by Sarah Brown and Allegra Fullerton
In celebration of the broad aims of Policy & Politics, we decided to focus this quarter’s highlights collection on our three most popular reads of 2025 to date. Spanning narratives, policy design, and direct democracy, these articles beautifully illustrate the journal’s breadth of scope — unusual among top-ranked outlets in the field.
So, without further ado, here’s a précis of each to whet your appetite for the full research articles, which are free to view until the end of January 2026.
Our first and most popular article, “A systematic review of the Narrative Policy Framework: a future research agenda” by Johanna Kuenzler, Bettina Stauffer, Caroline Schlaufer, Geoboo Song, Aaron Smith-Walter, and Michael D. Jones, offers a comprehensive overview of one of the most widely used frameworks in policy process research. Reviewing 131 studies employing the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), the authors trace its conceptual development, methodological applications, and empirical reach. It provides both a clear overview for those new to the framework and detailed insights for experienced researchers. Their analysis highlights both areas of theoretical maturity and opportunities for further refinement, setting out a clear and constructive agenda for future NPF research. For anyone engaging with the NPF, whether to ground new empirical work or to position a theoretical contribution, this is a must-read. No wonder it’s our most popular article of 2025!
Our second article, “How do policy and design intersect? Three relationships” by Liz Richardson, Catherine Durose, Lucy Kimbell, and Ramia Mazé, makes a strong contribution to the policy design literature by examining how design practices and policy processes both connect and diverge. The authors propose three key relationships between policy and design—design for policy, design in policy, and design as policy—zooming out each with distinct implications for power, participation, and learning. Moving beyond instrumental accounts of design thinking, the article develops a nuanced conceptual framework and a compelling agenda for future research at the interface of design and policy studies. This piece is a valuable reference point for future empirical and theoretical work.
Our final article, “The democratising capacity of new municipalism: beyond direct democracy in public–common partnerships” by Iolanda Bianchi, explores how new municipalist movements can reshape local governance. Drawing on the case of Barcelona, Bianchi analyses collaborations between public institutions and citizen-led “common” initiatives, arguing that these public–common partnerships democratise governance not merely by extending participation, but by redistributing power and reconfiguring the relationship between state and society. This article will be of particular relevance to researchers examining participatory governance, participatory budgeting, democratic participation, and urban politics.
Together, these three outstanding contributions showcase the intellectual diversity of Policy & Politics — from theoretical synthesis and conceptual innovation to empirically grounded analyses of governance in action
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All articles are free to access for a limited period until 31 January 2026:
Kuenzler, J., Stauffer, B., Schlaufer, C., Song, G., Smith-Walter, A., & Jones, M. D. (2025) A systematic review of the Narrative Policy Framework: a future research agenda.
Richardson, L., Durose, C., Kimbell, L., & Mazé, R. (2025) How do policy and design intersect? Three relationships.
Bianchi, I. (2025) The democratising capacity of new municipalism: beyond direct democracy in public–common partnerships.
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