The role of individual agents in policy and institutional change has long been of interest to academics and policy makers alike. Previous literatures have focused predominantly on the role of individual agents (individual policy entrepreneurs) (Mintrom and Norman, 2009) in processes of policy formulation, implementation, and the institutionalization of change in various policy areas, as well as variations on this literature addressing ‘ideational entrepreneurship’ (King, 2005), ‘public entrepreneurship’ (Ostrom, 2005), policy entrepreneurship (Kingdon, 1995), and ‘institutional entrepreneurship’ (Campbell 2004).

The focus on ‘agency’ has been an important development, enabling researchers to better reveal the causal mechanisms generating institutional change (i.e., how institutional change actually takes place). However, past research has generally been limited to specific intellectual silos or scholarly domains of inquiry. Policy scholars, for example, have tended to focus on the various mechanisms and levels at which agency operates, drawing on institutionalist perspectives but not always actively contributing to institutionalist theory. Institutionalist perspectives, by contrast, have tended to operate at macro-levels of enquiry, embracing the ontological primacy of institutions in processes of isomorphism but not necessarily contributing to or embracing policy perspectives that engage in more granular analyses of policy making processes, implementation, and the instantiation of institutional and policy change. Despite the obvious complementarities of these two intellectual traditions, it is surprising how little collaborative work, or indeed cross fertilization of theory and analytical design has occurred.  

These oversights have been acknowledged by scholars in public policy and public administration, who argue that the institutional and public policy fields need each other if a more perspicacious understanding of policy and institutional change is to emerge. For example, Peters, Pierre, and King (2005, 1277) note that “without some dynamic conception of agency, and including a greater role for political conflict, the approach [historical institutionalism] cannot provide an adequate explanation for change.” They further note that “institutional theory has not been a very widely employed analytical perspective” in different subfields of political science and that “institutional analysis has much to offer . . . in terms of understanding [the policymaking and policy change] process” (Pierre, Peters, and Stoker 2008, 233). Importantly, they also note the obstacles to greater theoretical interaction: “it is not clear to many policy scholars what the added value of institutionalism is in their field of study . . . institutional perspectives which stress interaction between structure and agency, remain largely absent” (Boin and Kuipers 2008, 42–43, 47).

On a theoretical level, it seems clear that both institutionalists and public policy scholars have largely overlooked the importance of complex interactions between interdependent structures, institutions, and agents in processes of isomorphism. In part, this neglect reflects the historical focus of public policy on specific issues of administrative reform and policy change, often from granular perspectives that fail to consider broader ontological issues associated with structure and institutions. Theorizing the role of structure and institutional design or operational systems and their impact on decision makers, agents, and processes of change have tended to fall beyond the theoretical lens of policy scholars. Equally, institutionalists have paid little attention to how agency-level conditions interact with structural and institutional mechanisms to enable and steer domestic policy communities toward administrative reform, tending to focus their theoretical lens at higher order systemic issues. In a sense, these two traditions have tended to speak past one another; looking at similar sets of questions and theoretical problems but uninformed by the obvious complementarities that exist.

It is thus not surprising that these intellectual silos have contributed to the emergence of important gaps in the extant literatures in both intellectual traditions. Too little work, for example, has been focused on complementarities in definitional approaches, measurement, patterns of institutional design and operation, or the specific characteristics of institutional and policy change—how they occur, why, and through what generative processes, agents, and institutional mechanisms (Campbell 2004, chp.2 and 3; see also Mahoney and Thelen 2010, 15–16). There is clearly a need to expand the theoretical lenses used to study institutional change in public bureaucracies, and to cross fertilize ideas, theoretical approaches and analytical designs.

 

Key Themes

 

We welcome papers on any aspect of institutional/policy entrepreneurship and institutional/policy change from all methodological and academic perspectives. We especially encourage submissions that explicitly engage with the agency of individual actors who initiate and implement institutional change in bureaucratic settings and submissions that attempt to bridge the gulf between institutional theory and public policy approaches. We also encourage conceptual and empirical contributions that address one or more of the following:

 

·         When, why and how does institutional entrepreneurship and reform in bureaucracies take place?

·         What are the enabling conditions for the agency of individual actors in policy and institutional change processes?

·         How and why do various macro-level (structural and institutional) and micro-level (organizational and/or individual agency) factors affect institutional entrepreneurship and policy/institutional change?

 

 

Publication

 

Selected papers will be published in an issue of Policy and Society.

 

 

 

Submission and Time Line:

 

Papers will be reviewed following the journal’s normal double-blind review process and criteria. The maximum length of articles including references, notes and abstract is 8,000 words. Articles must be accompanied by an abstract of not more than 150 words. Further guidelines can be found at http://www.journals.elsevier.com/policy-and-society/

 

Submission of papers with the editors must be not later than March 31, 2016

 

Contact Details

 

For further information please contact the Guest Editors: Caner Bakir (cbakir@ku.edu.tr) or Darryl Jarvis (djarvis@ied.edu.hk)

 

References

 

Boin, A. and Kuipers, S. (2008). ‘Institutional Theory and the Public Policy Field: A Promising Perspective for Perennial Problems.’ In Debating Institutionalism, ed. Jon Pierre, B. Guy Peters and Gerry Stoker. Manchester University Press.

 

Campbell, J. (2004). Institutional Change and Globalization. Princeton,NJ: Princeton

University Press.

 

King, M. (2005). “Epistemic Communities and the Diffusion of Ideas: Central Bank Reform in the United Kingdom.” West European Politics 28 (1): 94–123.

 

Kingdon, J. (1995). Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. 2nd ed.New York:

Longman.

 

Mahoney, J. and Thelen, K. (2009). ‘A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change.’ In Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power, ed. James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen: Cambridge University Press, 1-37.

 

Mintrom, M. and Norman, P. (2009). ‘Policy Entrepreneurship and Policy Change’. Policy Studies Journal, 37: 649–667.

 

Ostrom, E. (2005). ‘Unlocking Public Entrepreneurship and Public Economies’, Working

Paper Series DP2005/01, United Nations: World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER)

 

Pierre, J., Peter, G., and Stoker, G. (2008). “The promise and performance

of institutional analysis: conclusions.” In Debating Institutionalism, ed. Jon Pierre, Guy Peters, and Gerry Stoker. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

 

 

 

Dr. Caner Bakır
Co-director, Center for Globalisation, Peace and Democratic Governance

Associate Professor of International Political Economy

Department of International Relations
Koç University
College of Administrative Sciences and Economics 
Rumelifeneri Yolu 34450 Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey
E-mail: cbakir@ku.edu.tr
Ph: (+90 212) 338 16 74
Fax: (+90 212) 338 16 42

http://www.canerbakir.com/

http://glodem.ku.edu.tr/

Just published– ‘Bargaining with Multinationals: Why State Capacity Matters’, New Political Economy

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cnpe20/20/1#.VIS7PU1xnIU

Recently published – Bank Behaviour and Resilience: The Effect of Structures, Institutions and Agents (Palgrave 2013)

http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=288912

Read the most recent review of my book published in Public Administration

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padm.12086/abstract