POLICY CHANGE INCH BY INCH: POLICY ENTREPRENEURS IN THE HOLY BASIN OF JERUSALEM
| Author | ILANA SHPAIZMAN,ORI SWED,AMI PEDAHZUR |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12273 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
doi : 10. 1111/p adm .12273
POLICY CHANGE INCH BY INCH: POLICY
ENTREPRENEURS IN THE HOLY BASIN OF JERUSALEM
ILANA SHPAIZMAN, ORI SWED AND AMI PEDAHZUR
Facing barriers to change, policy entrepreneursoften shift their activities to a more favourable venue.
In the new venue they either pressure the system from the outside, leading to policy punctuation, or
make incremental changes within the existing system which over time will accumulate to a signi-
cant change in the status quo. This article aims to expand our understanding of policy entrepreneurs’
role in the policy process by examining the strategies they use in the incremental path. Specically,
it focuses on one gradual change strategy, conversion– redirection of existing institutions to new
purposes. Based on the case of policy entrepreneurs in the Holy Basin of Jerusalem, the ndings
indicate that when the entrepreneurs shift the venue to the bureaucracy they can establish coopera-
tive relations with the government that will provide them with the needed capacities to exploit the
gaps in the existing rules and redirect them to serve their aim.
INTRODUCTION
Policy entrepreneurs are individuals or groups who change the direction and ow of
politics (Schneider and Teske 1992). Often, changes do not come easy and involve dealing
with status quo bias resulting from powerful veto players, institutional veto points,
decision-makers’ limited attention span and the high uncertainty element inherent in
many initiatives (Shepsle 1986; Tsebelis 1995; Jones and Baumgartner 2005). One way
of overcoming these barriers is ‘venue shopping’: shifting the policy to another venue,
where they will have more opportunities and face less opposition. In the new venue,
policy entrepreneurs act to generate a positive feedback process that will break the policy
monopoly and lead to transformative policy change (Baumgartner and Jones 2009). Most
research views positive feedback as a process involving lobbying and advocacy efforts
from outside the existing system, which create accumulating pressure on the system and
eventually lead to policy punctuation (Roberts and King 1996; Pralle 2003; Baumgartner
and Jones 2009; Kingdon 2011; Carter and Jacobs 2014).
Yet, historical institutionalism research has found that policy entrepreneurs can also
operate from within the existing system. This is done by exploiting small-scale oppor-
tunities resulting from gaps in the existing rules and making incremental changes that
accumulate over time to produce a signicant shift from the status quo. This type of change
is termed gradual transformative (Sheingate 2003; Hacker 2004; Streeck and Thelen 2005).
As the political system in many democracies becomes more polarized and less stable, mak-
ing policy punctuations is harder to achieve, and gradual change becomes more popular
(Hacker et al. 2015).
Given the growing frequency of gradual transformative changes and the fact that in
many episodes of policy change one can identify the policy entrepreneurs who have
been its initiators (Kingdon 2011), it is logical to assume that policy entrepreneurs’ toolkit
includes gradual endogenous as well as exogenous strategies. However, to date, we lack a
systematic understanding of the tools and strategies policy entrepreneurs use to promote
their aims incrementally. This is because existing research continues to focus on abrupt
Ilana Shpaizman and Ami Pedahzur are at the Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin, USA. Ori
Swed is at the Department of Sociology,University of Texas at Austin, USA.
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 4, 2016 (1042–1058)
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
POLICY CHANGE INCH BY INCH 1043
changes, considering incremental ones to be less useful and more difcult to achieve
(Mintrom and Norman 2009). Consequently, not only does our understanding of policy
entrepreneurs remain partial, but in some cases we are liable to misinterpret their role in
the policy process. What may seem like a failure to pressure the system from the outside
may actually turn out to be success in altering it endogenously.
This article addresses this gap by examining how policy entrepreneurs use one gradual
transformative change strategy that can be especially appealing to them: conversion,
dened as redirection of existing institutions to new purposes (Streeck and Thelen 2005).
The article is based on an analysis of two policy entrepreneurship episodes in the Holy
Basin of Jerusalem. This case has been selected because it is a least likely case (George
and Bennett 2005) of policy entrepreneurs’ success in changing the status quo given
formidable barriers.
In the Israeli–Palestinian conict context, the Holy Basin is considered one of the most
explosive and sensitive fault lines. The multiple sacred monuments to the three monothe-
istic religions it houses are intertwined with the political and religious narratives of both
sides (Pullan and Sternberg 2012). Over the years, even small changes in the status quo in
this area have triggered violence and broad condemnation by the international commu-
nity. This has made successive Israeli governments cautious, avoiding formal changes in
the Holy Basin.
Nonetheless, since the early 1980s, a small group of policy entrepreneurs has succeeded
in shifting the status quo by taking control over large areas and expanding the perma-
nent Jewish presence in the Holy Basin (Pedahzur 2012). An examination of their activ-
ities reveals that their success is a result of constant exploitation of the gaps in existing
rules and the redirection of these rules to serve their goals. They have achieved this by
depoliticizing the policy image and establishing cooperative relations with the govern-
ment, which provided them with the discretionary capacities required to alter existing
structures.
Based on this case we argue that when policy entrepreneurs are organized groups and
when the government does not oppose their actions, they can shift the status quo through
conversion. This may be achieved by manipulating the policy image, shifting the venue
to the bureaucracy and establishing cooperative relations with the government. In that,
the article expands our understanding of the role of policy entrepreneurs in promoting
policy change.
The rest of the article is organized as follows. The next section elaborates on policy
entrepreneurs and the way they promote change both externally and internally using
venue shopping. It also discusses conversion and its appeal to policy entrepreneurs. Next,
the data and the method are presented, followed by a description of the Holy Basin and the
policy entrepreneurs operating there. The following section presents an empirical analy-
sis of two episodes in which policy entrepreneurs used conversion: the Absentee Property
Law and the salvage excavations. Finally, the conclusions are discussed.
POLICY ENTREPRENEURS, VENUE SHOPPING AND POLICY CHANGE
Policy entrepreneurs are individuals or groups whose creative acts have a transforma-
tive effect on politics, policies or institutions (Sheingate 2003, p. 185). Although variously
dened, all scholars agree that they may be identied by their efforts to promote signicant
policy change (Roberts and King 1991; Schneider and Teske1992; Mintrom 1997; Sheingate
2003; Kingdon 2011). Policy entrepreneurs differ from other actors in the political sphere,
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 4, 2016 (1042–1058)
© 2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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