Policy & Politics journal’s most highly cited articles of 2025 

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By Sarah Brown

In celebration of Policy & Politics‘ new 2-year Impact Factor of 3.5 in the 2025 Journal Citation Reports (JCR), and its continued position in the top quartile of journals in both Public Administration and Political Science, we’ve made this collection of highly cited articles free to access until 31 July. Together, these articles celebrate the achievements of our authors while showcasing the breadth of scholarship published in Policy & Politics and its contribution to advancing understanding of policy processes and policymaking.

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Smokefree Public Places Policy in Scotland: Rethinking Policy Work in Multiple Streams and Punctuated Equilibrium Theory

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by Katherine E. Smith

In this article, author Katherine E. Smith revisits Scotland’s landmark smokefree public places legislation to ask not only how policy change occurred, but how it was actively made. Drawing on a 2024 witness seminar with ministers, civil servants, advocates and researchers, the article builds a collectively constructed, retrospective account of how this major reform was developed, designed and implemented.  

Existing analyses, particularly those based on Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework and Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, are broadly supported. As Smith shows, a policy window opened as problem, policy and political streams aligned, while wider shifts in policy image and venue helped enable a significant punctuation in tobacco policy. However, the article’s central contribution lies in demonstrating that these theories under-specify the policy work through which such conditions are produced and translated into outcomes. 

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Interpretive process tracing themed section article on ‘Interpretive Process Tracing? How Process Tracing Can Become Amenable to Interpretive Research 

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by Hilde van Meegdenburg

In Interpretive Process Tracing? How PT Can Become Amenable to Interpretive Research, Hilde van Meegdenburg advances an analyticist approach to PT and explores how process tracing can be made amenable to interpretive research. In this important research article in our new themed section advancing an interpretive approach to process tracing, the author addresses a key methodological tension: while process tracing is widely used in policy research and foreign policy analysis, it has largely been developed within a regularity-oriented, broadly positivist framework. 

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Interpretive process tracing themed section article on “Interpretive process tracing and policy feedback theory: how social reporting put poverty on the agenda in Germany”

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Christopher Smith Ochoa

In a strong contribution to our new themed section on Interpretive Process Tracing, this article examines how poverty became recognised as a legitimate policy issue in Germany, bringing interpretive process tracing into dialogue with policy feedback theory to explain how a political system that long denied poverty came to embed it within federal policy reporting.

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Policy & Politics Impact Factor announcement 2025

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Editorial team of Policy & Politics from left to right: Christopher M. Weible, Allegra Fullerton, Oscar Berglund, Elizabeth Koebele, Kristin Taylor, Claire Dunlop, Sarah Brown

Co-Editors of Policy & Politics

To all our authors, reviewers, Editorial Board members, readers, friends and supporters,
We’re delighted to announce that Policy & Politics (P&P) has achieved a 2-year Impact Factor of 3.5 in the 2025 Journal Citation Reports, maintaining its position in the top quartile of journals in both Public Administration and Political Science.

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Call for papers on Power and Politics in the Policy Process – A Special Issue of Policy & Politics

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Editorial team of Policy & Politics from left to right: Christopher M. Weible, Allegra Fullerton, Oscar Berglund, Elizabeth Koebele, Kristin Taylor, Claire Dunlop, Sarah Brown

Co-Editors of Policy & Politics

The co-editors invite abstracts for a special issue on Power and Politics in the Policy Process.

Abstract submission (500-750 words) deadline: 1 September 2026

From our perspective as editors of Policy & Politics, there is a clear gap in the literature: politics is either not explicitly addressed or under-integrated in policy process studies. The implication is that if politics is missing, then so is power. Our concern is theoretical, empirical and fundamentally practical: not enough has been done to advance knowledge about how politics influences policy responses to public problems. This is to the field’s detriment, given the increasing tendency toward illiberalism in democratic systems that fractures the pluralist norms that policy process research has long relied on.

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Interpretive process tracing themed section article on “Policy diffusion and interpretive process tracing: explaining the spread of assisted voluntary return policies”

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by Sybille Münch

This article examines how assisted voluntary return (AVR) policies diffuse across European and national contexts, focusing on Germany within the multi-level governance system of the European Union. Developing an interpretive, mechanism-based account of policy diffusion, author Sybille Münch argues that understanding how policies travel requires close attention to how actors construct meaning, rather than relying solely on abstract diffusion models. 

Moving beyond single diffusion mechanisms 

Policy diffusion research often seeks to identify a dominant mechanism—such as learning, emulation, or competition—to explain how policies spread. Münch instead proposes a more fine-grained approach, drawing on interpretive process tracing and the concept of complex causal mechanisms. These mechanisms operate as sequences of actor-driven actions and interpretations, rather than as singular explanatory forces. 

This approach challenges assumptions that policies are simply transferred intact between contexts. Rather, policies are actively interpreted, adapted, and sometimes contested as they move across governance levels.  

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NEW Themed Section Blog Series on Advancing Interpretive Process Tracing in Policy Research on Introducing Interpretive Process Tracing in Policy Research

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Guest edited by Hilde van Meegdenburg, Sandra Plumer & Johanna Kuhlmann


We are excited to publish this introductory article to a new themed section on Interpretive Process Tracing (IPT). This article lays out the conceptual and methodological foundations for a growing strand of policy research, while also making a substantial standalone contribution to debates on causal mechanisms and process tracing. In doing so, it both frames the research articles in the themed section and advances IPT as a coherent research approach in its own right. 

The article begins from a familiar starting point: the increasing prominence of process tracing (PT) in policy research, particularly as a tool for uncovering causal mechanisms—the “cogs and wheels” linking causes to outcomes. However, the authors identify an important tension. Much existing PT adopts a regularity-oriented, moderately positivist stance, assuming that mechanisms generate recurring patterns and can be studied through relatively objective observation. This sits uneasily with interpretive traditions in policy studies, which emphasise context, contingency, and the situated meanings actors attach to policy processes. 

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In memory of Raúl Pacheco-Vega

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We are deeply saddened to learn of the sudden passing of Raúl Pacheco-Vega, a valued member of the Policy & Politics Editorial Board since 2021.

Raúl was an engaged, energetic, and highly supportive member of our Board, making a significant contribution to the journal through his expertise, insight, and commitment to the field. A respected scholar of public policy and environmental governance, his work advanced understanding of issues including water governance, climate change, research methods, and social vulnerability.

He brought energy and good humour to our Board and was always willing to share his time and expertise with colleagues. He was a talented member of our community whose presence will be greatly missed.

Our thoughts are with his family, friends, colleagues, and students at this difficult time.

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Explaining the Policy Advisory Success of Non-Governmental Organisations in Unlikely Settings 

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by Denitsa Marchevska


In her article, author Denitsa Marchevska examines how non-governmental organisations can achieve policy advisory success in settings where such influence would typically be considered unlikely. The article addresses a central puzzle: while non-governmental organisations are often seen as disadvantaged within policy advisory systems, they are nevertheless able, in some cases, to play a substantive role in policy formulation. 

The article situates this puzzle within scholarship on policy advisory systems, interest group influence, and collaborative governance. Across these literatures, non-governmental organisations are commonly understood to face structural constraints, including more limited access to decision-makers, fewer resources, and weaker institutional positioning. These constraints are expected to be particularly pronounced in more closed or less participatory policy-making environments. 

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