Quarterly highlights collection: policy evidence, institutional capacity and the limits of state action

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by Sarah Brown & Allegra Fullerton


This quarter’s highlights collection brings together three of Policy & Politics’ most read open access articles of 2025. Taken together, they speak to a shared concern at the heart of contemporary policy scholarship: how governments define, authorise and act on evidence under conditions of institutional constraint, political short-termism and contested authority. Each article examines a different moment in the policy process — from the mobilisation of lived experience, to the organisation of state capacity, to the formal enactment (and non-enactment) of law — offering complementary insights into why policy ambition so often falters in practice. 

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COPPR collection on Policy Process Research from Policy & Politics journal 

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by Sarah Brown & Allegra Fullerton

Policy process theories have long provided scholars with conceptual tools for explaining how policy change occurs or stalls, and how actors, ideas, interests, and institutions interact over time. In celebration of being a sponsor of the Conference on Policy Process Research, we present this Virtual Issue featuring seven articles recently published in Policy & Politics that engage directly with leading policy process frameworks. Read on to see the latest from the Narrative Policy Framework, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, and the Multiple Streams Framework, alongside critical perspectives on policy implementation. Read together, these contributions show how policy process theories are continuously refined through empirical testing, conceptual development, and application across diverse political and institutional contexts. 

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Gender equity policy and visibility politics in the film and television industries

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by Kevin Guyan, Doris Ruth Eikhof and Amanda Coles

In their recent article on gender equity policy and visibility-politics in the film and television industries, Guyan et al. examine how the politics of visibility shapes gender equity policy across film and television in the UK, Canada and Germany. Drawing on documentary analysis and 34 semi-structured interviews from an international comparative study, the authors show that visibility is mobilised in three distinct imaginaries—as evidence, as solution, and as demonstration of action—each carrying important policy trade-offs. 

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Review of Policy & Politics in 2025 and happy holidays!

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by the P&P editorial team: Chris Weible, Allegra Fullerton, Oscar Berglund, Elizabeth Koebele, Kristin Taylor, Claire Dunlop & Sarah Brown

A photo of the Policy & Politics editorial team: 5 women and 2 men stood outside in front of some grass, trees, and a building

Dear authors, reviewers, Editorial Board members, Early Career Editorial Board members, readers, and friends of Policy & Politics,

As 2025 draws to a close, we want to extend our sincere thanks to all of you. Your scholarship, rigour and sustained engagement have played a central role in making this another strong year for the journal and the blog. In this final blog of 2025, we reflect on P&P’s achievements this year, feature our most popular blog in 2025, showcase the highest number of open access articles we’ve published this year, and consider the year to come with gratitude for our community and hope for the future of the journal and its contribution to policy scholarship.

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Experts in governance: a comparative analysis of the Nordic countries

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by Johan Christensen, Stine Hesstvedt, Kira Pronin, Cathrine Holst, Peter Munk Christiansen and Anne Maria Holli

Photographs of four women and two men. From left to right: Johan Christensen, Stine Hesstvet, Kira Pronin, Catherine Holst, Peter Munk Christiansen and Anne Maria Holli

In a recent article published in Policy & Politics, Experts in governance: a comparative analysis of the Nordic countries, Johan Christensen, Stine Hesstvedt, Kira Pronin, Cathrine Holst, Peter Munk Christiansen and Anne Maria Holli examine how expert knowledge is channelled into policy making in the Nordic region. They focus on government-appointed advisory commissions as a key institutional pathway for incorporating expertise and explore how the role of academic experts on these commissions has changed over time.

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Lived experience as evidence in anti-poverty policy making: a governance-driven perspective

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by Clementine Hill O’Connor and Hayley Bennett

In a recent article published in Policy & Politics, Clementine Hill O’Connor and Hayley Bennett examine how “lived experience” has become increasingly important in anti-poverty policy making, and ask what it means to treat such experiences as a form of evidence. They argue that, while lived experience is often presented as a movement-led, democratic challenge to established forms of expertise, it is also shaped by governance-led processes that channel participation into institutional priorities.

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Highlights from our most popular Policy & Politics articles of 2025 exploring narratives, design, and democracy in policymaking

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by Sarah Brown and Allegra Fullerton

Two women, the authors of this blog.

In celebration of the broad aims of Policy & Politics, we decided to focus this quarter’s highlights collection on our three most popular reads of 2025 to date. Spanning narratives, policy design, and direct democracy, these articles beautifully illustrate the journal’s breadth of scope — unusual among top-ranked outlets in the field.

So, without further ado, here’s a précis of each to whet your appetite for the full research articles, which are free to view until the end of January 2026.

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Engineering advice and UK energy policy: how engineering advisers navigate influence and constraints

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by Laurent Lioté, Adam Cooper and Neil Strachan

Three separate photographs of men side by side. From left to right: Laurent Lioté, Neil Strachan and Adam Cooper

In a recent article published in Policy & Politics, Laurent Lioté, Adam Cooper and Neil Strachan examine how engineering advisers contribute to policy making in the context of UK energy policy. Despite the growing importance of engineering solutions to address societal challenges like climate change, the authors highlight a notable gap in academic research on how engineering advice is actually used — and understood — within government.

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Applying collective action frameworks to analyse local-level collaboration for electric vehicle-related policies

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by Aaron Deslatte, Michael D Siciliano and Rachel M. Krause

Black and white photos of two men and a woman; the authors of blog. From left to right: Aaron Deslatte, Michael D Siciliano and Rachel M. Krause

In their recent article published in Policy & Politics, Aaron Deslatte, Michael D. Siciliano and Rachel M. Krause offer a new perspective on how local governments manage collaboration when implementing climate-related infrastructure—particularly electric vehicle (EV) policy. Drawing on the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework, they argue that successful coordination depends not only on external partnerships between governments, but also on the internal organisation of responsibility across departments within a single authority.

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Policy dismantling and its ripple effects on local policy-making

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by Liliana D. González-Viveros and Verónica López Guerra

Photos of two women; the blog authors; González-Viveros and Verónica López Guerra

Policy dismantling is a growing field in public policy analysis. Scholars approach this topic from different perspectives, such as exploring why it occurs and analysing the strategies used to achieve it. However, the effects of policy dismantling on the policy-making process, particularly in multilevel governance frameworks, remain unclear. In their recent article published in Policy & Politics, Liliana D. González-Viveros and Verónica López Guerra explore what happens when national policies are dismantled—not just in terms of services lost, but in how policy-making itself adapts in response.

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