by Sarah Brown and Elizabeth Koebele
All articles featured in this blog post are free to access until 31 October 2024
It’s that time of year again when course syllabi are updated with fresh research. We hope to make this easier with the essential reading list below, which features some of the most significant research relevant to public policy students that we’ve published over the last year. We feature nine articles and a special issue for teaching topical themes such as health policy, policy learning and advocacy. All articles are ideal for Public Policy, Politics and Social Policy classes alike.
As always, we welcome your feedback on the articles featured, as well as future unit topics you’d like to see covered! Let us know what you’re teaching and how we can help!
Our first theme focuses on a substantive policy area that is increasingly taught in public and social policy courses, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and on-going climate crisis: health policy.
Our first article, “Analysing the ‘follow the science’ rhetoric of government responses to COVID-19” by Margaret Macaulay and colleagues, has been one of the most widely read and cited articles of last year and was the winner of our Best Paper prize for 2023. This is not surprising, as it advances bold and well evidenced claims on a hot topic in public health governance. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic – and in the face of widespread anxiety and uncertainty – governments’ mantra that they were “just following the science” was meant to reassure the public that decisions about pandemic responses were being directed by the best available scientific evidence. However, the authors claim that making policy decisions based only on scientific evidence is impossible (if only because ‘the science’ is always contested) and undemocratic (because governments are elected to balance a range of priorities and interests in their decisions). Claiming to be “just following the science” therefore represents an abdication of responsibility by politicians.
Our second featured article, entitled What types of evidence persuade actors in a complex policy system? by Geoff Bates and colleagues, explores the use of evidence to influence different groups across the urban development system to think more about health outcomes in their decisions. Their three key findings are: (i) evidence-based narratives have wide appeal; (ii) credibility of evidence is critical; and (iii) many stakeholders have priorities other than health, such as economic considerations. The authors conclude that these insights can be used to frame and present evidence that meets the requirements of different urban development stakeholders and persuade them to think more about how the quality of urban environments affects health outcomes.
Our final article on health policy looks at the role of charitable funding in the provision of public services, specifically examining the English and Welsh National Health Service (NHS). Here, authors Helen Abnett and colleagues argue that there is no legislative or policy guidance within the NHS that determines what should be provided by government and what can be provided by charities. Consequently, the latter are not only providing goods and equipment that are essential to the provision of basic health services, but also non-essential items intended to make hospital visits more comfortable for patients and staff, such as newspapers, books, etc. The authors conclude that, while charitable funding has lots to offer, it is also beset by well-documented challenges of insufficiency and the unequal distribution of resources. They argue that charitable funding of basic health provision has the potential to enable government to reduce their responsibility for expenditure on welfare services, as well as contribute to growing inequalities in the provision of health services across the NHS.
Our second theme in this reading list blog is the ever-popular policy learning. We hope our selection of articles offers new insights on this core area of policy studies, as well as a sneak preview of our forthcoming special issue on “Policy Learning and Policy Innovation” in October.
Our first article investigates how policy learning happens across a multilevel governance structure during a crisis. Here, authors Bishoy Zaki and Ellen Wayenberg introduce the topic by reminding us that, while scholarship has explored how policy learning influences policy during crises, little is known about how it takes place across different levels of governance structures, despite their influence on crisis responses. Using the case of the Belgian COVID-19 policy response, their research found that the multilevel governance structure broke the policy learning process into smaller heterogenous learning processes that take place at different levels. They also found that decentralised approaches to learning provided the space for customised, yet often fragmented policy responses. Finally, they found that institutional legacies, varying degrees of policymaker control over learning, and an absence of common approaches to designing learning processes led policymakers to engage in different learning processes.
Our second article on policy learning, by Simone Busetti and Maria Righettini, investigates three municipal case studies from the Italian food stamp programme implemented during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The repetition of the programme over a short period of time offered the opportunity to investigate inter-crisis learning, the process by which lessons from the first wave of implementation contributed to reforms in the second delivery. Through their case, the authors show how the coronavirus crisis magnified the acquisition of knowledge and provided radical inter-programme lessons – long-term, non-incremental learning beyond the management of the emergency. Yet, their research findings also highlighted how this window of opportunity for learning quickly closed, and how certain lessons learned may be lost in the process of reform, hard to implement or are unlikely to be extrapolated across contexts.
Our final article on this theme offers a new theoretical perspective on agency across policy learning governance theories. In a second contribution to this collection, author Bishoy Zaki claims that the predominant ontological position on agency in policy learning literature has been relatively learner-oriented. In other words, it explores how actors acquire, translate, and disseminate knowledge and information to address policy problems or ‘puzzles’. However, despite its influence on policy learning and its outcomes, policy actors’ agency in shaping learning processes has been scarcely explored or theorised. This article explains how integrating a learning governance perspective into existing conceptual approaches to policy learning can provide a better basis for understanding interactions and outcomes, such as policy or belief change. In this way, the author offers a more robust baseline for explaining learning processes, an advancement that has significant implications for both policy learning theory and practice.
And finally, to assist you in updating your reading list on policy learning and stay ahead of the field, here’s a sneak preview of articles from our forthcoming special issue publishing in October on “Policy Learning and Policy Innovation” edited by Claire A. Dunlop, Claudio M. Radaelli, Ellen Wayenberg and Bishoy L. Zaki.
