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“Just following the science”: blame avoidance and abdication of responsibility

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by Patrick Fafard and Adele Cassola

Pandemic politics saw governments repeatedly claim to be “just following the science.” In the face of widespread anxiety and uncertainty, this mantra was meant to reassure the public that decisions about pandemic responses were being directed by the best available scientific evidence. But making policy decisions based only on scientific evidence is impossible (if only because ‘the science’ is always contested) and undemocratic (because governments are elected to balance a range of priorities and interests in their decisions). Claiming to be “just following the science” therefore represents an abdication of responsibility by politicians.  Working with colleagues, we advanced these bold claims in a recent article published in Policy & Politics that is part of our long-running research program on public health governance.

The inherent limits of ‘evidence-based’ policy have been repeatedly described and analysed. We know that policy and programme choices are never based solely on the available scientific evidence. So why did politicians claim to be “just following the science,” and what are the implications of doing so?

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Policy integration in local government: what are the barriers?

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by Nicolai De Wulf, Joris Voets and Astrid Molenveld

Cities nowadays are confronted with a wide range of complex societal issues and, correspondingly, the expectations and challenges for local governments have grown. Within this context, they are often praised for their dynamism and their ability to achieve results. As a consequence, local governments often enjoy a large degree of trust from their citizens. But what are the barriers local policy makers face when trying to coordinate and integrate policies? Our recent article in Policy & Politics, entitled ‘Policy coordination and integration in local government: perspectives on barriers’ shows that three distinct perspectives emerge, which we describe in more detail below.

Complex societal issues mentioned are difficult to approach from within one single policy domain. Take, for example, the issue of sustainable mobility, which encompasses mobility, sustainability and the environment, urban planning, the local economy and so forth. Policy issues that span multiple policy domains (horizontally), also involve multiple political and administrative actors and interests (vertically). As such, complex societal issues challenge the traditional modes of collaboration between politics and administration.

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2023 Policy & Politics Reading List

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by Elizabeth Koebele with Sarah Brown

Updating your course reading lists? Check out our essential reading recommendations on evidence-based policymaking, policy learning in multi-level and crisis contexts and the representation of diverse identities in public policy

It’s that time of year again to update your course syllabi with the latest research. Here at Policy & Politics, we hope to make that job easier for you by providing suggestions for teaching three important and timely themes in your policy courses.

Our first theme, showcasing three articles, is evidence-based policymaking (EBP). Of interest to students and scholars alike, our articles on EBP span a variety of perspectives that challenge mainstream views and showcase new angles on how EBP affects policy process dynamics. They should all lead to interesting classroom discussions and assignments about the meaning and validity of EBP.

The next three articles in our collection tackle different aspects of policy learning – an ever-popular topic with students and scholars alike, according to our readership data! These selected articles advance the dialogue on this important topic by exploring how learning may be fostered or constrained by multi-level governance structures and in crisis contexts.

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Policy & Politics Quarterly Highlights Collection – free to access from 1 August – 31st October 2023

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Enhancing Democracy throughout the Policy Process

by Sarah Brown and Elizabeth Koebele

This quarter’s highlights collection features four articles that examine the use of democratic principles and processes in contexts that are not traditionally democratic, which we hope will resonate with some of the topical debates that are currently playing out on the global stage.

In our first article, author Karin Fossheim asks how non-elected representatives can secure democratic representation. In this important contribution to the literature on representative democracy, Fossheim analyses representation in governance networks. She does this by comparing how non-elected representatives, their constituents and the decision-making audience understand the outcome of representation to benefit constituency, authorisation and accountability. Her research findings conclude that all three groups mostly share an understanding of democratic non-electoral representation, understood as ongoing interactions between representatives and constituents, multiple (if any) organisational and discursive sources of authorisation and deliberative aspects of accountability. All these elements are shown to support democratic representation despite the absence of elections.

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The opportunities and challenges of politically designed co-creation platforms

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by Sam van Elk & Britt Regal

This situation has sparked thinking about how to foster co-creation on a larger scale. One key idea involves co-creation ‘platforms’. These platforms are adaptable structures that can be applied to diverse contexts, similar to a computer operating system that can run various programs. The UK’s Local Enterprise Zones are good examples of such ‘platforms’ –  each ‘Zone’ is tailored to local needs but operates within a common framework. Academics have suggested that governments use platforms to encourage their citizens, businesses, and communities to co-create. But to date, there has been limited research into what happens when a government follows this advice.

Our study, ‘The opportunities and challenges of politically designed co-creation platforms’, recently published in Policy and Politics addresses this limitation. We studied the London Borough of Culture programme, a platform that aims to foster collaboratively created cultural events. The program offers annual awards to a winning ‘London Borough of Culture’ to run a year of cultural events, alongside several runner-up prizes. Boroughs are encouraged to work collaboratively and treat residents as ‘co-creators’. Our work centred on the Greater London Authority, which administers the scheme, and the London Borough of Waltham Forest, the inaugural winning borough.

