The idea of individuals playing a big role in championing megaprojects was proposed by Jasmine Wang. This is me attempting to flesh out her ideas. Please note that this is an exploratory piece/work in progress - super duper rough - but I thought that it’d be interesting to share.

Summary of Hypothesis

There exists a recurring theme of specific individuals championing megaprojects. Such individuals — whom I term ‘megaproject entrepreneurs’ (henceforth MEs) — are responsible for garnering sufficient support/resources/funding to successfully get their megaproject off the ground. As a starting point to my exploration, I hypothesise that MEs and political entrepreneurs are ‘parallel’: they share the same set of traits + skills and employ similar strategies to political entrepreneurs. This idea is elaborated upon in the literature review section.

A key trait MEs share is sociability, which they use to win over the support of the ‘right people’ and gain access to the relevant networks. MEs are also adept at ‘framing’ the vision/aims/need of the megaproject at hand in a way that appeals to the relevant stakeholders. This primarily involves making use of factors such as the contemporary sociopolitical context, underlying sentiments and incentives, timing, and target audience selection. Other characteristics shared by MEs include ambition, intelligence and credibility.

It remains unclear how important/indispensable such individuals are to megaprojects, and S&T progress more widely. Firstly, there is evidence that background sociopolitical factors and incentives are powerful driving forces behind the launch of such megaprojects. This poses the counterfactual of whether or not the megaproject would have been launched regardless. Secondly, it is important to disentangle the successful launch/conception of a megaproject and a successful endproduct/outcome. MEs typically play an outsized role in the former but a much smaller role in the latter. A distinct set of individuals with a different skillset are typically responsible for ensuring that the megaproject yields a successful ‘end product’ — I dub these individuals as ‘Megaproject Managers’ (henceforth MMs) [1]. This hence begs the question of whether MMs more important for S&T progress than MEs [2].

Literature Review: Policy Entrepreneurs

Many lessons about megaproject entrepreneurs (henceforth MEs) can be gleaned from literature on political entrepreneurs (henceforth PEs). Although the two have distinct goals in mind, both types of entrepreneurs strive to convince the government to prioritise and pour resources into a particular endeavour. The aim of this section is to give a broad overview of the role of PEs in policymaking and to draw parallels to MEs in launching megaprojects. The parallels drawn here are exploratory and based on my intuition; I’m hoping to use this as a starting point to inspire directions to take my hypotheses/analysis/research in. They are not meant to be well-researched conclusions.

Note: Most of the literature review below derives from Paul Cairney’s writings on his blog (or at least takes it as a starting point). He has given a fantastic overview of political entrepreneurs — much better than I could provide → hence the plethora of direct quotes below that I compiled (cited accordingly).

Policy Entrepreneurs - Overview

The concept of PEs was introduced by John Kingdon (1984) along with his Multiple Streams Framework (henceforth MSF). As the two concepts are deeply linked, it is worth giving a brief overview of the latter as well. The MSF puts forward 3 key streams — problem, policy and politics.

Paul Cairney gives a good overview to the MSF [3]:

1. “The problem stream condition is satisfied when attention is brought to a policy problem. There are no objective indicators to determine which problems deserve attention, and perceptions of problems can change quickly. Problems hence receive attention based on how they are ‘framed’ or defined by participants who compete for attention – using evidence to address uncertainty and persuasion to address ambiguity In some cases, issues receive attention because of a crisis or change in the scale of the problem.
2. The policy stream condition is satisfied when a solution to the proposed problem is available. To deal with the disconnect between lurching attention and slow policy development, relevant actors develop widely-accepted solutions in anticipation of future problems, then find the right time to exploit or encourage attention to a relevant problem.
3. The politics stream condition is satisfied when policymakers have the incentive and opportunity to translate the proposed solution into policy. This ‘receptiveness’ to the proposed solution is influenced by various factors, from their own beliefs, their perception of the ‘national mood’ to the feedback they receive from interest groups and political parties.”

