The rise of Big Tech as super policy entrepreneurs

Abstract

Large technology companies (Big Tech) are becoming ever more powerful in modern societies. While concerns have been raised about their political, economic, and social implications, the policy implications of their rise remain underexplored. We utilize Kingdon’s concept of the policy entrepreneur, alongside the broader policy entrepreneurship literature, to examine Big Tech’s expanding role in the policy process. We conceptualize the super policy entrepreneurs as an ideal type capturing a distinctive configuration of roles across streams, stages, and subsystems, and analyses Big Tech as an empirical approximation of this ideal. We argue that Big Tech displays three distinguishing features: they are prominent entrepreneurs across all streams in the multiple streams framework; they exert influence across all stages of the policy cycle; and they operate across multiple policy subsystems and the broader policy universe, thereby able to influence cross-sectoral and transboundary policies. Together, these features enable Big Tech to emerge as super policy entrepreneurs, commanding unprecedented levels of influence in the policy process. We further highlight that Big Tech as super policy entrepreneurs can reconfigure how policy windows emerge and are exploited, while recognizing that the effects of such entrepreneurship remain contingent and mediated by institutional and political constraints.