Entrepreneurship in the Swedish municipal polis: the case of Mer [*] Östersund

Scholars in political science and policy studies have been paying increasing attention to a specific kind of actor, the policy entrepreneur, as an agent of change. Less attention has been paid to the contextual factors that may shape entrepreneurial action as most of the extant research is performed in pluralistic systems and in high complexity policy sectors. This is a study of a routine planning process in the municipality of Östersund in Northern Sweden with the purpose of studying the kind of actors that may act entrepreneurially (the who); the kind of strategies they use; and what contextual powers facilitate these strategies (the how). This two-and-a-half-year routine, low-complexity process was analyzed with in-depth interviews and a survey, participant observation, document analysis, and formal social network analysis. Findings suggest that professional administrators acted entrepreneurially by employing a set of six strategies while the members of civil society were central – though not entrepreneurial – participants.