Abstract

This article aims to provide an original contribution to the still-hidden perspective of comparison in institutional change. Relying on the existing literature on institutional entrepreneurship ( IE ), the study aims to test a new typology that better investigates different institutional entrepreneurship modes from a comparative perspective. The typology distinguishes four modes of IE : integrative, contested, legitimizing, and opportunistic. We validate the typology by investigating the level and content of consumer/user protection salience in annual reports of nine European independent regulatory agencies ( IRA s) in the telecommunications ( TLC s) sector over ten years (2003 2014). Evidence highlights the existence of different institutional and policy entrepreneurship styles, within and across countries, around the same policy issues. It reveals that IE is far from a monolithic entity.