Month: February 2025

How Policy Advisors Construct Legitimacy in Challenging Times

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by Andrea Krizsán and Dorottya Fekete

Two photographs of women, both of European heritage, both smiling: the authors of the article.

In our recent article in Policy & Politics, we delve into the changing context of policy advice in autocratising Hungary. In this context, the legitimacy of policy expertise is closely linked to the experts’ relationship with the political regime. As experts are increasingly clustered on opposite sides of the political divide – some with limited or no access to policy processes; others too close to the government, undermining their professional credibility – they rely on a series of practices to construct legitimacy. 

Policy advisors use various strategies to construct legitimacy. They balance scientific rigour with political relevance. Our analysis demonstrates that even if the main bases of legitimacy (policy relevance and scientific robustness) continue to be seen as benchmarks for constructing legitimacy, they gain new meanings in the context of polarised, autocratising Hungary. This balancing involves distinctive discursive, individual and organisational practices.

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Improving support for postgraduate researchers’ wellbeing

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by John Turnpenny

There has been concern in many countries for decades about poor wellbeing and mental health among students and staff in Higher Education institutions, including universities. In response, there is no shortage of recent initiatives to support wellbeing. In the UK, for example, there are research programmes, evidence hubs, charters, and strategies. There are also many different interventions, from direct support for people with wellbeing or mental health issues, to more indirect preventative measures such as improving supervision training.

However, why does such support sometimes struggle to have the desired impact? In my recent article in Policy & Politics, I examine some of the political and operational challenges of supporting wellbeing of postgraduate researchers (PGRs[1]), and the interactions between these challenges. In the UK there is an ongoing debate about PGRs’ status: they are often seen as neither, or confusingly both, staff and students. While PGRs pay fees to their institution, they contribute significantly to research and teaching, often while on casual contracts. I show how and why this status ambiguity has profound and complex implications for the capacity to design, steer, implement, engage with or benefit from support.

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Policy feedback and the politics of trade agreements

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by Rodrigo Fagundes Cezar

Why do interest groups mobilise to change the design of international institutions? The existing research on this topic expects moments when there is a peak in political action, but generally does not consider how such peaks might impact future mobilisations. To fill this gap, my recent article published in Policy & Politics entitled Policy feedback and the politics of trade agreements, seeks to provide an explanation for the conditions under which interest groups mobilise around trade policies using a policy feedback framework.

In particular, I argue that interest groups are more likely to mobilise around polarising (aspects of) trade policy when they have had bad experiences with them before. In other words—organisations are more likely to take action when they have reason to believe that a particular policy will harm their constituents or goals because they have engaged in political learning.

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When crises become the new normal: eroding expert influence during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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by Eric Montpetit, Antoine Claude Lemor, Maria Alejandra Costa, and Louis-Robert Beaulieu-Guay

4 individual portrait photographs of the 4 authors of the article: Eric Montpetit (male), Antoine Claude Lemore (male), Alejandra Maria Costa (female) and Louis-Robert Beaulieu-Guay (male).

Some might say that people can grow accustomed to almost anything—even the worst crises. Indeed, human beings learn to cope with disruptions that initially provoke serious fears, but over time become a “new normal.” This capacity to adapt can be so strong that it undermines the influence of expert knowledge guiding decisions in times of crisis. That is precisely what we observed in Quebec (Canada) during the COVID-19 pandemic, as discussed in our recent article published in Policy & Politics.

Experts often believe that raising alarms about an impending catastrophe is an effective way to heighten awareness among both the public and policymakers regarding the risks of inaction. While fear-based strategies can yield results early in a crisis, they may become counterproductive later on.

In March 2020, many epidemiologists warned decision-makers that, without the swift implementation of strict lockdown measures, COVID-19 would spread exponentially—leading to a horrific number of casualties. In several countries, immediate lockdowns followed, with little consideration for the associated economic costs or unprecedented restrictions on individual freedoms. By highlighting the gravity of the threat, epidemiologists initially exerted considerable influence on both the public and policymakers.

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Policy & Politics Highlights collection on Democratic Innovations: free to access from 1 February – 30 April 2025

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by Sarah Brown and Allegra Fullerton

Welcome to our first themed collection of 2025, featuring our most popular, recent research published in Policy & Politics! Our first collection centres around themes of Democracy. Whether you’re preparing to teach a unit on democracy or doing research in that area, or are just interested in keeping up to date with the latest concepts in democratic innovations, we hope you will find these highlighted articles interesting!

Our first article in this collection, is a conceptual article which presents a new theory of robust democracy. In this powerhouse of an article, authors Sørensen and Warren argue that such a theory is needed to strengthen the capacity of liberal democracies to adapt and innovate in response to change. While many democratic theorists recognise the necessity of reforming liberal democracies to keep pace with social change, the authors argue that  what enables such reform is rarely considered. The authors posit that liberal democracies are politically robust when they are able to continuously adapt and innovate in ways that enable them to serve their core democratic functions, even in the face of disruptive political demands and events. These functions include securing the empowered inclusion of those affected, collective agenda setting and will formation, and the making of joint decisions. This theorising becomes all the more urgent in response to three current challenges that the authors highlight which urgently demand the adaptation and innovation of liberal democracies to become more politically robust: an increasingly assertive political culture, the digitalisation of political communication and increasing global interdependencies. The new theory suggests that when a political system serves these three core democratic functions, this not only deepens democracy, which is justifiable on its own terms, but it also increases political robustness.

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