Policy Entrepreneurs and Policy Change When Politicians Are Absent: The Inclusion of Autistic Individuals in Armed Forces

ABSTRACT How do policy entrepreneurs change policy when politicians are not directly involved in the process? While public policy scholars have examined the conditions under which politicians refrain from direct engagement in policy design, they have paid less attention to the strategies policy entrepreneurs employ in the absence of political actors. Drawing on textual analysis and 30 in‐depth interviews with members of the “Roim Rachok” (“Looking Ahead”) program, which facilitates the inclusion of individuals on the autism spectrum in the Israel Defense Forces as a case study, we addressed this lacuna by exploring how policy entrepreneurs independently advance policy change. The findings suggest that the policy entrepreneurs operated through institutionalized collaborative networks. They also leveraged Israel's security challenges as a structured framework for promoting their new policy. In addition, they created an organizational infrastructure. Finally, they focused on establishing trust with the security organizations with whom they collaborated.