As you plan reading lists for the coming academic year, this collection of recent articles offers fresh insights for units on emotions in public policy, the politics of environmental policy, and governance networks. Each article draws on cutting-edge empirical research combined with conceptual innovation, making them ideal for both undergraduate and postgraduate modules exploring the politics of policymaking.
We hope these suggestions save you time and effort in mining recent articles while ensuring your course materials reflect the latest research from the frontiers of the discipline.
We are delighted to be ending the year on a high note. Submissions are at their highest level for over a decade, we’ve published more diverse scholarship from a far broader range of countries than ever before, and we’ve maintained our top quartile rankings in both Public Administration and Political Science with an impact factor of 4.3, thanks to the huge support of our loyal community. Congratulations to you all!
To celebrate, we have made our top 10 most highly cited articles published in 2024 free to access until 31 January 2025. Happy holiday reading!
Top 10 most highly cited articles published in 2024 – free to access until 31 January 2025
Straightforward enough? These statements may seem uncontroversial, and yet significant energy is expended banishing emotions from political discussion, arguing that they muddy the waters and get in the way of “reasoned” debate.
Why? Must the commitment to evidence-based policy making be devoid of feeling? Isn’t evidence marshalled in ways that reflect affective attachments to policy ideas? Is it because some are opposed to the specific emotions that are being mobilised in politics?
Our recently published article in Policy & Politics: Emotions and anti-carceral advocacy in Canada: ‘All of the anger this creates in our bodies is also a tool to kill us’, examines a subject that has aroused intense debate: the expansion of the punitive state. We were interested in how activists mobilise others to resist punitive policies, the resources they bring to their activism, and the feelings that guide them. We were struck by how activists understand themselves as feeling actors, as people with thoughts, hopes and dreams that are grounded in their embodied experiences. Our focus group interviews with activists in Ottawa, Canada revealed three key findings about the role of emotions in organising: (1) anger mobilises anti-carceral activism; (2) fear of state actors and surveillance are motivational forces to become or remain involved in activist organising; and (3) organisers understand care and mutual aid as alternatives to incarceration and mechanisms to support one’s activist peers.
In his article The Politics of Climate Change as in the the two editions of his The Politics of Climate Change, Anthony Giddens identifies what he and others now refer to as ‘Giddens’s paradox’ – that although climate scientists are increasingly certain about the nature and intensity of anthropogenic climate change the general public is becoming less concerned that it is a crucial issue calling for immediate comprehensive, global action. He identifies four reasons for this: the well-funded campaigns against policy proposals to reduce carbon emissions, often involving disinformation, by those who would lose financially, notably companies involved in fossil fuels; the difficulties lay people have in appreciating climate science and the concepts of risk and uncertainty; the ‘free rider’ issue – why should Britain (or any country for that matter) which is only a small contributor to the global emissions total take a lead in tackling the issue; and the primacy that many countries, especially those in the developing world, place on economic development.
There is thus a global paralysis regarding climate change policy that needs to be broken. Giddens suggests that a new policy paradigm is now urgently needed, based Continue reading →
by Andrew Ryder, Fellow at the University of Bristol, Associate Fellow at the Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham, and Visiting Professor at Corvinus University Budapest.
It is my contention that universities are institutions of central importance in maintaining humanist values. Alas we live in age where such a vision seems to be at risk through an audit culture which seems to commodify and tame knowledge production. I come from a background of service provision and activism, as a teacher and later community organiser working for Gypsy, Traveller and Roma (GTR) communities, and have sought to base this work on emancipatory practice. Since I started lecturing full time in higher education five years ago, through employment at the Corvinus University Budapest and a series of fellowships at the University of Bristol and Third Sector Research Centre, Birmingham, I have sought to fuse my previous background of emancipatory work with knowledge production. This has primarily been achieved by promoting collaborative research with GTR communities. There is a growing interest in the co-production of research knowledge involving academics working in partnership with marginalised citizens and communities. However, the concept of community participation in research – certainly as equal partners – has been, and remains, contested. Is the knowledge generated ‘tainted’ by activism and engagement or can it be critical and objective? Continue reading →
Policy & Politics Journal Blog 