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Seizing opportunities, inventing new products, transforming markets--entrepreneurs are an important and well-documented part of the private sector landscape. Do they have counterparts in the public sphere? The authors argue that they do, and test their argument by focusing on agents of dynamic political change in suburbs across the United States, where much of the entrepreneurial activity in American politics occurs. The public entrepreneurs they identify are most often mayors, city managers, or individual citizens. These entrepreneurs develop innovative ideas and implement new service and tax arrangements where existing administrative practices and budgetary allocations prove inadequate to meet a range of problems, from economic development to the racial transition of neighborhoods. How do public entrepreneurs emerge? How much does the future of urban development depend on them? This book answers these questions, using data from over 1,000 local governments.
The emergence of public entrepreneurs depends on a set of familiar cost-benefit calculations. Like private sector risk-takers, public entrepreneurs exploit opportunities emerging from imperfect markets for public goods, from collective-action problems that impede private solutions, and from situations where information is costly and the supply of services is uneven. The authors augment their quantitative analysis with ten case studies and show that bottom-up change driven by politicians, public managers, and other local agents obeys regular and predictable rules.
List of Figures
List of Tables
Ackowledgments
Pt. 1
A Theory of the Public Entrepreneur
1
Ch. 1
Public Entrepreneurs as Agents of Change
3
Ch. 2
Bringing Back the Entrepreneur: Neoclassical Economic Models and the Role of the Entrepreneur
17
Ch. 3
The Functions of Political Entrepreneurs in the Local Market for Public Goods
41
Pt. 2
The Decision Calculus of the Public Entrepreneur
61
Ch. 4
The Market for Entrepreneurs
63
Ch. 5
The Emergence of Political Entrepreneurs
81
Ch. 6
Entrepreneurs, Policy Dimensions, and the Politics of Growth
109
Ch. 7
Entrepreneurial Challenges to the Status Quo: The Case of the Growth Machine
128
Ch. 8
Bureaucratic Entrepreneurs: The Case of City Managers
147
Pt. 3
The Milieux of the Public Entrepreneur
169
Ch. 9
The Business-Government Nexus in the Local Market for Entrepreneurs
171
Ch. 10
Entry, Voice, and Support for Entrepreneurs
185
Pt. 4
Entrepreneurs and Change in the Local Market for Public Goods
211
Ch. 11
Entrepreneurs and Change in the Local Market for Public Goods
213
Notes
223
Bibliography
239
Index
257
Overview
Seizing opportunities, inventing new products, transforming markets--entrepreneurs are an important and well-documented part of the private sector landscape. Do they have counterparts in the public sphere? The authors argue that they do, and test their argument by focusing on agents of dynamic political change in suburbs across the United States, where much of the entrepreneurial activity in American politics occurs. The public entrepreneurs they identify are most often mayors, city managers, or individual ...