« Taiwan Journal of Political Science No.83Publish: 2020/03

Strategies Employed by Policy Entrepreneurs to Promote Policy Change in the Era of Social Media: A Case Study of the “Go Green With Nuclear” Referendum in Taiwan

Author: Hsin-yu Hsu

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

The importance of policy entrepreneurs on policy change has been confirmed by many studies. However, domestic research is insufficient regarding what strategies are adopted by policy entrepreneurs to promote policy change. Based upon related literature and references, this article organizes, simplifies, and constructs a clear and concise scheme to classify the strategies employed by policy entrepreneurs into four categories: idea development, demonstration and marketing, coalition building, and relationship management.

Using the “Go Green with Nuclear Referendum in 2018” as a case study, this article analyzes these local policy entrepreneurs’ strategies in Taiwan. Via secondary data analysis and in-depth interviews, this article describes strategies employed by local policy entrepreneurs who successfully promoted the referendum, and it examines the applicability of the above-mentioned scheme. The results show that in this peculiar era of social media, individual policy entrepreneurs without political power and resources can still effectively facilitate policy changes by employing diverse strategies, which are also consistent with the classification scheme proposed in this article.

Keywords:Policy Change、Policy Entrepreneurs、Social Media、“Go Green with Nuclear” Referendum