Policy entrepreneurship within street-level bureaucracies

This chapter’s aim is to introduce the concept of street-level policy entrepreneurship and to explain its importance to the research on autonomy in public administration organizations. Street-level policy entrepreneurs are frontline implementers of public policies who exploit windows of opportunity to influence policy outcomes to promote their own goals, without having the resources necessary to achieve this alone. Although often considered to be elite actors in the policy field, policy entrepreneurs can also manifest in the grassroots - at the street level. These low-level actors have a unique characteristic that shapes their ability to influence policy design, but also limits it: their autonomy. Indeed, for innovation to grow, autonomy is required. Bureaucratic autonomy on the individual level is defined throughout this book as the ability to translate one’s own preferences into authoritative actions, without being subjected to external constraints. As such, it manifests daily in the process of street-level policy implementation. While traditional views of discretion and autonomy may perceive it to be antithetical to bureaucratic attributes such as hierarchy and rule obedience, more recent views perceive it as a beneficial feature of bureaucratic organizations. But how does autonomy manifest in the process of policy design? This chapter attempts to answer this question, demonstrating how it is in fact a cycle that feeds itself: autonomy is required for street-level policy entrepreneurship, and street-level policy entrepreneurship increases autonomy.