.

Knaggård, Å. (2015), The Multiple Streams Framework and the problem broker. Eur J Polit Res, 54: 450–465.

Knaggård analyzes the factors that go into the policy making process using John Kingdon's Multiple Streams Framework. Kingdon's (MSF) model separates three different areas: problem, policies and politics. This source talks about the "problem banker" which can be paralleled with policy entrepreneurs. This will be a useful source of information for our article as we can further explore the role the policy entrepreneurs have in this process as they relate to the policy stream of Kingdon's model.


Sabatier, P. A., & Weible, C. M. (2014). Theories of the policy process. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, a member of the Persus Books Group.

Sabatier and Weible lay out the history, approach and framework for public policy making. By analyzing various methods and relating historical policy making conventions, the authors show how manipulation is a major process in policy making. Kingdon is extensively covered in this source. This source will provide information that can be applied to the article in terms of different approaches and things a policy entrepreneur might use to gain influence on policy making.

Sætren, Harald, (2016), From controversial policy idea to successful program implementation: the role of the policy entrepreneur, manipulation strategy, program design, institutions and open policy windows in relocating Norwegian central agencies, Policy Sciences, 49, issue 1, p. 71-88,

This research article examines how the Norwegian government implemented seemingly poor policy into successful results. It examines how they formulated and created their policy through 'policy windows' and made it into a legitimate policy that gave results using the Multiple Streams Framework. This research, especially looking into policy windows can be incorporated into our article. Policy windows can be seen as the windows a political entrepreneur has to see and use to potentially capitalize and push their own self-interests.

Stone, D. A. (1989). Causal Stories and the Formation of Policy Agendas. Political Science Quarterly, 104(2), 281.

This article looks at how agenda setting can be seen as causal responses to human action and intervention. It focuses on political actors and their attitudes, resources and opportunities to set agendas, how political actors evaluate the risk/reward of their actions and finally how the employ specific language tactics to influence policy. This article and analysis will provide more information into the actions and process political entrepreneurs take when looking to influence policy. It also will provide a basis of causal actions and reactions to political entrepreneurs asserting themselves into agenda setting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JCarson5 (talkcontribs) 19:23, 14 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment edit

  This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Evan Collict, JCarson5.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 15:07, 18 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

Splitting proposal edit

I propose that the section about the Multiple streams framework be split into a separate page called Multiple streams framework. The content of the section is much broader than the notion of the policy entrepreneur. The multiple streams framework is a central concept in the policy sciences and therefore deserves its own article. The section I propose to split is already informative and well-sourced enough to make its own page. Please let me know what you think :) @Evan Collict, 78.131.29.152, 87.71.1.47, 79.183.140.167, and 77.125.68.42: Analytical Baggage (talk) 18:02, 27 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Since no discussion took place two month after I suggested the split, I will close this discussion now and copy the subsection over to the Multiple streams framework page, which so far redirected to the MSF section of the Policy entrepreneur page

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.