Policy Entrepreneurs and the Design of Public Policy: Conceptual Framework and the Case of the National Health Insurance Law in Israel

The main aim of this article is to suggest a theoretical conceptual framework to facilitate the description and explanation of the influence of policy entrepreneurs on the formulation and design of public policy. The analysis focuses on the behavior and political participation of players as a sort of human behavior which designs, directly or indirectly, a given social, collective reality. The conceptual framework uses theoretical tools of public policy and administration as well as new institutional approaches. In this context, the article defines policy entrepreneur, identifies the main characteristics of entrepreneurial activities, describes various strategies which the policy entrepreneur may employ, and characterizes a model of successful and effective policy entrepreneurship. The article emphasizes the importance of policy entrepreneurs in the public policy arena and suggests several insights regarding the conditions for their activity, their motivations and main strategies. The theoretical framework and main insights regarding the processes of institutional change in public policy are used in the analysis of the design of the Israel National Health Law of 1994 as a case study.

[1]  John L. Campbell.  Institutional Change and Globalization , 2020 .

[2]  A. Meydani.  Political entrepreneurs and electoral capital: the case of the Israeli State Economy Arrangement Law , 2008 .

[3]  T. Moe,et al.  Bureaucrats, Legislators, and the Size of Government , 1983, American Political Science Review.

[4]  M. Barzelay,et al.  Public Management Policymaking in Spain: The Politics of Legislative Reform of Administrative Structures, 1991–1997 , 2010 .

[5]  Robert A. Dahl,et al.  Who Governs: Democracy and Power in an American City. , 1961 .

[6]  M. M. Hart,et al.  Entrepreneurship: A Definition Revisited , 1996 .

[7]  T. Moe.  The Organization of Interests: Incentives and the Internal Dynamics of Political Interest Groups , 1988 .

[8]  R. Malley.  A New Middle East , 2006 .

[9]  D. Chernichovsky,et al.  The political economy of healthy system reform in Israel. , 1995, Health Economics.

[10]  Michael Mintrom,et al.  Policy Entrepreneurs and School Choice , 2000 .

[11]  Michael C. Munger,et al.  Economic Models of Interest Groups: An Introductory Survey , 1991 .

[12]  N. Roberts,et al.  Policy Entrepreneurs: Their Activity Structure and Function in the Policy Process , 1991 .

[13]  Colin Scott,et al.  Regulation in the Age of Governance: The Rise of the Post-Regulatory State , 2004 .

[14]  Jan Schnellenbach.  Public entrepreneurship and the economics of reform , 2007, Journal of Institutional Economics.

[15]  Itai Sened,et al.  The Role of Lobbyists: Entrepreneurs with Two Audiences , 1993 .

[16]  Y. Carter,et al.  From Street‐level Bureaucrats to Street‐level Policy Entrepreneurs? Central Policy and Local Action in Lottery‐funded Community Cancer Care , 2007 .

[17]  George W. Downs.  Bureaucracy, innovation, and public policy , 1976 .

[18]  M. Mintrom,et al.  Policy entrepreneurs and the diffusion of innovation , 1997 .

[19]  Yair Zalmanovitch.  Transitions in Israel's Policymaking Network , 1998 .

[20]  T. Oliver,et al.  Translating ideas into actions: entrepreneurial leadership in state health care reforms. , 1997, Journal of health politics, policy and law.

[21]  S. Taylor,et al.  Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Asymmetric Information* , 1987 .

[22]  Mark Schneider,et al.  Public Entrepreneurs: Agents for Change in American Government , 1995 .

[23]  H. Stevenson,et al.  A Paradigm of Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurial Management * , 1990 .

[24]  R. Salisbury.  Interest Representation: The Dominance of Institutions , 1984, American Political Science Review.

[25]  A. Shirom.  The Israeli health care reform: a study of an evolutionary major change. , 1995, International Journal of Health Planning and Management.

[26]  I. Geva‐May,et al.  What Prompts Health Care Policy Change? On Political Power Contests and Reform of Health Care Systems (The Case of Canada and Israel) , 2000, Journal of health politics, policy and law.

[27]  P. Koehn.  Globalization, Decentralization, and Public Entrepreneurship: Reorienting Bureaucracy in the People’s Republic of China , 2009 .

[28]  Mark Schneider,et al.  Toward a Theory of the Political Entrepreneur: Evidence from Local Government , 1992, American Political Science Review.

