Addressing the existential threat posed by the climate and biodiversity crises requires deep-seated transformative change. Such change necessitates political action far more radical than that characterising current mainstream policymaking. Yet what sort of policymakers and policymaking could foster the needed radical transformations towards ecological sustainability? This is the question we address in our recent article published in Policy & Politics entitled What kind of political agency can foster radical transformation towards ecological sustainability?
The paper takes “degrowth” as an example of a radical political project, contemplating the sort of political action that could bring about the type of policies its proponents call for. Degrowth involves deep transformations towards a society co-existing harmoniously within itself and with nature. To bring about such transformations, degrowth proponents, for instance, suggest eco-taxes and limits placed on advertising, caps on income and wealth, subsidies for organic agriculture and regulation making it illegal for companies to produce products that cannot be repaired.
By Sarah Brown, Journal Manager with Dr. Elizabeth Koebele, co-editor
The theme of this quarter’s highlights collection from Policy & Politics is Policy Feedback Theory (PFT), an increasingly popular theory of the policy process that is featuring more regularly on public policy syllabi. In a nutshell, PFT considers how past policies (re)shape the political context in which new policies are formed.
Our first article in this collection has been one of our most popular and highly cited since its publication in 2022: New pathways to paradigm change in public policy: Combining insights from policy design, mix and feedback by Sebastian Sewerin, Benjamin Cashore and Michael Howlett. Here, the authors argue that policy science scholarship is better at explaining policy change in retrospect, rather than formulating forward-looking recommendations about how to achieve major or paradigmatic change. Potentially even more concerning, existing scholarship emphasises the importance of external shocks in initiating major policy change, which doesn’t augur well for proactively tackling the major problems of our time such as climate change. In their article, the authors identify two conceptual and theoretical gaps that might limit how policy scholars think about major or paradigmatic change: 1) a lack of shared understanding of what ‘policy change’ is, and 2) a focus on (changing) policies in isolation rather than on policies as part of complex policy mixes. Against this background, they argue that combining insights from policy design, policy mix and policy feedback literature allows us to identify other pathways towards initiating and achieving policy change.
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.
Welcome to our first virtual issue of 2023 featuring the latest policy process theory research published in Policy & Politics. This issue features three recently published articles that apply and develop different policy process theories across a range policy contexts.
Our first article, Advocacy Coalitions, Power and Policy Change by Tim Heinmiller, critiques a core principle of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) – that major policy change will not occur as long as the advocacy coalition that instated the policy remains “in power” in a jurisdiction. Firstly, Heinmiller explores what it means for a status quo advocacy coalition to be in power in a jurisdiction, especially as it relates to the ACF’s theory of policy change. After critically examining how this concept has been used in existing ACF scholarship, the author proposes a standard operationalization of being in power, drawing on the veto players literature, which he then illustrates using a case study of Canadian firearms policy. His conclusion demonstrates how the proposed operationalization is an improvement on existing practices that advances the theory around and measurement of policy change in the ACF.
Jennifer A. Kagan, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, United States; Kristin L. Olofsson, Oklahoma State University, United States
Our recent article, published in Policy & Politics, aims to deepen our understanding of how industry and environmental groups perceive their advocacy strategies and effectiveness. The study context is oil and gas policy conflicts in Colorado State in the US, and data derive from two saves of a survey (administered in 2015 and 2017) of individuals involved in these conflicts. This study focuses specifically on individuals from industry groups – such as oil and gas companies or professional associations – and environmental groups, such as environmental nonprofits.
This blog post is based on a research article recently published in the Policy & Politics journal titled “Analysing the stability of advocacy coalitions and policy frames in Ghana’s oil and gas governance.” The article begins on the premise that there are several ways for people to engage in governance. One way is for people to join an association. The other way is to engage in policy debates.
This quarter’s highlights collection focuses on three of our most widely read and cited articles this year. All three were featured in our special issue published in July on Transformational Change in Public Policy which was guest edited by our co-editors: Oscar Berglund, Claire Dunlop, Elizabeth Koebele and Chris Weible.
The authors highlight how significant time and effort has been spent seeking to understand policy change around the major societal issues we face. Yet their findings show that most change tends to be incremental. The consequent challenge they set out is whether or not public policy scholarship is up to the job of developing a coherent research programme to build knowledge and enable necessary, positive transformational change.
Special issue blog series on Transformational Change through Public Policy.
Sebastian Sewerin, Benjamin Cashore, Michael Howlett
The study of major policy change is certainly nothing new in the Policy Sciences. Yet, it seems fair to say that the most prominent contributions to the theorisation of policy change have been more interested in policy change per se, rather than in its direction of travel. Take Peter Hall’s influential study of paradigm change in the UK: The shift in economic policy during the Thatcher government certainly deserves being labelled as paradigmatic but whether it was, from a point of social equality and justice, a ‘good’ change in the ‘right’ direction seems highly questionable. Continue reading →
Sebastian Sewerin, Benjamin Cashore, Michael Howlett
Policy & Politics Journal Blog 