March 2024 – Policy & Politics Journal Blog

Investigating stakeholder rationales for participating in collaborative interactions at the policy–science nexus

March 27, 2024March 27, 2024policypressblogLeave a comment

by Helena Seibicke

Contemporary politics has become increasingly reliant on scientific knowledge. In evidence-based policymaking, science is invoked to address complex, ‘wicked’ problems. Yet, policymakers do not necessarily base decisions on the best-available evidence, and models of knowledge used in policymaking have long been criticised as simplistic.

Therefore, collaboration with non-scientific actors (so called ‘stakeholders’) has emerged as a possible way forward. The increasing emphasis on prolonged and formalised engagement of stakeholders in research projects is subjected to public expenditure justifications, improvement of the input, throughput and output of funded research to inform policymaking processes and address societal challenges. It also reflects the view that an effective response to these challenges requires multi-partner collaborations between academic experts and various interests and perspectives.

On both sides of the policy–science nexus, collaborative interactions are extended to include stakeholders to improve the impact (i.e. the usability and applicability) of knowledge. And while stakeholder involvement often follows this overarching justification, the question of stakeholder rationales for participating in these processes has previously received little scholarly attention. The scarce literature that does exist largely focuses on improving the transfer of knowledge outcomes of collaborative innovation, and knowledge production, rather than the involved actors’ interactions.

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The importance of feminist democratic innovations in policy and politics

March 20, 2024March 19, 2024policypressblogLeave a comment

by Paloma Caravantes and Emanuela Lombardo

Democratic innovations in institutional politics are processes or institutions aimed at improving the quality of democracy beyond electoral politics. This is done by including the voices, knowledge and experiences of civil society in policy processes (Martínez-Palacios, 2018; della Porta, 2020). But what are feminist democratic innovations in policy and politics? They are actions seeking to transform unequal gender and intersectional hierarchies through promoting intersectional inclusion and participation in both policy content and institutional structures.

In our article in Policy & Politics, we explore this topic and propose a conceptualisation of feminist democratic innovations in local institutional politics. We apply our framework to a laboratory of feminist municipal politics that was Barcelona’s local government from 2015 to 2023 (Cruells and Alfama, 2019). The case of Barcelona offers us an example of a public institution shaped by the struggles of progressive social movements (della Porta and Zamponi, 2022), in which critical feminist actors from institutions and civil society had the opportunity to tailor politics and policymaking.

We identify four types of transformations: (a) transforming knowledge, (b) transforming policymaking and public funding, (c) transforming institutions, and (d) transforming actors’ coalitions. Firstly, knowledge has a prominent role in Barcelona’s gender equality policy, both in terms of the discursive construction of a ‘feminist city’, and as a tool for gender-informed diagnosis and policy solutions. Secondly, the municipality of Barcelona democratises policymaking in terms of inclusion and participation through mainstreaming gender and its intersections, mostly focused on class, as well as using gender-related criteria to assign and distribute public funding. Thirdly, inter-institutional change involves the strengthening of gender equality structures and tools, such as gender impact assessment reports. The fourth feminist democratic transformation is the effort to expand the municipality’s relations with civil society and increase the participation of feminist organisations in policymaking processes.

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Activists have legitimate feelings and policy makers might want to start listening

March 13, 2024March 12, 2024policypressblogLeave a comment

By Michael Orsini and Jennifer M. Kilty

We think with emotions. We reason with emotions.

Straightforward enough? These statements may seem uncontroversial, and yet significant energy is expended banishing emotions from political discussion, arguing that they muddy the waters and get in the way of “reasoned” debate.

Why? Must the commitment to evidence-based policy making be devoid of feeling? Isn’t evidence marshalled in ways that reflect affective attachments to policy ideas? Is it because some are opposed to the specific emotions that are being mobilised in politics?

Our recently published article in Policy & Politics: Emotions and anti-carceral advocacy in Canada: ‘All of the anger this creates in our bodies is also a tool to kill us’, examines a subject that has aroused intense debate: the expansion of the punitive state. We were interested in how activists mobilise others to resist punitive policies, the resources they bring to their activism, and the feelings that guide them. We were struck by how activists understand themselves as feeling actors, as people with thoughts, hopes and dreams that are grounded in their embodied experiences. Our focus group interviews with activists in Ottawa, Canada revealed three key findings about the role of emotions in organising: (1) anger mobilises anti-carceral activism; (2) fear of state actors and surveillance are motivational forces to become or remain involved in activist organising; and (3) organisers understand care and mutual aid as alternatives to incarceration and mechanisms to support one’s activist peers.

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NEW SPECIAL ISSUE BLOG SERIES ON POLICY EXPERTISE IN TIMES OF CRISIS. BLOG 7: The challenges experts face during creeping crises: the curse of complacency

March 12, 2024March 11, 2024policypressblogLeave a comment

Special issue blog series on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis

Ahmad Wesal Zaman, Olivier Rubin and Reidar Staupe-Delgado

The policy literature has generally presented crises as urgent public threats with clearly demarcated ‘focusing events’. As a result, most studies have identified the main challenges faced by expert agencies involved in evidence-based policymaking as managing uncertainty, time pressure and communication. However, less focus has been devoted to analysing the concrete challenges faced by expert agencies during creeping crises. Creeping crises are characterised by spatial and temporal fragmentation and elusiveness, which create an additional challenge for expert agencies: how to get the crisis on the political agenda.

Comparing two global creeping crises: climate change (CC) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), our recently published article in Policy & Politics, highlights two distinct strategies for influencing policymaking. Our analysis showed how two expert agencies, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), pursued different strategies when setting the global agenda and influencing policymaking. Our findings showed that the WHO’s approach to policymaking regarding AMR was mostly guided by top-down, science-led, formal engagements and strategies. This approach has successfully increased the salience of the global challenge of AMR, providing strong, evidence-based solutions. But it has been less successful in promoting the challenge onto the global political agenda.

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NEW SPECIAL ISSUE BLOG SERIES ON POLICY EXPERTISE IN TIMES OF CRISIS. BLOG 6: Did the Covid-19 pandemic cause enduring change in the roles of experts in politics?

March 11, 2024March 11, 2024policypressblogLeave a comment

Special issue blog series on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis

Kennet Lynggaard, Theofanis Exadaktylos, Mads Jensen & Michael Kluth

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, many of us would probably have been a little hesitant on the exact field of work, or even unaware of the existence, of experts such as a mathematical virologist or experimental epidemiologist. Well into the pandemic, after several lockdowns and reopening of societies, highly specialised concepts from virology and epidemiology had entered everyday conversations, just like experts involved in handling the pandemic have become household names and, in many countries, even minor celebrities.

Our article, just published in Policy & Politics, assesses the role for experts during the various stages of the pandemic, based on evidence collected from a survey of comparative politics scholars from 31 European countries in 2022, which you can find more detail on in the book: Governments’ Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Europe: Navigating the Perfect Storm 2023. In our P&P article, we analysed the role of experts during the processes of depoliticisation and re-politicisation at each stage of the pandemic, alongside their influence on government responses to the pandemic. We propose a new typology, classifying four different ideal types of roles for experts: leading, antagonistic, managerial, and auxiliary – see figure 1.

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