- Types of learning and varieties of innovation: how does policy learning enable policy innovation?
by Nihit Goyal and Michael Howlett - Why policy failure is a prerequisite for innovation in the public sector by Philipp Trein and Thenia Vagionaki
- Policy and organisational learning in judicial reform: evidence from Italy by Jonathan C. Kamkhaji and Giancarlo Vecchi
- How do governments learn from ad hoc groups during crises? From SARS to COVID-19 by Sreeja Nair and Akshat Garg
- The relative effects of diversity on collective learning in local collaborative networks in Belgium by Nadège Carlier, David Aubin, and Stéphane Moyson
- Policy beliefs, belief uncertainty, and policy learning through the lens of the Advocacy Coalition Framework by Matthew C. Nowlin
Our final theme in this collection is the well-established yet enduring topic of advocacy in policy processes. Here we feature three of our most popular articles on this subject.
Our first article, Advocacy Coalitions, Power and Policy Change by Tim Heinmiller, critiques a core principle of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) – that major policy change will not occur as long as the advocacy coalition that instated the policy remains “in power” in a jurisdiction. Firstly, Heinmiller explores what it means for a status quo advocacy coalition to be in power in a jurisdiction, especially as it relates to the ACF’s theory of policy change. After critically examining how this concept has been used in existing ACF scholarship, the author proposes a standard operationalization of being in power, drawing on the veto players literature, which he then illustrates using a case study of Canadian firearms policy. His conclusion demonstrates how the proposed operationalization is an improvement on existing practices that also advances the theory around and measurement of policy change in the ACF.
Our second article, by Paul Wagner and colleagues, challenges the insider outsider approach to advocacy by exploring how collaboration networks and belief similarities shape strategy choices. Here, the authors remind us that, although advocacy strategies are a key success factor for public, private and third sector actors who seek to influence policy choices, research on policy networks has paid little attention to the forms of advocacy studied by interest groups scholars. The interest groups’ literature differentiates insider from outsider strategies and assumes that interest groups with strong access to policymakers opt for insider strategies, while those with weak access are constrained to using outsider strategies. Within this context, their article investigates if policy actors’ choices of advocacy strategies are similar to those in their collaboration network and to those with similar policy beliefs as their own. Their results show that, irrespective of the context, actors are likely to use the same advocacy strategies as their collaboration partners and those whose policy beliefs are like their own. This research demonstrates the value of using a policy network approach to move beyond the insider/outsider dichotomy on interest groups’ use of advocacy strategies.
Our third and final article on this theme analyses the stability of advocacy coalitions and policy frames in Ghana’s oil and gas governance. Here, author Alex Osei-Kojo claims that, although political associations and public discourse on policy issues are essential components of any democratic system, their characteristics, particularly those concerning change or stability over time, remain largely understudied, especially outside western jurisdictions. By applying the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to the context of Ghana’s oil and gas governance, this article seeks to reduce these limitations by analysing coalition stability at the micro- and meso-levels. It also examines the stability of policy frames as expressions of policy beliefs. The results show coalition stability at the meso-level but instability at the micro-level. In addition, some policy frames appear more stable than others. This article contributes to existing knowledge by proposing two levels of coalition stability analysis, augmenting the number of ACF applications beyond western jurisdictions, facilitating comparative analysis, and producing more generalisable knowledge.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading our latest research and that we’ve helped to give you some ideas for teaching resources to include on unit guidance for your students. Please also look out for our quarterly highlights collections during the year for more ideas for your teaching.
In the meantime, happy reading!
Articles featured in this collection are free to view until 31 October 2024 so be sure to download them now!
Health policy
MacAulay, M., Fafard, P., Cassola, A., and Palkovits, M. (2023). Analysing the ‘follow the science’ rhetoric of government responses to COVID-19. Policy & Politics 51, 3, 466-485, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16831146677554>
Bates, G., Ayres, S., Barnfield, A., and Larkin, C. (2023). What types of health evidence persuade policy actors in a complex system?. Policy & Politics 51, 3, 386-412, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16814103714008>
Abnett, H., Bowles, J., and Mohan, J. (2023). The role of charitable funding in the provision of public services: the case of the English and Welsh National Health Service. Policy & Politics 51, 2, 362-384, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16764537061954>
Policy Learning
Zaki, B. L., and Wayenberg, E. (2023). How does policy learning take place across a multilevel governance architecture during crises?. Policy & Politics 51, 1, 131-155, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16680922931773>
Busetti, S., and Righettini, M. S. (2023). Policy learning from crises: lessons learned from the Italian food stamp programme. Policy & Politics 51, 1, 91-112, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16678318518550>
Zaki, B. L. (2024). Policy learning governance: a new perspective on agency across policy learning theories. Policy & Politics 52, 3, 412-429, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2023D000000018>
Advocacy
Heinmiller, B. T. (2023). Advocacy coalitions, power and policy change. Policy & Politics 51, 1, 28-46, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16569341758199>
Wagner, P. M., Ocelík, P., Gronow, A., Ylä-Anttila, T., and Metz, F. (2023). Challenging the insider outsider approach to advocacy: how collaboration networks and belief similarities shape strategy choices. Policy & Politics 51, 1, 47-70, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/030557322X16681603168232>
Osei-Kojo, A. (2023). Analysing the stability of advocacy coalitions and policy frames in Ghana’s oil and gas governance. Policy & Politics 51, 1, 71-90, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/030557322X16651632139992>
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