by Katharina Paul
In a recent article published in Policy & Politics, author Katharina T. Paul argues for a shift in how we analyse public health controversies by introducing a new methodology—policy valuography—that explores how different social actors assign value to vaccination. The article, entitled Towards a new policy analytical methodology in the study of vaccination governance, moves beyond familiar binary framings of vaccine hesitancy and proposes a deeper investigation of the “valuation practices” that shape vaccination governance.
Rethinking value in wicked problems
Paul positions declining vaccine uptake as a “wicked problem”—one that resists clear solutions because actors fundamentally disagree on what the problem is. Rather than treating value as fixed or self-evident, she urges policy scholars to consider how notions of value are constructed, negotiated, and stabilised over time. The concept of valuation, drawn from Science and Technology Studies, allows her to capture the diversity of logics—from ethical and scientific to economic and political—that underpin how vaccines are assessed and justified in public discourse and policy.
Introducing policy valuography
To investigate these dynamics, the article introduces policy valuography, a multi-sited methodology for tracing how vaccines are valued across different arenas—such as scientific communities, policy forums, media debates, and everyday clinical encounters. Drawing on three empirical vignettes—vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV), COVID-19, and mpox—Paul shows how moments of problematisation reveal competing and sometimes conflicting ways of valuing vaccines. For example, HPV vaccination raised tensions between public health aims and moral anxieties about sexuality; COVID-19 vaccines became entangled in questions of trust, equity, and global distribution; and mpox vaccination campaigns highlighted trade-offs between ring vaccination strategies and the risk of stigma.
From fixed values to contested valuations
By foregrounding valuation practices, Paul offers an alternative to policy approaches that treat vaccine hesitancy as a matter of misinformation or ignorance. She demonstrates that conflicts over vaccines often stem not from differing values per se, but from the ways values are enacted, prioritised and communicated in governance. This insight shifts the analytical focus away from individual behaviour and toward institutional processes, discursive framings, and the calculative tools that render some valuations dominant while marginalising others.
Implications for policy analysis
The article contributes to both critical policy studies and public health scholarship by offering a methodological framework that is attentive to complexity, contingency, and contestation. Paul’s policy valuography provides a promising new avenue for studying other intractable governance issues, from climate change to antimicrobial resistance. As she notes, addressing wicked problems requires understanding not just what is at stake, but how different actors come to define and value what matters.
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You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at
Paul, K. T. (2025). Towards a new policy analytical methodology in the study of vaccination governance: from values to valuations. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2025), available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2025D000000069>
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