Policy & Politics Journal Blog

By Sarah Brown, Journal Manager

Try our new themed virtual issues which are free to download from 1-30 November:

Public Services and Reform
In this new virtual issue, we bring you our most impactful and recent research from diverse perspectives with a coherence of focus on increasing our understanding of public services and reform.

To introduce two highlights from the issue, opening the collection is one of our most innovative articles on how health discourses are linked to population health outcomes, hence the title: Working-class discourses of politics, policy and health: ‘I don’t smoke; I don’t drink. The only thing wrong with me is my health’. Moving from health to employment, Rebecca Taylor analyses the changing dynamics that come into play as the provision of employment services increasingly moves to public, private and third-sector organisations in her article entitled UK employment services: understanding provider strategies in a dynamic strategic action field. Covering a diverse range of public industries, other articles in the collection offer insightful studies across education, social care, disability, counter-terrorism, local government and state regulation.

Download them now before 30 November while they’re free to access!

Customer engagement in UK water regulation: towards a collaborative regulatory state?
Authors: Heims, Eva; Lodge, Martin

Keeping expertise in its place: understanding arm’s-length bodies as boundary organisations
Authors: Boswell, John

Changing experiences of responsibilisation and contestation within counter-terrorism policies
Authors: Thomas, Paul

Local governance under austerity: hybrid organisations and hybrid officers
Authors: Pill, Madeleine; Guarneros-Meza, Valeria

The effects of privatisation on the equity of public services: evidence from China
Authors: Wang, Huanming; Mu, Rui; Liu, Shuyan

Working-class discourses of politics, policy and health: ‘I don’t smoke; I don’t drink. The only thing wrong with me is my health’
Authors: Mackenzie, Mhairi; Collins, Chik; Connolly, John; Doyle, Mick; McCartney, Gerry

Who cares? The social care sector and the future of youth employment
Authors: Montgomery, Tom; Mazzei, Micaela; Baglioni, Simone et al

UK employment services: understanding provider strategies in a dynamic strategic action field
Authors: Taylor, Rebecca; Rees, James; Damm, Christopher

Electricity market reform: so what’s new?
Authors: Toke, David; Baker, Keith

Re-evaluating local government amalgamations: utility maximisation meets the principle of double effect (PDE)
Authors: Drew, Joseph; Grant, Bligh; Fisher, Josie

Constructing the need for retrenchment: disability benefits in the United States and Great Britain
Authors: Morris, Zachary

Activating citizens in Dutch care reforms: framing new co-production roles and competences for citizens and professionals
Authors: Nederhand, Jose; Van Meerkerk, Ingmar

Shifting logics: limitations on the journey from ‘state’ to ‘market’ logic in UK higher education
Authors: Alexander, Elizabeth A.; Phillips, Wendy; Kapletia, Dharm

If you enjoyed this blog, try our other themed virtual issues which are free to download from 1-30 November:

Evidence-Based Policy

Evidence translation: an exploration of policy makers’ use of evidence
Authors: Ingold, Jo; Monaghan, Mark

Can experience be evidence? Craft knowledge and evidence-based policing
Authors: Fleming, Jenny; Rhodes, Rod

British educational trajectories from school to university: evaluating quantitative evidence in policy formulation and justification
Authors: Johnston, Ron; Manley, David; Jones, Kelvyn; Hoare, Anthony; Harris, Richard

Studying public deliberation after the systemic turn: the crucial role for interpretive research
Authors: Ercan, Selen A.; Hendriks, Carolyn M.; Boswell, John

Global evidence in local debates: the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in Swiss direct-democratic debates on school policy
Authors: Schlaufer, Caroline

Welfare state

Resistance or resignation to welfare reform? The activist politics for and against social citizenship
Authors:  Edmiston, Daniel; Humpage, Louise

What ever happened to asset-based welfare? Shifting approaches to housing wealth and welfare security
Authors: Ronald, Richard; Lennartz, Christian; Kadi, Justin

Conceptualising the active welfare subject: welfare reform in discourse, policy and lived experience
Authors: Wright, Sharon

How much change? Pierson and the welfare state revisited
Authors: McCashin, Anthony

Reconsidering the fiscal-social policy nexus: the case of social insurance
Authors: Koreh, Michal; Beland, Daniel

And Claire Dunlop’s special issue on Policy learning and policy failure:

Policy learning and policy failure: definitions, dimensions and intersections  
Author: Dunlop, Claire A.

Pathologies of policy learning: what are they and how do they contribute to policy failure?  
Author: Dunlop, Claire A.

Overcoming the failure of ‘silicon somewheres’: learning in policy transfer
processes  
Author: Giest, Sarah

Understanding the transfer of policy failure: bricolage, experimentalism and translation  
Author: Stone, Diane

British Columbia’s fast ferries and Sydney’s Airport Link: partisan barriers to learning from policy failure  
Authors: Newman, Joshua; Bird, Malcolm G.

Policy failures, policy learning and institutional change: the case of Australian health insurance policy change  
Author: Kay, Adrian

Policy myopia as a source of policy failure: adaptation and policy learning under deep uncertainty  
Authors: Nair, Sreeja; Howlett, Michael