Kingdon argues that a “policy window/window of opportunity” is opened when all three streams come together in which there is potential for policymaking to occur. The water metaphor falls short in illustrating the nature of this “coupling” and “decoupling”. As Cairney suggests, “a ‘window of opportunity’ is best described as akin to a space launch in which policymakers will abort the mission unless every relevant factor is just right” [4]. This is where PEs come in. PEs tune the conditions of each stream to their advantage, ‘couple’ the three streams and exploit the resulting opened “policy window” for their cause.

They “lie in wait in and around government with their solutions at hand, waiting for problems to float by to which they can attach their solutions, waiting for a development in the political stream they can use to their advantage” (Kingdon, 1984: 165–6)

More from Cairney [5]: PEs are “people with the knowledge, power, tenacity and luck to be able to exploit windows of opportunity and heightened levels of attention to policy problems to promote their ‘pet solutions’ to policymakers”.

And more here as well [6]:

“Although many PEs seem to be exceptional people, Mintrom (2019: 308-20) identifies:

• Key attributes to compare
  • ‘ambition’, to invest resources for future reward
  • ‘social acuity’, to help anticipate how others are thinking
  • ‘credibility’, based on authority and a good track record
  • ‘sociability’, to empathise with others and form coalitions or networks
  • ‘tenacity’, to persevere during adversity
• Skills they seem to share
  • ‘strategic thinking’, to choose a goal and determine how to reach it
  • ‘team building’, to recognise that policy change is a collective effort, not the responsibility of heroic individuals
  • ‘collecting evidence’, and using it ‘strategically’ to frame a problem and support a solution
  • ‘making arguments’, using ‘tactical argumentation’ to ‘win others to their cause and build coalitions of supporters’ (2019: 313)
  • ‘engaging multiple audiences’, by tailoring arguments and evidence to their beliefs and interests
  • ‘negotiating’, such as by trading your support in this case for their support in another
  • ‘networking’, particularly when policymaking authority is spread across multiple venues.
• The strategies built on these attributes and skills.
  • ‘problem framing’, such as to tell a story of a crisis in need of urgent attention
  • ‘using and expanding networks’, to generate attention and support
  • ‘working with advocacy coalitions’, to mobilise a collection of actors who already share the same beliefs
  • ‘leading by example’, to signal commitment and allay fears about risk
  • ‘scaling up change processes’, using policy innovation in one area to inspire wider adoption.”

Although Kingdon emphasises the importance of PEs, he also evokes the additional metaphor of PEs being “surfers waiting for the big wave” (Kingdon, 1995). The key role of the environment is reiterated by Cairney and Jones (2015), who concluded that although PEs “are best understood as well- informed and well-connected insiders who provide the knowledge and tenacity to help couple the ‘streams’”, such individuals are “‘surfers waiting for the big wave’ not Poseidon-like masters of the seas” and hence cannot do more than their environments allow.

Megaproject Entrepreneurs: Drawing from the Literature on Political Entrepreneurs

At a higher level of abstraction, PEs and MEs are fundamentally trying to achieve the same goal. Both want their proposals to be implemented and subsequently adopt a broker/advocate role to ensure that this comes to pass. While PEs try to get their policy solution implemented by policymakers in government, MEs similarly attempt to get their megaproject off the ground by garnering the required support/approval/resources from the government. Due to this fundamental parallel between PEs and MEs, I have elected to use ideas from literature on PEs as a starting point for my hypotheses about MEs. Indeed, at first blush, similarities in traits, skills and strategies between the two groups can already be observed. This hypothesis will be further explored in a separate section below.

However, there are several differences between PEs and MEs that are worth noting here. Firstly, the “problem” stream is a lot more fuzzy when talking about megaprojects than policy. In PE literature, epistemic communities are said to be the key actors who are responsible for delineating the problem space — an example is climate change. The identification of this problem and the drawing of attention to it is a key factor in the conception of a “policy window”. However, megaprojects do not always have such well-defined problems and instead emphasise technological solutions. For example, Shiro Ishii and his biological warfare project in Japan was not addressing a clear problem (and was not conceived/approved due to such a problem). Rather than having a clearly defined problem, megaprojects instead seem to rely more on the general underlying sentiment/need that results from contemporary socio-political context. For Shiro Ishii’s case, this would be the desire for Japan to be ahead of foreign powers and, later on, the need to win WWII. Another example would be the Cold War backdrop for Ovchinnikov and Bioreparat. This sentiment could then be hence framed or interpreted as a problem to incentivise governmental action. I hence propose that unlike PEs, who couple the three streams to form a “policy window” and take advantage of such a window, MEs only use the the “policy” and “politics” stream, with “problem framing” being a big way to influence the “politics” stream.

