Review of Policy & Politics in 2025 and happy holidays!

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by the P&P editorial team: Chris Weible, Allegra Fullerton, Oscar Berglund, Elizabeth Koebele, Kristin Taylor, Claire Dunlop & Sarah Brown

A photo of the Policy & Politics editorial team: 5 women and 2 men stood outside in front of some grass, trees, and a building

Dear authors, reviewers, Editorial Board members, Early Career Editorial Board members, readers, and friends of Policy & Politics,

As 2025 draws to a close, we want to extend our sincere thanks to all of you. Your scholarship, rigour and sustained engagement have played a central role in making this another strong year for the journal and the blog. In this final blog of 2025, we reflect on P&P’s achievements this year, feature our most popular blog in 2025, showcase the highest number of open access articles we’ve published this year, and consider the year to come with gratitude for our community and hope for the future of the journal and its contribution to policy scholarship.

Reflections on 2025

This year, thanks to the ongoing support of our community:

  • Our readership has quintupled over the last 5 years, representing the highest increase since the journal started publishing in 1972. This is one of the strongest motivators for us on the journal team, and we are so grateful to have such an engaged and loyal following, thank you!
  • Submissions reached their highest level in more than a decade, reflecting both the vitality of public policy scholarship and the professional respect many of you tell us you have for Policy & Politics as an outlet for your best work.
  • We published a broader range of international scholarship than ever before, with contributions from an increasingly diverse set of countries and research contexts.
  • We maintained our position in the top quartile of journals in both Public Administration and Political Science, made possible through the collective effort of authors, reviewers and Board members.

We remain grateful to all of you for sustaining the journal’s quality and intellectual ambition.

Our most popular blog of 2025

We are delighted to share that our most widely read blog post of 2025 was “Metagoverning collaborative networks: a cumulative power perspective” by Alexander L. Q. Chen & Oda Hustad. Here, the authors examine how collaborative governance networks are subtly steered through metagovernance, introducing a new framework that distinguishes between output-, input-, and process-based forms of indirect control. Using an illustrative Danish case, the authors show how these mechanisms accumulate to shape participation, decision-making, and outcomes—shedding light on power dynamics that often remain hidden in accounts of collaboration. Their contribution lies in demonstrating that even “horizontal” networks involve significant, cumulative power, and in offering scholars a clearer way to analyse when such power empowers participants and when it marginalises them.

Open access highlights: Making more open research accessible than ever

We are particularly proud to have published a record number of open access articles in 2025, helping to broaden the reach and impact of the research we publish. These included:

Looking ahead to 2026

As we look towards 2026, we remain encouraged by the journal’s continued growth: rising submissions, expanding global participation, sustained interest in open access and strong engagement with our blog. We hope you will continue to contribute—through submitting, reviewing, reading and sharing research.

Thank you once again for your support throughout 2025. We wish you a restful break and all the best for the year ahead.

The P&P Editorial Team, Policy & Politics

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