Policy Entrepreneurs in Public Administration : A Social Network Analysis

Abstract

This article examines the role of policy entrepreneurs in promoting change in flood risk mitigation at the local level in Sweden through a comparative study of two Swedish municipalities with different approaches to flood risk governance; as a technical issue or a social issue. The municipality in which flood risk mitigation is addressed as a social issue exhibits a larger size of the network mitigating flood risk, more diverse actors involved, and a more central location of the politicians and senior management. Moreover, the analysis points to the salience of a bureaucratic policy entrepreneur in promoting this shift toward addressing it as a social issue, and shows how they use relational strategies to frame the issue as relating to climate change action. The article operationalizes sociability and credibility, two of the attributes of policy entrepreneurs, and thus, contributes to the theoretical and methodological discussion of policy entrepreneurs in general, and as they pertain to environmental policy in particular.