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The Political Nature of Inside Activism

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Abstract

This chapter focuses directly on agency in different respects by reviewing and assessing highly interesting conceptualizations of public officials as creative political agents, such as policy entrepreneurs, administrative guerillas, and street-level actors. We discern differences and similarities between these concepts and inside activism, and further elaborates on the latter’s central characteristics. We conclude that inside activism bears resemblance to other actor concepts that stress creativity and the political nature of agency, but we also argue that inside activism brings some novelty by combining three vital dimensions in a specific way: inside–outside, political–administrative, and actor–structure. It is also more precisely defined than other comparable concepts and thus lends itself to systematic empirical testing.

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Hysing, E., Olsson, J. (2018). The Political Nature of Inside Activism. In: Green Inside Activism for Sustainable Development. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56723-5_3

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