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Annual call for special issue proposals for Policy & Politics

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by the Policy & Politics Team

Policy & Politics has been publishing innovative works at the intersection of public policy and politics for over 50 years. It is a world-leading, top quartile journal that is committed to advancing scholarly understanding of the dynamics of policy-making and implementation.  By exploring the interplay between political actors, governing institutions and policy issues, the journal contributes to building policy process theory; and by reflecting on the evolving context in which these interactions occur, it provides timely and fresh insights into the influence of politics on policy and vice versa. 

The journal’s co-editors invite proposals for a special issue that will make a significant contribution to our understanding of the nexus of public policy and politics.  The journal only has space to publish one special issue each year, so this is a competitive process.

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How evidence-based policymaking helps and hinders policy conflict

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by Lars Dorren and Eva E.A Wolf

Although one would expect evidence based policy making (known as ‘EBPM’: meaning the introduction of facts and figures in policy processes) to help bring clarity to policy conflicts, this is not always the case. In fact, it can have the very opposite effect, as our recently published research article argues: “How evidence-based policy making helps and hinders policy conflict”.

Previous research has shown that evidence can help conflicting parties move past their differences by temporarily offering them a set of principles to which they all can ascribe. EBPM also gives people the tools to scrutinise decisions, and comes with transparent procedures. However, our study shows that working based on EBPM principles does not always help policy conflict. We looked at the way in which a piece of evidence called the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) impacted existing conflicts in three large infrastructure projects in Flanders. The observed processes revolved around determining the preferred option among multiple proposed solutions for an infrastructural issue that needed to be addressed. We found that, in these processes, the introduction of an EBPM-type instrument such as the EIA also created confusion.

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What types of health evidence persuade actors in a complex policy system?

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by Geoff Bates, Sarah Ayres, Andrew Barnfield, and Charles Larkin

Good quality urban environments can help to prevent non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, mental health conditions and diabetes that account for three quarters of deaths globally (World Health Organisation, 2022). More commonly however, poor quality living conditions contribute to poor health and widening inequalities (Adlakha & John, 2022). Consequently, many public health advocates hope to convince and bring together the stakeholders who shape urban development to help create healthier places.

Evidence is one tool that can be used to convince these stakeholders from outside the health sector to think more about health outcomes. Most of the literature on the use of evidence in policy environments has focused on the public sector, such as politicians and civil servants (e.g., Crow & Jones, 2018). However, urban development decision-making processes involve many stakeholders across sectors with different needs and agendas (Black et al., 2021). While government sets policy and regulatory frameworks, private sector organisations such as property developers and investors drive urban development and strongly influence policy agendas.

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The many meanings of policy instruments: exploring individual and structural determinants in obesity policy

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by Robert Ralston, Charlotte Godziewski and Lauren Carters-White

How can obesity policy move away from individual-centred blaming or nudging and meaningfully address the political-economic root causes of poor diets? For many health inequalities researchers, policy instruments that regulate industry are seen as a promising way to target those root causes. More than a simple tweak, such policy instruments are implicitly expected to finally move public health policy away from a focus on individual responsibility characteristic of neoliberal governance. But is a change in policy instrument – even a substantive one – capable of sparking change in the underlying policy paradigm? Does proposing structure-targeting instruments (eg. industry regulation) necessarily mean that policymakers now think differently about the policy issue? This is the puzzle we explore in our article recently published in Policy & Politics entitled The many meanings of policy instruments: exploring individual and structural determinants in obesity policy. Our research focuses on the case of the UK’s 2020 Tackling Obesity Strategy. This strategy has been welcomed precisely because it proposes ‘harder’ regulation of commercial actors. While this may sound promising to many, we argue that the Tackling Obesity Strategy unfortunately lacks the radical change of past strategies.

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New citation metrics for Policy & Politics

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To all our authors, reviewers, readers, friends and supporters,

We’re delighted to announce that Policy & Politics has achieved a 2-year impact factor of 4.7, further improving its position in the top quartile of Political Science journals (16th out of 187 journals) and Public Administration journals (7th out of 49 journals).

In other citation metrics announced in 2023, Scopus’ CiteScore has ranked Policy & Politics in the 94th percentile (76 out of 1,415) of Public Administration journals and the Scimago Journal and country Rank (SJR) rankings place Policy & Politics in the top quartile (20 out of 199 journals) in Public Administration.

We are so grateful to all of you in our scholarly community for helping us achieve these excellent results. Thank you!

To celebrate the achievements of our authors, we have created a free collection of highly cited articles. All of the articles below are free to access until 31 July 2023. Read the Highly Cited Collection here.

With best wishes,

Oscar, Claire, Elizabeth and Chris

Policy & Politics Co-Editors