Understanding the role of the policy advocacy elite in bureaucratic realms and policy diffusion: Insights from vehicle electrification initiatives in New Jersey (USA)

Abstract

How do policy advocates participate in the policy diffusion process via interface with the constellation of policy-making systems and actors? This paper brings together geographies of policy diffusion and public administration theory of bureaucratic culture to analyze 17 interviews conducted with elites who advocate for vehicle electrification within the State of New Jersey, as well as 103 responses from household surveys in 3 communities. We advance several points. We conceptualize the policy advocacy elite, which exists outside of the bureaucracy but within its surrounding policy realm. Their existence in this liminal space situates them to disrupt organizational culture and traps that might otherwise stymie policy innovation. Through their interactions with a constellation of bureaucratic and community-based policy actors, the policy advocate elite have potential to both disrupt organizational traps emanating from the bureaucracy but also to produce reverse traps that originate in the communities. In both instances, an ontology of place may ground advocacy in disruptive potential.