by Allegra Fullerton and Sarah Brown
Policy problems do not arrive in the policy process with fixed meanings. How problems are understood, which solutions appear possible, and how people respond to them are shaped through social and political processes involving policy narratives, values, beliefs and other ways of making sense of the world.
This virtual issue brings together five articles from Policy & Politics that explore how meanings are constructed, reproduced and contested across very different policy settings. From sustainable transport and gender equity to vaccination governance and emerging climate technologies, they reveal some of the processes through which particular understandings of policy problems and possibilities take shape – and why this matters for the policy process.
In How policy narratives shape sustainability governance: a case study of urban transport policy discourse, Mario Angst, Neitah Noemi Müller, Viviane Walker and Myriam Pham-Truffert connect sustainability imaginaries with the Narrative Policy Framework. Analysing 12 years of urban transport policy discourse in Zürich, they find evidence that competing macro-level narratives of sustainability as modernisation or transformation help to structure policy discourse. Their analysis demonstrates how broader stories about desirable futures can shape the positions actors take in particular policy processes.
Narratives are also the focus of Hilda Broqvist’s Stories told before: intertextuality in policy narratives on men’s violence against women. Broqvist argues that phenomena invoked as evidence are policy narratives and are rarely created from scratch. Studying Swedish municipal policy on men’s violence against women, she introduces intertextuality to the Narrative Policy Framework to show how new narratives draw on existing ones. Previous stories can be echoed, developed or challenged, allowing narrative elements – and the understandings of policy problems they contain – to travel between policy texts.
The construction of meaning in policymaking extends beyond narratives themselves. Kevin Guyan, Doris Ruth Eikhof and Amanda Coles examine the assumptions underlying gender equity interventions in Gender equity policy and visibility politics in the film and television industries. Comparing policy in the UK, Canada and Germany, they identify three imaginaries in which visibility is understood as evidence of a problem, as a solution, and as evidence that action is being taken. Their findings complicate the assumption that greater visibility necessarily produces greater equity, showing how particular ways of seeing a problem can both enable and constrain the policy responses that follow.
Katharina T. Paul similarly challenges something that can appear self-evident: the ‘value’ of vaccination. In Towards a new policy analytical methodology in the study of vaccination governance: from values to valuations, Paul proposes ‘policy valuography’ as a way of studying how different actors ascribe scientific, economic, ethical, social and other forms of value to vaccination. Rather than treating value as fixed or reducible to metrics, the article directs attention to how valuations are produced, aligned and contested across different sites of governance.
Finally, Chris Koski and Paul Manson examine what shapes public attitudes when established political cues are comparatively weak. Not yet partisan: Cultural Theory explains attitudes about solar radiation management in the US investigates attitudes towards an emerging and still unfamiliar climate intervention. They find that partisanship is a relatively weak predictor of attitudes towards solar radiation management, while cultural types – alongside confidence in science – help explain support. The study therefore captures an unusual moment in which attitudes towards a policy issue have not yet hardened along familiar partisan lines.
Taken together, these articles show that meaning in the policy process is neither fixed nor simply given. Narratives connect present policy debates with stories told before; imaginaries influence which problems and solutions become visible; valuations establish what is considered worthwhile; and cultural beliefs shape responses to unfamiliar policy choices. In different ways, each demonstrates how understandings of policy problems and possibilities are produced through interaction between actors, ideas and their wider social and political contexts.
Understanding these processes helps us to understand not simply what people support or oppose, but how particular understandings of policy problems and possibilities are constructed, gain traction and come to make sense in the first place.
Articles referenced in post:
Angst, M., Müller, N. N., Walker, V., & Pham-Truffert, M. (2026). How policy narratives shape sustainability governance: a case study of urban transport policy discourse. Policy & Politics, 54(3), 447-476 [Open Access] https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2025D000000084
Broqvist, H. (2026). Stories told before: intertextuality in policy narratives on men’s violence against women. Policy & Politics, 54(3), 477-502 https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2026D000000085
Guyan, K., Eikhof, D. R., & Coles, A. (2026). Gender equity policy and visibility politics in the film and television industries. Policy & Politics, 54(2), 253-275 [Open Access] https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2025D000000081
Koski, C., & Manson, P. (2026). Not yet partisan: Cultural Theory explains attitudes about solar radiation management in the US. Policy & Politics, 54(4), 682-706 https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2026D000000092
Paul, K. T. (2026). Towards a new policy analytical methodology in the study of vaccination governance: from values to valuations. Policy & Politics, 54(2), 209-229 [Open Access] https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2025D000000069
