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Toward a Theory of the Political Entrepreneur: Evidence from Local Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Mark Schneider  and
Paul Teske
Mark Schneider
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Stony Brook
Paul Teske
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Stony Brook
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Abstract

Political scientists have been increasingly interested in entrepreneurs—individuals who change the direction and flow of politics. In this research note, we synthesize aspects of an economic approach to entrepreneurship with concepts used in political science. We then tie these theoretical observations to the emergence of entrepreneurs in local governments and test components of our theory using observations from a large set of suburban municipal governments. Empirically, we identify several conditions that affect the probability that an entrepreneur will emerge in a local government, especially slack budgetary resources that the political entrepreneur can reallocate. We also find that the probability with which an entrepreneur is found in local government is a function of the difficulty of overcoming collective action problems in a community.

Type
Research Notes
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 86 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 737 - 747
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1992

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