Attention- and Support-Seeking Strategies

Abstract

‘Policy Entrepreneurs in Water Governance’ aims to contribute to a better understanding of the strategies that individual change agents employ in their efforts to effect policy change, as well as to examine the contextual effectiveness of these strategies. This chapter takes a closer look at the ways in which policy entrepreneurs demonstrate the significance of specific problems, and ultimately acquire support of policy makers and (necessary) coalition partners for their preferred policy change ideas. This chapter, ‘Attention- and Support Seeking Strategies’, distinguishes three different attention- and support-seeking strategies: the demonstration strategy, the strategy of rhetorical persuasion, and the related strategy of exploiting focusing events. In addition to a theoretical discussion on the contextual effectiveness of these three strategies, this chapter presents the results of the in-depth interviews and the focus group, along with the results of the extensive mail survey. The empirical data suggest that policy entrepreneurs work hard to buttress claims on problems and simultaneously, convince others of the value of their idea for policy change by showing that it offers an appropriate or even necessary solution. In other words, this chapter shows that policy entrepreneurs work hard to present their ideas as solutions to particular identified problems. The chapter concludes with a concise summary and review of the empirical research findings.