Public entrepreneurship and the politics of regeneration in multi-level governance

Abstract

The paper uses a case study of urban regeneration policy in Sheffield, UK, to explore local public entrepreneurship in a system of multi-level governance. Recent analyses of public entrepreneurs have directed attention to the macro-political structural and institutional conditions that enable and constrain these actors, and to their individual characteristics and attributes. The stress has been on the national level and on individual action at the expense of the agency of local networks of entrepreneurs. In order to address this lacuna, we consider how local policy entrepreneurs work across governance levels and develop ideas, institutional structures and support in pursuit of their goals, using Kingdon's notion of policy streams as a vehicle for our analysis. We highlight the contingent and path-dependent nature of such entrepreneurship. In particular, we identify the temporal sequencing of agenda shifts and entrepreneurial actions as a crucial aspect of the policy process.