Social justice and equality – Policy & Politics Journal Blog

Updating your course reading lists? Check out our essential reading recommendations for Public Policy, Politics and Social Policy from Policy & Politics

July 3, 2024July 3, 2024policypressblogLeave a comment

by Sarah Brown and Elizabeth Koebele

All articles featured in this blog post are free to access until 31 October 2024

It’s that time of year again when course syllabi are updated with fresh research. We hope to make this easier with the essential reading list below, which features some of the most significant research relevant to public policy students that we’ve published over the last year. We feature nine articles and a special issue for teaching topical themes such as health policy, policy learning and advocacy. All articles are ideal for Public Policy, Politics and Social Policy classes alike.

As always, we welcome your feedback on the articles featured, as well as future unit topics you’d like to see covered! Let us know what you’re teaching and how we can help!

Health policy

Our first theme focuses on a substantive policy area that is increasingly taught in public and social policy courses, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and on-going climate crisis: health policy.

Our first article, “Analysing the ‘follow the science’ rhetoric of government responses to COVID-19” by Margaret Macaulay and colleagues, has been one of the most widely read and cited articles of last year and was the winner of our Best Paper prize for 2023. This is not surprising, as it advances bold and well evidenced claims on a hot topic in public health governance. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic – and in the face of widespread anxiety and uncertainty – governments’ mantra that they were “just following the science” was meant to reassure the public that decisions about pandemic responses were being directed by the best available scientific evidence. However, the authors claim that 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.

Our second featured article, entitled What types of evidence persuade actors in a complex policy system? by Geoff Bates and colleagues, explores the use of evidence to influence different groups across the urban development system to think more about health outcomes in their decisions. Their three key findings are: (i) evidence-based narratives have wide appeal; (ii) credibility of evidence is critical; and (iii) many stakeholders have priorities other than health, such as economic considerations. The authors conclude that these insights can be used to frame and present evidence that meets the requirements of different urban development stakeholders and persuade them to think more about how the quality of urban environments affects health outcomes.

Continue reading →

Why refrain from torturing foreigners abroad?: British counterterrorism and the international prohibition of torture.

April 20, 2022April 13, 2022policypressblogLeave a comment

Janina Heaphy

My recent article published in Policy & Politics explores why politicians would decide to restrict their own counterterrorism operations, despite a persistently high terrorist threat and little pressure from the public? After years of violating human rights in the name of counterterrorism, the UK, for instance, implemented new policies, which, at least on paper, were supposed to protect foreigners abroad from the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and its American partners’ coercive interrogation practices. Usually, such changes are attributed to a scandal, to the governing politicians’ ideology, to the public mood, or to a particularly strong lobby group – but what if all these explanations simply do not apply, as was the case for the so-called British “Principles” in 2019? Continue reading →

Analysing boundaries of health and social care in policy and media reform narratives: the epic and tragic narratives of policy reform.

March 30, 2022March 24, 2022policypressblogLeave a comment

Sarah van Duijn, Duco Bannink & Henk Nies

When we wrote this blog, Ukraine had not yet been invaded by Russia. However, it would feel inappropriate to us to publish this blog without acknowledging it. We are aware that we are no experts in the field of geopolitics or international relations. However, we cannot help but remark that the strategies we found in our article have become amplified in the rhetoric that surrounds the war in Ukraine. Indeed, the epic-tragic mechanism is part and parcel of democratic processes – as we show in our article – but it is also a part of incomparably worse phenomena such as (threats of) war. Continue reading →

Fear and Loathing in Today’s Politics

November 10, 2021policypressblogLeave a comment

Jonathan J Pierce

In the past year, rioters have stormed the US Capitol building trying to overthrow a presidential election, protestors have marched against police brutality in support of Black Lives Matter, governments have spent trillions of dollars on bailing out the economy, people are protesting mask mandates and lockdowns, and white supremacy and anti-fascist movements are growing daily and seeking a revolution. This is all occurring while the world faces the largest public health crisis in over a century. People are angry and anxious about today’s politics. Can theories and frameworks of public policy explain the influence of emotions? My conclusion based on my recent research published in Policy & Politics is no. Continue reading →

Can community involvement policies mitigate NIMBYism and local opposition to asylum seeker centres?

October 20, 2021October 20, 2021policypressblogLeave a comment

Rianne Dekker, Caroline Oliver & Karin Geuijen

When numbers of refugees seeking asylum increase, local governments are prompted to open new asylum seeker centres (ASCs). This happened for example during the European ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015-16, and more recently, with increasing numbers of people fleeing Afghanistan. Decisions to open facilities such as ASCs often inspire opposition which local governments must navigate. This is the issue we explore in our recent article in Policy & Politics where we ask: Can community involvement policies mitigate NIMBYism and local opposition to asylum seeker centres?

Usually, governments assume that opposition to a facility is fueled by NIMBYism, where residents object to a facility’s local siting but would not object if it was opened elsewhere. They adopt strategies to isolate the facility from its locality, to prevent possible negative impacts. However, in many cases, local opposition has deeper roots than NIMBYism and requires a different policy approach. Continue reading →

Applying intersectionality in policy and practice

July 14, 2021July 30, 2021policypressblogLeave a comment

Ashlee Christoffersen

My recent article in Policy & Politics, The politics of intersectional practice: Competing concepts of intersectionality, shares findings from the first empirical study internationally to explore how both practitioners and policymakers themselves understand how to operationalise ‘intersectionality’. I found that there are five contradictory uses of ‘intersectionality’, some of which further equality for intersectionally marginalised communities, while others actually deepen inequalities (Table 1). In this post I share key recommendations arising for both policy and ‘practice’ (the work of third sector practitioners – delivering services, community development and policy advocacy). These findings also hold relevance for public sector practitioners and grassroots organisations. Continue reading →

Investing in social justice?

June 23, 2021June 22, 2021policypressblogLeave a comment

Francesco Laruffa

Social investment is an increasingly influential approach – both among policymakers and social policy scholars – which emphasizes the economic benefits of welfare state interventions. Improving people’s education, for example, not only ameliorates their wellbeing but also their productive potential, thereby contributing to economic growth.

Critics of this approach have argued that social investment tends to replace value-based considerations (e.g. based on notions of needs and rights) with an economic evaluation of social policy, e.g. conceiving individuals narrowly and instrumentally as “human capital”. By substituting “social” logic with cost-benefit calculations, social investment may also lead to the adoption of policies that reinforce the marginalisation of vulnerable groups. Indeed, the economic rationale suggests focusing policies on those groups that offer the highest returns on investment in terms of employment and productivity. But what about deprived groups who have no valuable “human capital” to offer? Continue reading →

How the political framing of the principle of basic income encouraged it to be seriously debated resulting in an implementation experiment in Finland

May 27, 2020May 26, 2020policypressblogLeave a comment

Johanna Perkiö

There is a pressing need for policies that will help to overcome some of the intractable social and economic problems of our time, such as increasing economic inequality, growing insecurity and labour market polarisation, and, most importantly, the climate change crisis. Both academics and policymakers will need to learn to think ‘outside the box’ to explore new ideas and solutions. Continue reading →