By Ryan P. Scott, Chris M. Messer, Adam Mayer and Tami C. Bond
In this article, the authors explore the concept of calibration in policy design, highlighting how policymakers adjust the scope and design policy interventions to match political, social, and administrative realities. Building on previous work, the authors argue that policies designed with multiple targets might have mechanisms of change quite different from the obvious mechanism of the most visible policy instrument.
This article investigates how policy narratives shape sustainability governance, by examining sustainability imaginaries and macrolevel narratives in urban transport policy through the lens of the Narrative Policy Framework. It examines how sustainability policy is shaped not only by institutions and interests, but by the stories actors tell about the future. Focusing on sustainability governance, it argues that policy processes are structured by competing macrolevel narratives that articulate different understandings of what sustainability means and how it should be pursued.
The article brings together two bodies of scholarship that are often treated separately: sustainability science-based research on sustainable imaginaries, and policy process theory, particularly the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). Sustainability, the authors argue, is inherently normative and future-oriented. It begins as a vision of a desirable future before being translated into policy action, and these visions are continually reworked through policy discourse.
Building on work by Adloff and Neckels, the authors conceptualise three ideal-typical sustainability trajectories — modernization, transformation and control — and translate them into sustainability policy paradigms. Drawing on Stauffer’s account of macrolevel narratives as policy paradigms “in story form”, they show how each paradigm is underpinned by distinct cultural and institutional narratives.
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The editors of Policy & Politics invite proposals for a special issue that will make a significant contribution to our understanding of the nexus of public policy and politics.
Proposals submission deadline: 30 April 2026
Policy & Politics has been publishing innovative works at the intersection of public policy and politics for over 50 years. It is a world-leading, top quartile journal that is committed to advancing scholarly understanding of the dynamics of policy-making and implementation. By exploring the interplay between political actors, governing institutions and policy issues, the journal contributes to building policy process theory; and by reflecting on the evolving context in which these interactions occur, it provides timely and fresh insights into the influence of politics on policy and vice versa.
The journal’s co-editors invite proposals for a special issue to be published online and in print that will make a significant contribution to our understanding of the nexus of public policy and politics. The journal only has space to publish one special issue each year, so this is a competitive process.
Continue readingby 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.
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.
Continue readingby 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.
Continue readingby the P&P editorial team: Chris Weible, Allegra Fullerton, Oscar Berglund, Elizabeth Koebele, Kristin Taylor, Claire Dunlop & Sarah Brown
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.
Continue readingby Johan Christensen, Stine Hesstvedt, Kira Pronin, Cathrine 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.
Continue readingby 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.
Continue readingby Sarah Brown and Allegra Fullerton
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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