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.
by Liz Richardson, Catherine Durose, Lucy Kimbell and Ramia Mazé
In a recent article published in Policy & Politics, Liz Richardson, Catherine Durose, Lucy Kimbell and Ramia Mazé explore how the fields of policy and design relate to one another — and why the common framing of ‘design for policy’ may be too narrow to capture the full range of interactions between the two. While design has become an increasingly visible feature of policymaking practice in recent years, the authors argue that existing accounts tend to list design methods (such as prototyping or visualisation) without fully exploring the purpose and politics behind their use.
by Matthew Flinders, Heidi Houlberg Salomonsen and Thurid Hustedt
Although often overlooked, the rise of populism has placed additional pressures on the relationship between ministers and their senior civil servants. Dismissed as part of ‘the elite’, ‘the establishment’ or even ‘the blob’, the civil service has in many countries been required to adapt and navigate an increasingly fluid set of politico-administrative boundaries. In this context it was highly symbolic that the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, issued a direct message to all civil servants as one of his first acts in office.
‘I am so pleased to have this early opportunity to speak directly to every one of you…… working in the Civil Service’ he stated ‘I want you to know that– you have my confidence, my support and, importantly, my respect.’
The fact that the new occupant of No.10 was at exactly the same time trying to install new media management structures underlines the existence of a potential tension between, on the one hand, a ministers desire to respect the civil service and established constitutional relationships, but on the other hand, ensure that officials do promote a positive ‘spin’ on the work of the government.
The root issue is that senior civil servants are expected to be politically neutral and largely anonymous and yet their role in relation to media management brings with it politicising tendencies and risks. As Rod Rhodes noted in his book Everyday Life in British Government(2011) ‘…nowadays, senior civil servants speak in public almost as often as ministers’.’
Understanding whether and under which conditions civil servants can respond to requests for advice and assistance in managing the media from ministerial masters is therefore crucial.
How do senior civil servants cope with the pressures of media management, and how does this affect different relationships? Are senior civil servants increasingly required to be ‘promiscuously partisan’ as Peter Aucoin once suggested?
Our extensive research in the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden, recently published in Policy & Politics, has helped tease-apart the various layers to this question.
By blending the theory of public sector bargaining with existing studies of politico-administrative media management, and interviewing over sixty officials, ministers and special advisers, our recent study came to three main conclusions.
First and foremost, none of the three cases found evidence of widespread problems in relation to breaching rules, sacrificing neutrality, or undermining anonymity. However, civil servants perceive their political neutrality to be under more pressure than their professional anonymity.
Quarterly highlights collection 1 August – 31 October 2022
Welcome to this quarter’s highlights collection featuring three articles that provide a range of insights from different perspectives on policy and regulation. Continue reading →
Kevin Morrell, Orlando Fernandes and Loizos Heracleous
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimate USD$240 billion is lost annually to national governments as a result of corporate tax avoidance by Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). This happens because MNEs can shift profits across their national subsidiaries to exploit differences in tax regimes. In our recent article in Policy & Politics, we explain how in 2013, the British subsidiary of Amazon was able to do this lawfully so it only paid £4.2 million in tax despite UK sales being worth more than £4.3 billion. Similarly, in a 14-year period, Starbucks generated more than £3 billion in sales to the UK but paid just £8.6 million in tax to the British government. Continue reading →
Across the world over the last thirty years, the provision of policy advice to governments has been transformed as a diverse range of actors have been increasingly engaged in the policy-making process. Academic research needs to better understand the changes that have taken place by considering the shape of the new advisory systems, and the influence of different types of policy advice. In my latest research article in Policy & Politics, I seek to address this gap in understanding. The scholars Jonathan Craft and John Halligan developed the concept of a ‘policy advisory system’ to explain how policy advice is formulated by ‘interlocking actors’ beyond the formal bureaucracy of government. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) define policy advisory systems as the autonomous organisations – advisory bodies, think-tanks, policy labs, ‘what works’ centres, political advisers, committees of inquiry – that sustain government’s requirement for knowledge and expertise. Their growth has been observed particularly in the Anglophone countries – New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the UK. Continue reading →
Eran Vigoda-Gadot, Shlomo Mizrahi and Nissim Cohen
How much do we trust the government? To what degree do we feel that it has a responsibility to ensure that its citizens are healthy? Do these issues have any relationship with our satisfaction with the services the government provides?
These are important questions, particularly when we face major issues like pandemics. We know that when we trust people or institutions, we are more willing to cooperate with them, take risks, commit to them and share information with them. In contrast, when we don’t trust people or institutions, we may fear them, be defensive in our interactions with them, not cooperate with them and distort the information we give them. Continue reading →
Jeremy Moon, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark reports on the article he has published with Jette Steen Knudsen, Copenhagen University, Denmark, and Rieneke Slager, Nottingham University Business School, UK.
Originally published on the 29/5/14 on the Better Business blog
Traditionally, most authorities on corporate social responsibility (CSR) suggested that, by definition, CSR was about the discretion of companies and unrelated to the requirements of the law and public policy.
Curiously, one of the main CSR themes over the last decade has been the growth of governmental interest in CSR. My own introduction to CSR was in the context of this supposed paradox. Whilst studying public policy responses to UK unemployment in the early 1980s I encountered overlaps with CSR (e.g. through local economic partnerships, the Youth Training Scheme). Continue reading →
Kevin Morrell, Orlando Fernandes and Loizos Heracleous
Patrick Diamond
Eran Vigoda-Gadot, Shlomo Mizrahi and Nissim Cohen
Policy & Politics Journal Blog 