Other points that are worth flagging:

• Another difference: ‘actors’ found in each stream
  • In policy, epistemic communities are the main actors in the “problem” stream
  • In ME: epistemic communities are key actors in the “policy” stream.
    • Quick example: A-bomb → coalition of scientists and then politicians etc. that supported/believed in its conception
• MEs act as brokers → they champion a megaproject that advances the development of a specific technology (of which they are pioneers - typically) and communicate this to advocacy coalitions and high-ranking figures (i.e. merge the “politics” stream with “technology” via networking). They make use of timing (‘problem interpretation) and public sentiment (‘problem framing’) when communicating their ideas.
• MEs are typically from the “technology” stream (i.e. they are scientists themselves) and are active in the “politics” stream. However, different megaproject entrepreneurs 1) fit more or less into a stream (e.g. Bush fits less into “technology” stream and more into “politics” right before the Manhattan project rolled around) 2) did more/less merging (e.g. Pan Jianwei did less ‘merging’ → less of a politician than other figures studied → in this case, the merging was more due to timing)
• PE literature emphasises the importance of context and implies that it plays a bigger role than PEs in the success of policymaking. I hypothesise that context is also very important in determining whether or not a megaproject is successful in gaining approval/funding (more so than the individuals).
• A possible extension that I’d like to explore: does the megaproject entrepreneurs vs managers difference hold for PE literature as well?
  • e.g. are PEs different from implementers (distinct from success of carrying it out, details…)
  • Megaproject managers skillset→ systems engineering/management, some social skills (to secure funding) but the former is much more important
  • In some ways, these individuals are much more important than megaproject entrepreneurs → perhaps even more so in the Chinese space (where there’s more top-down > bottom-up)

  I’m currently in the process of exploring the hypothesis and have gone through a number of different case studies which I’ve listed here [7][8]. I’ve also noted down quite a few uncertainties and remaining questions. The notes are super messy and feature numerous incomplete thoughts so I won’t be sharing them (maybe when I clean them up later on!).

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  [1] Although some individuals play the role of both megaproject entrepreneur and manager (e.g. Shiro Ishii), others only take on one of these roles (e.g. Bush as only an entrepreneur for the Manhattan project - Groves as the manager). I hence thought that it’d be useful to make this distinction. Dominic Cummings wrote a very good intro into MMs and systems engineering (not sure what your political affiliations are, but it’s a v useful resource though a bit messy)

  [2] Note the underlying assumption that the successful completion of a megaproject = an advance in scientific progress. I need to explore whether this is actually the case, but this isn’t the space for this.

  [3] https://paulcairney.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/policy-concepts-in-1000-words-multiple-streams-analysis/

  [4] https://paulcairney.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/cairney-pp-practical-lessons-policy-entrepreneurs-revised-13-december-17-clean.pdf

  [5] https://paulcairney.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/what-is-a-policy-entrepreneur/

  [6] https://paulcairney.wordpress.com/2019/12/23/policy-analysis-in-750-words-entrepreneurial-policy-analysis/

  [7] MEs (list compiled by Jasmine!): Shiro Ishii x Japanese Biowarfare reseach, Yury Ovchinnikov x Biopreparat, Vannevar Bush x Manhattan Project, Sergei Korolev x Russian Space Program, Pan Jianwei x Quantum Computing, Qian Xuesen x Chinese Atomic Bomb, Eric Drexler x Nanotechnology

  [8] MMs: General Groves x Manhattan Project, George Mueller x Apollo, Simon Ramo (more widely -TRW, also Schriever?) x ICBMs </span>