[29]  A. Israeli,et al.  Health reform and rationing in Israel. , 1997, Health affairs.

[30]  Michael Boss.  Economic theory of democracy , 1974 .

[31]  W. Hamilton,et al.  The evolution of cooperation. , 1984, Science.

[32]  H. W. Dodds,et al.  Bureaucracy and Representative Government , 1937 .

[33]  N. Roberts,et al.  Transforming Public Policy: Dynamics of Policy Entrepreneurship and Innovation , 1996 .

[34]  S. Gress,et al.  Health care system change and the cross-border transfer of ideas: influence of the Dutch model on the 2007 German health reform. , 2010, Journal of health politics, policy and law.

[35]  A. Downs.  An Economic Theory of Democracy , 1957 .

[36]  Richard F. Elmore,et al.  The politics of policy implementation , 1980 .

[37]  T. L. Schwartz.  The Logic of Collective Action , 1986 .

[38]  A. Reinstaller.  Policy entrepreneurship in the co-evolution of institutions, preferences, and technology: Comparing the diffusion of totally chlorine free pulp bleaching technologies in the US and Sweden , 2005 .

[39]  D. Chinitz.  Israel's health policy breakthrough: the politics of reform and the reform of politics. , 1995, Journal of health politics, policy and law.

[40]  Paul DiMaggio.  Interest and Agency in Institutional Theory , 1988 .

[41]  S. Mizrahi,et al.  Privatization Through Centralization in the Israeli Health Care System , 2012 .

[42]  Michael Mintrom,et al.  Policy Entrepreneurship and Policy Change , 2009 .

[43]  Daniel Maman.  The Emergence of Business Groups: Israel and South Korea Compared , 2002 .

[44]  D. Shinar.  BEN-GURION UNIVERSITY OF THE NEGEV , 2012 .

[45]  P. '. Hart,et al.  Leadership and Institutional Reform: Engineering Macroeconomic Policy Change in Australia , 2003 .

[46]  Tânia Margarete Mezzomo Keinert,et al.  Reinventing government: how the entrepreneurial spirit is transforming the public sector , 1993 .

[47]  Michael X Cohen,et al.  A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice. , 1972 .

[48]  Xufeng Zhu.  Strategy of Chinese policy entrepreneurs in the third sector: challenges of “Technical Infeasibility” , 2008 .

[49]  L. Ringius.  Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea: Public Ideas, Transnational Policy Entrepreneurs, and Environmental Regimes , 2000 .

[50]  Y. Babad,et al.  Healthcare reform implementation: stakeholders and their roles-the Israeli experience. , 2005, Health policy.

[51]  Tom Dyson.  The Politics of German Defence and Security: Policy Leadership and Military Reform in the post-Cold War Era , 2007 .

[52]  Luc Bernier,et al.  The Changing Nature of Public Entrepreneurship , 2007 .

[53]  C. MacKenzie.  Policy entrepreneurship in Australia: a conceptual review and application , 2004 .

[54]  M. Barzelay,et al.  The Comparative Historical Analysis of Public Management Policy Cycles in France, Italy, and Spain: Symposium Introduction , 2010 .

[55]  M. Olson,et al.  The Logic of Collective Action , 1965 .

[56]  M. Mintrom,et al.  Advocacy Coalitions, Policy Entrepreneurs, and Policy Change , 1996 .

[57]  Darren C. Treadway.  Political Will in Organizations , 2012 .

[58]  E. Ostrom.  Unlocking Public Entrepreneurship and Public Economies , 2005 .

[59]  Michael Mintrom,et al.  Policy Networks and Innovation Diffusion: The Case of State Education Reforms , 1998, The Journal of Politics.

[60]  R. Salisbury,et al.  An Exchange Theory of Interest Groups , 1969 .

[61]  E. J. Ingram,et al.  The Politics of Policy Implementation. , 1978 .

[62]  Yair Zalmanovitch.  Policy Making at the Margins of Government: The Case of the Israeli Health System , 2002 .

[63]  John W. Kingdon.  Agendas, alternatives, and public policies , 1984 .

[64]  Lael R. Keiser.  The Politics of Child Support in America , 2004, Perspectives on Politics.

[65]  Michael Barzelay,et al.  From “New Institutionalism” to “Institutional Processualism”: Advancing Knowledge about Public Management Policy Change , 2006 .