by Johan Christensen, Stine Hesstvedt, Kira Pronin, Cathrine Holst, Peter Munk Christiansen and Anne Maria Holli
In a recent article published in Policy & Politics, Experts in governance: a comparative analysis of the Nordic countries, Johan Christensen, Stine Hesstvedt, Kira Pronin, Cathrine Holst, Peter Munk Christiansen and Anne Maria Holli examine how expert knowledge is channelled into policy making in the Nordic region. They focus on government-appointed advisory commissions as a key institutional pathway for incorporating expertise and explore how the role of academic experts on these commissions has changed over time.
In a recent article published in Policy & Politics, Clementine Hill O’Connor and Hayley Bennett examine how “lived experience” has become increasingly important in anti-poverty policy making, and ask what it means to treat such experiences as a form of evidence. They argue that, while lived experience is often presented as a movement-led, democratic challenge to established forms of expertise, it is also shaped by governance-led processes that channel participation into institutional priorities.
This quarter’s Policy & Politics highlights collection brings together three of our most popular articles recently published, that extend and deepen our theoretical and empirical understanding of collaborative governance. Each article advances our knowledge by engaging critically with key debates in the field, whether through conceptual synthesis, empirical exploration, or theoretical refinement. Together, they contribute to our understanding of the complexities and contingencies of collaboration in contemporary governance settings.
In a recent article published in Policy & Politics, entitled A systematic review of conflict within collaborative governance, authors Jacob Torfing, Reza Payandeh, Seyed Mostafa Jalili and Masoud Banafi provide a comprehensive overview of how conflict emerges and is managed within collaborative governance processes. Their systematic review draws on 62 peer-reviewed studies with the aim of identifying where, when, and how disagreements surface in collaborative governance initiatives—and what strategies are employed to deal with them.
In a recent article published in Policy & Politics, Martin B. Carstensen and Eva Sørensen explore how collaborative governance can be understood as a series of fluid, adaptive interactions—rather than as a stable, coherent and linear process. Drawing on bricolage theory and theories of robust governance, they propose a new way of thinking about how partnerships form, evolve, and sustain themselves in dynamic, unpredictable settings.
by Sam Warner, David Richards, Diane Coyle and Martin J. Smith
In our recent article published in Policy & Politics, we examine how centralised financial control and short-term political pressures have undermined the performance of the Prison Service in England and Wales. As successive governments grapple with the problem of overcrowded, poorly performing prisons, the effectiveness of prison governance and resource management is a live issue with significant political and policy implications. Drawing on extensive interviews and documentary analysis, our article highlights how governance structures intended to deliver efficiency have instead constrained local autonomy and eroded service outcomes.
A paradox of New Public Management
Despite New Public Management’s (NPM) long made promises of greater efficiency through devolved managerial discretion, we argue that, in practice, the UK’s central government frequently reasserts input controls—particularly through the Treasury’s dominance of budgeting frameworks. Existing literature explores this paradox through elite incentives structures, but we focus on the implications for public financial management beyond the centre. We argue that this paradox creates tensions for public managers who are held accountable for delivering outputs and outcomes but lack the financial flexibility to do so effectively.
Case study evidence from the Prison Service
Using the Prison Service as a detailed case study, the article shows how governance arrangements evolved from the 1990s onward. While initial reforms introduced managerial autonomy, a shift toward hyper-centralised control—especially post-2010—saw the Treasury and the Ministry of Justice exert increasing influence over financial management and other operational and commercial practices. As a result, prison governors are left with reduced authority in key areas of decision-making. Their job is made harder, and resource allocation is less efficient, as a result.
Short-termism and degraded outcomes
Our article illustrates how a focus on short-term fiscal targets led to cost-cutting measures that undermined service quality. This included staffing reductions, deteriorating prison conditions, and rising incidents of violence and self-harm. Interviewees repeatedly emphasised that innovation and local responsiveness were being crowded out by rigid, top-down control. We argue that these dynamics not only degrade service performance but also represent a long-term false economy.
A call for more strategic governance
Our article points to the importance of rebalancing the system—restoring autonomy at agency and local levels and embedding longer-term thinking into resource allocation and financial management. The UK’s current approach to performance budgeting continues to prioritise centralised control over outcomes. Addressing this imbalance is vital if public services are to meet complex, long-term challenges effectively.
The authors would like to thank the Nuffield Foundation for funding this research.
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You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at
Warner, S., Richards, D., Coyle, D., and Smith, M. J. (2024). The inefficiency of centralised control and political short-termism: the case of the Prison Service in England and Wales. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024), available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000053>
If you enjoyed this blog post, you may also be interested in reading
Wenzelburger, G. (2025). Policy windows and criminal justice reforms: a Multiple Streams Framework analysis. Policy & Politics 53, 2, 296-314, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000060>
Sloam, J., and Henn, M. (2025). How young people can shape environmental policy in urban spaces. Policy & Politics 53, 1, 65-86, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000039>
Bianchi, I. (2025). The democratising capacity of new municipalism: beyond direct democracy in public–common partnerships. Policy & Politics 53, 2, 403-422, available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000033>
Asticher, L. (2025). How institutional legacies constrain reform during a favourable policy window: COVID-19 and the healthcare workforce shortage. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2025), available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2025D000000067>
Welcome to our first themed collection of 2025, featuring our most popular, recent research published in Policy & Politics! Our first collection centres around themes of Democracy. Whether you’re preparing to teach a unit on democracy or doing research in that area, or are just interested in keeping up to date with the latest concepts in democratic innovations, we hope you will find these highlighted articles interesting!
