2016 Impact Factor: Free collection of highly cited articles

News, Policy & Politics,

P&P editors

Sarah Ayres, Steve Martin, Felicity Matthews, Diane Stone – Policy & Politics Editors

We are delighted to announce that Policy & Politics has achieved an impressive result in this year’s Journal Citation Reports with an Impact Factor of 1.939. This places the Journal firmly in the top quartile of international journals in both the public administration and the political science categories.

This fantastic outcome is testimony to the outstanding quality of research produced by our authors, the meticulous scrutiny of our peer reviewers, and the hard work of the Policy & Politics and Policy Press team. We would like to offer our thanks and congratulations to all.

To celebrate this increase we have made the most highly cited articles which contributed to the 2016 Impact Factor free to read until 31 July 2017: Continue reading 2016 Impact Factor: Free collection of highly cited articles →

News release: Policy and Politics achieves top international ranking

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We are delighted to announce that Policy & Politics , which has been publishing key works in public and social policy and politics for 45 years, has just achieved an impact factor of 1.939.  It is now ranked 11th in the field of public administration, placing it firmly in the top quartile of international journals.

Policy & Politics, published by Policy Press, has gained a reputation for being more innovative and risk-taking than many of its competitors, partly due to its clear competitive advantage of being owned by the University of Bristol and therefore wholly independent.  Continue reading News release: Policy and Politics achieves top international ranking →

A seismic shift has occurred in British politics

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MFlinders-new-smallBy Matthew Flinders, Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics, University of Sheffield

This post was originally published on The Conversation on 9 June 2017.

The 2017 general election was a once-in-a-generation opportunity that the Tories fumbled and Labour exploited to remarkable effect. The Tories managed to spook older voters and thereby alienate a core constituency; Labour, meanwhile, both connected with younger people and somehow got them to actually vote in large numbers.

All political scholars should beware reaching too quickly for their pens, keyboards or quills; to adapt the old adage, “write in haste, repent at leisure”. Nonetheless, it strikes me that a seismic shift has occurred in British politics. It is now clear that Theresa May’s gamble has been a catastrophic failure. With a hung parliament, the UK’s negotiating position on Brexit looks to be in tatters. Theresa May asked the British public to show its support for a “hard” Brexit, but the public declined. Continue reading A seismic shift has occurred in British politics →

Opinion Editorial: The Lady is not for Wobbling: Mrs May, social care and spending political capital

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MFlinders-new-smallBy Matt Flinders

A shorter version of this blog post was originally published by Prospect magazine.

When is a wobble not a wobble? This might not seem the most obvious question to be asking in the context of the current General Election campaign but that’s exactly what makes it so important. Could it be that Theresa May’s recent backtracking on the costs of social care was nothing of the kind? Instead part of a more subtle game of preparing the public for tough choices that will inevitably have to be taken? Have we just witnessed the political equivalent of a footballers fake dive? Continue reading Opinion Editorial: The Lady is not for Wobbling: Mrs May, social care and spending political capital →

We still need ‘experts’: evidence translation in practice

Evidence-based policy, Policy & Politics, ,

JoIngold_MarkMonaghan2Jo Ingold and Mark Monaghan

This blog post is based on the authors’ article, Evidence translation: an exploration of policy makers’ use of evidence, which won the 2016 prize for the best article in Policy & Politics and is free to access until 15 June 2017.

The role of evidence in policy making, and whether evidence-based policy can ever be a reality, has attracted much debate, both inside and outside academia. In our article on what we refer to as ‘evidence translation’, we try to grapple with these issues. Our academic interest in this area stemmed from research we had conducted separately on similar themes (the role of evidence in policy making), but from different traditions and persuasions. Ingold had focused on ideas relating to ‘policy transfer’ in welfare to work, comparing Denmark with the UK. By contrast, Monaghan had concentrated efforts on understanding the standing of evidence in policy debates often seen, by critics, to be evidence free – in this case the area of UK drug policy. Our substantive areas were not a hindrance to our partnership. Instead, we were very much enthralled by some commentaries in the journal Policy & Politics (and elsewhere) that suggested that both evidence-based policy and policy transfer were fundamentally concerned with the same process, but were literatures that had emerged separately. It was, we felt, a hypothesis worth exploring, but more than that we quickly arrived at the conclusion that there was much to be learned by each literature from the other. Continue reading We still need ‘experts’: evidence translation in practice →

Practical Lessons from Policy Theories: a new agenda

Evidence-based policy, Policy & Politics new issue information, , , ,

Weible workshop 2Professors Chris Weible and Paul Cairney were the successful applicants for our 2019 special issue call for proposals. This blog post summarises a recent workshop held in Colorado on their topic Practical Lessons from Policy Theories by way of presaging some of the key research themes they will pursue in their special issue.

Policy theories provide profound lessons for people trying to understand and engage with the policy process. As policy scholars we often take them for granted, but for non-specialists they can represent a new way of thinking. So, sharing these insights helps scholars and practitioners. Explaining our theories clearly gives us a new way to take stock of policy theory: how does it help us think about and act within the policy process?

That’s why we asked a group of experts to describe the ‘state of the art’ in their field and the practical lessons that they offer. Continue reading Practical Lessons from Policy Theories: a new agenda →

The Welfare State on the Chopping Block

Family policy and welfare, News, Poverty and Inequality, Social justice and equality, , , ,

zach_morrisZach Morris, Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare

Zach Morris, 2017 winner of our Bleddyn Davies Prize for the best article from an early career scholar, summarises the findings from his winning article, which is free to read until 15 June 2017.

With the Republican Party in power in the US, the welfare state is once again on the chopping block. And disability benefit programs – traditionally designed for the “deserving poor” – may not be protected from these cuts. So, what political strategies are retrenchment advocates pursuing? And will their efforts succeed?

As discussed in my P&P article, a major safeguard against disability benefit retrenchment in the US is its structural positioning as a “Social Security” program. In the UK, the disability benefit program has always been considered distinct from the old-age “State Pension” program. But in the US, the disability and old age programs have historically been grouped together under the auspices of the Social Security Administration. This connection between disability benefits and the more popular old-age program provides a form of institutionalized protection to the US disability program and is a major reason why that program has historically proven so difficult to cut. Continue reading The Welfare State on the Chopping Block →