As you update reading lists for the coming academic year, we present a curated collection of policy and politics scholarship that will engage students in fresh arguments and support robust classroom discussion. This collection of recent articles offers fresh material for teaching on expertise and evidence in policymaking & politics, policy process theories, and interpretive approaches to policy research. Together, these articles showcase some of the latest developments in public policy and political scholarship, combining conceptual innovation, empirical analysis, and methodological reflection. They provide useful additions to undergraduate and postgraduate modules across public policy, politics, governance, and research methods.
We hope these suggestions save you time in identifying recent scholarship while ensuring your course materials reflect current debates at the forefront of the discipline – and they are all free to access from July to September, so you can get reading straight away.
Read the full Student Reading List collection here.
This quarter’s highlights collection showcases 3 recent articles on policy process theories that make important contributions to this area of policy research and theory development.
In our first article, ‘Organisation, information processing, and policy change in US federal bureaucracies , authors Samuel Workman et al examine policy change in the US federal bureaucracy. They build on Punctuated Equilibrium Theory’s premise that institutional friction and limited attention are prime influences on policy change, and they introduce a new approach for measuring and modelling these dynamics. This new approach incorporates the centralisation of information, decision-making, and the complexity of the policy, into the architecture of different organisations. Specifically, it measures how different sized organisations delegate federally regulated agenda items across the US federal bureaucracy from 2008-2016.
Their findings suggest that larger bureaucracies may handle change and problem definitions more easily than smaller organisations. These bureaucracies are not forced to shift attention to each new problem. This is because being part of a department provides more capacity to handle various problems as they emerge onto the agenda. Additionally, the division of attention within these structures allows for a broader range of strengths and expertise to tackle problems better. These findings challenge the typical view that smaller, nimble organisations manage change better.
Our second article, by Johanna Kuenzler and co-authors, considers how the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) helps in understanding how policy narratives impact public policy processes. It offers a systematic analysis of the historical development of NPF research, examining the use of the NPF’s theoretical elements over five time periods. The article provides insight into the foundation of NPF, highlighting the influence of positivist and interpretivist approaches throughout its development.
Figure: Number of published articles according to historical stages of the development of the NPF
As illustrated in the figure above, the article highlights the unique contributions of key NPF publications across each of the time periods of its development. The findings indicate a consistent focus on the core theoretical components and methodological innovations, demonstrating the framework’s robustness.
Finally, the article suggests avenues to further develop the framework, drawing from past lessons such as the introduction of the beneficiary character, and proposes further investigation of character and narrative dynamics. It also encourages additional work to bridge positivist and interpretive approaches and outlines the strengths of each. In summary, the article is a welcome contribution and has much to offer to both those who are fluent and new to the NPF.
For decades, the authors explain, public policy researchers have tried to answer this question by using the policy theory called the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) which was originally developed to understand policymaking in the USA. Taking an overview of 178 studies that use the MSF to analyse policymaking and implementation in China, the authors found that scholars have increasingly used the MSF to examine how policies are made and implemented in China, as illustrated in the figure below.
Figure: China-focused MSF articles (N = 178) published per year.
Since the appearance of the first article that used the MSF to analyse policymaking in China (Zhou & Yan, 2005), almost two hundred journal articles have used the framework to identify the driving forces behind policymaking and policy implementation (or the lack thereof) in China. Based on the authors’ analysis of these studies, they offer important guiding principles for those who would like to use the MSF to analyse policy processes in China.
To conclude, the article identifies a range of under-examined areas for future policy research, such as banking, finance, energy, and health. In addition, more comparative studies are needed that help identify how policy processes in China are different from that in other political systems. The authors hope this article will help to inspire more studies that use the multiple streams framework to deepen our understanding of policymaking and implementation in China.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this quarter’s collection of articles focusing on a range of perspectives on different policy process theories. We wish you a relaxing break and look forward to bringing you more of the latest research from Policy & Politics in 2025!
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at:
Kuenzler, J., Stauffer, B., Schlaufer, C., Song, G., Smith-Walter, A., & Jones, M. D. (2024). A systematic review of the Narrative Policy Framework: a future research agenda. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000046
van den Dool, A., & Qiu, T. (2024). Policy processes in China: a systematic review of the multiple streams framework. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000038
Workman, S., Robinson, S. E., & Bark, T. (2024). Organisation, information processing, and policy change in US federal bureaucracies. Policy & Politics, 52(2), 278-297 https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2023D000000013
Attention in the policy process—among individuals, among institutions and organisations, and within political systems—is a scarce resource. Paying attention to one or even a few issues means other issues go unaddressed.
Making a decision and choosing an alternative requires something called the “serial shift”: moving from addressing multiple issues at once, say within a legislative committee system or set of bureaucratic offices, to focussing on one issue at a time. Prioritising an issue on the agenda also means prioritising the advocates and policy conflicts associated with them.
We know a lot about how issues reach the decision agenda. Policy entrepreneurs and coalitions redefine existing issues and try to couple problems with alternatives; media coverage can attract elite attention and contribute to a sense that something should be done; policymakers schedule some issues to periodically recur so that they’re sure to receive attention some time, even if not right now.
We know less about how the serial shift feeds back in to the agenda setting process. Does the serial shift legitimise and certify conflict, signalling which conflicts are considered more legitimate? Or does restricting the decision agenda to one set of conflicts create a flow of attention to other issues?
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, has brought down the price of natural gas in the U.S. and made it an energy exporter to the U.K. and Germany, among other countries. In the meantime, anti-fracking movements have swept through states with rich shale gas reservoirs. Political conflicts about fracking play out on the national stage, featuring Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign promise of “no more drilling on federal lands”, and the “Drill Baby Drill” shawl worn by Congresswoman Lauren Boebert to the 2022 State of Union speech. Beyond these high-profile displays, citizens bear the day-to-day consequences of fracking, be it economic opportunities or environmental damages. Do state-level fracking policies genuinely respond to local public opinion? What are the driving forces behind the responsiveness of energy development policies?
My recently published research article, entitled Policy responsiveness and media attention, aims to address these questions by considering the media’s role as an intermediary between the public and the legislators within a U.S. context. Local newspapers, not national cable television, inform citizens of local affairs and state politics. Regarding matters such as releasing liquid from fracking production to a soil farm as a dumping ground, a local newspaper’s coverage is the source that local residents rely on, which in turn could lead to a bill proposal about regulating soil farms in the statehouse.
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.
Are you planning a new policy or politics-focused course? Or maybe you’re updating your existing syllabi with some of the newest research on policy and politics? We’re here to help! In this blog, we provide recommendations for new Policy & Politics articles (as well as a few older favorites) that make excellent contributions to syllabi for a diversity of courses. We hope this saves you time and effort in mining our recent articles while also ensuring your course materials reflect the latest research from the frontiers of the discipline. Continue reading →
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 →
Elizabeth Koebele with Sarah Brown
Johanna Perkiö
Policy & Politics Journal Blog 
