co-production

Highlights from our most popular Policy & Politics articles of 2025 exploring narratives, design, and democracy in policymaking

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by Sarah Brown and Allegra Fullerton

Two women, the authors of this blog.

In celebration of the broad aims of Policy & Politics, we decided to focus this quarter’s highlights collection on our three most popular reads of 2025 to date. Spanning narratives, policy design, and direct democracy, these articles beautifully illustrate the journal’s breadth of scope — unusual among top-ranked outlets in the field.

So, without further ado, here’s a précis of each to whet your appetite for the full research articles, which are free to view until the end of January 2026.

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Thank you to all our authors, reviewers, board members, readers and friends of Policy & Politics for another great year in 2024 

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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 

1. Policy learning governance: a new perspective on agency across policy learning theories Bishoy Zaki 

2. Types of learning and varieties of innovation: how does policy learning enable policy innovation? Nihit Goyal and Michael Howlett 

3. Crisis management in English local government: the limits of resilience Tania Arrieta and Jonathan S. Davies 

4. Expert perspectives on the changing dynamics of policy advisory systems: the COVID-19 crisis and policy learning in Belgium and Australia Marleen Easton, Jennifer Yarnold, Valerie Vervaenen, Jasper De Paepe, and Brian W. Head 

5. Social identities, emotions and policy preferences Johanna Hornung  and Nils C. Bandelow 

6. The democratising capacity of new municipalism: beyond direct democracy in public- common partnerships Iolanda Bianchi 

7. The politics of anger: emotional appraisal mechanisms and the French pension reform protests Johanna Kuhlmann and Peter Starke 

8. Emotions and anti-carceral advocacy in Canada: ‘All of the anger this creates in our bodies is also a tool to kill us’ Jennifer M. Kilty and Michael Orsini
 
9. The challenges experts face during creeping crises: the curse of complacency Ahmad Wesal Zaman, Olivier Rubin, and Reidar Staupe-Delgado

10. Identifying proactive and reactive policy entrepreneurs in collaborative networks in flood risk management Per Becker, Jörgen Sparf, and Evangelia Petridou 

Democratisation through New Municipalism: The Role of Public-Common Partnerships

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by Iolanda Bianchi


In my recent article published in Policy & Politics, I take a journey through the burgeoning phenomenon known as ‘new municipalism’, a movement that is rapidly gaining traction as a powerful catalyst for injecting a breath of democratic air into local politics and policy-making. 

At the heart of new municipalism’s democratisation strategy is the concept of public-common partnerships. These are not just any alliances, but deliberately formed partnerships between civil society organisations with a passion for social justice and local public institutions. The aim is clear: to empower these groups to take over and self-manage public goods and services. This approach is championed by proponents of the new municipalism, who see in these partnerships a democratising capacity that echoes ideologies from Marx and beyond, suggesting that self-management is tantamount to the practice of direct democracy. However, this perspective invites a nuanced critique that cautions us against oversimplifying the relationship between self-management and direct democracy. 

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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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Updating your course reading lists? Check out our essential reading recommendations for teaching Public Participation, Gender and the Policy Process, and Policy Innovation from Policy & Politics

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Elizabeth SarahElizabeth Koebele with Sarah Brown

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 →

How does technological governance shape democracy?

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Am and MetzlerHeidrun Åm & Ingrid Metzler

In our recent article in Policy & Politics, we explore debates about “digital contact tracing apps” in Norway and Austria, i.e. apps developed to help manage the COVID-19 pandemic. We followed what we dubbed a ‘technology-centred comparison’: following the development of these apps throughout each stage as they were designed, launched, assessed, contested, stabilised, and redesigned. At each of these stages, we explored which actors shaped these developments and how. Continue reading →

How volunteers support refugee families’ access to childcare in Germany: ‘Sometimes I ask myself, am I supporting a flawed system?

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Siede MunchAnna Siede and Sybille Münch

The integration of migrants and refugees is often proclaimed to be a ‘two-way process’, leading not just to a transformation of the newcomers but the whole society. This requires efforts from both the state as well as civil society, ideally in co-operation. That’s how many policy documents in Germany phrase it. And indeed, since 2015 and now with the current arrival of Ukrainian refugees, we see unprecedented levels of civic engagement. So, where do we stand with regard to these new forms of interaction between state and society that are called “co-production”? Continue reading →

Policy & Politics highlights collection May – July 2022 – free to access.

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BROWN_SarahQuarterly highlights collection 3rd May – 31st July 2022

In this quarter’s highlights collection, we feature three articles that provide a range of insights from different contexts on the politics of governance. Continue reading →

Policy & Politics favourites of 2021

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Thea Cook, Journals Marketing ExecutiveThea-Cook

We wanted to share some of our readers’ favourite content that you might have missed. Please enjoy free access to some of our most read and highly cited articles, along with some of our editors’ highlights from recent issues. Continue reading →

Policy & Politics Highlights collection November 2021 – January 2022 – all articles included are free to access

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Sarah_Brown_credit_Evelyn_Sturdy
Image credit: Evelyn Sturdy at Unsplash

Sarah Brown
Journal Manager, Policy & Politics

This quarter’s collection highlights three of our most popular and highly cited articles in 2021 which, based on their readership and citation levels, have clearly made an important contribution to their fields.

The first article, A theoretical framework for studying the co-creation of innovative solutions and public value, forms an introduction to the special issue on co-creation in public policy and governance, guest edited by Jacob Torfing, Ewan Ferlie, Tina Jukić and Edoardo Ongaro, published in April 2021. The central proposition is that the concept of public value carries unexploited potential as a ‘game changer’ for advancing the co-creation of innovative solutions in the public sector. They argue that it allows us to appreciate the many different public and private actors, including service users, citizens and civil society organisations, which can contribute to the production of public value. The authors quip that co-creation is the “new black” because it mobilises societal resources, enhances innovation and builds joint ownership over new public value outcomes. Continue reading →