Our first article in this collection, is a conceptual article which presents a new theory of robust democracy. In this powerhouse of an article, authors Sørensen and Warren argue that such a theory is needed to strengthen the capacity of liberal democracies to adapt and innovate in response to change. While many democratic theorists recognise the necessity of reforming liberal democracies to keep pace with social change, the authors argue that what enables such reform is rarely considered. The authors posit that liberal democracies are politically robust when they are able to continuously adapt and innovate in ways that enable them to serve their core democratic functions, even in the face of disruptive political demands and events. These functions include securing the empowered inclusion of those affected, collective agenda setting and will formation, and the making of joint decisions. This theorising becomes all the more urgent in response to three current challenges that the authors highlight which urgently demand the adaptation and innovation of liberal democracies to become more politically robust: an increasingly assertive political culture, the digitalisation of political communication and increasing global interdependencies. The new theory suggests that when a political system serves these three core democratic functions, this not only deepens democracy, which is justifiable on its own terms, but it also increases political robustness.
Some suggest that DMPs face risks of being used instrumentally by decisionmakers to bolster popularity or legitimacy. This is exacerbated because governance decisions around DMPs are often opaque or ad hoc. As their popularity increases, so too do these risks. Unlike other forms of political participation, such as elections, there are no generally accepted standards to uphold integrity of DMPs. To what extent can challenges in their ethics and governance be monitored and mitigated?
In our recent article published in Policy & Politics, we found divergent views on this question. We used Q methodology to map shared viewpoints on the integrity and governance of DMPs, with members of the DMPs community: practitioners, researchers, advocates and policymakers involved in their study, design, implementation and promotion. Our study identified five viewpoints on the integrity and governance of deliberative mini-publics as follows.
Many (local) governments worldwide experiment with citizen participation in policy decision-making. Engaging citizens is assumed to be an answer to the real or perceived crisis of representative democracy. There is, however, no consensus about the extent to which the key actors in democracy – elected politicians, civil servants and lay citizens – perceive participatory policy decision-making as legitimate. We know that elected politicians may be more hesitant than citizens, because the shift from representative to participatory democracy involves a shift in decision-making power. But we also know that within the different groups of democratic actors, there is no consensus as to the value and virtue of increased citizen participation: some politicians are more in favour than others. A similar dissensus can be observed among civil servants and among citizens.
In our recently published article in Policy & Politics, we investigate the existence of ‘multi-actor clusters’: groups of people defined by a shared stance towards citizen participation, irrespective of their formal institutional role in local democracy. Based on data from a vignette survey with 4000+ respondents in Flemish local government (politicians, civil servants and citizens), we find five distinct clusters. Two of these clusters – together comprising more than half of the respondents – prefer participatory over representative policy decision-making. We also find respondents of every type in these two clusters: citizens and council members, but also civil servants and (to a lesser extent) executive politicians. Of the remaining three clusters, one cluster is clearly in favour of representative decision-making. While the other two clusters comprise respondents that either favour and accept or reject all forms of political decision-making (representative and participatory alike).
All articles featured in this blog post are free to access until 31 October 2024
It’s that time of year again when course syllabi are updated with fresh research. We hope to make this easier with the essential reading list below, which features some of the most significant research relevant to public policy students that we’ve published over the last year. We feature nine articles and a special issue for teaching topical themes such as health policy, policy learning and advocacy. All articles are ideal for Public Policy, Politics and Social Policy classes alike.
As always, we welcome your feedback on the articles featured, as well as future unit topics you’d like to see covered! Let us know what you’re teaching and how we can help!
Our first theme focuses on a substantive policy area that is increasingly taught in public and social policy courses, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and on-going climate crisis: health policy.
Our first article, “Analysing the ‘follow the science’ rhetoric of government responses to COVID-19” by Margaret Macaulay and colleagues, has been one of the most widely read and cited articles of last year and was the winner of our Best Paper prize for 2023. This is not surprising, as it advances bold and well evidenced claims on a hot topic in public health governance. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic – and in the face of widespread anxiety and uncertainty – governments’ mantra that they were “just following the science” was meant to reassure the public that decisions about pandemic responses were being directed by the best available scientific evidence. However, the authors claim that making policy decisions based only on scientific evidence is impossible (if only because ‘the science’ is always contested) and undemocratic (because governments are elected to balance a range of priorities and interests in their decisions). Claiming to be “just following the science” therefore represents an abdication of responsibility by politicians.
Our second featured article, entitled What types of evidence persuade actors in a complex policy system? by Geoff Bates and colleagues, explores the use of evidence to influence different groups across the urban development system to think more about health outcomes in their decisions. Their three key findings are: (i) evidence-based narratives have wide appeal; (ii) credibility of evidence is critical; and (iii) many stakeholders have priorities other than health, such as economic considerations. The authors conclude that these insights can be used to frame and present evidence that meets the requirements of different urban development stakeholders and persuade them to think more about how the quality of urban environments affects health outcomes.
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