local government

Latest Policy Process research from Policy & Politics free to access

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As proud co-sponsors of the Conference on Policy Process Research 2024, we bring you our latest policy process research, free to access for the conference period from 15-17 May. 

Please look out for members of our team attending COPPR! 


Happy reading! 

Organisation, information processing, and policy change in US federal bureaucracies 
Authors: Samuel Workman, Scott E. Robinson, and Tracey Bark 

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

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Policy responsiveness and its administrative organisation in China 

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by Yao Liu, Eduardo Araral, Jiannan Wu


Do policy makers in China care about public opinion? Our recent article published in Policy & Politics demonstrates that Chinese governments effectively address public demands, especially on environmental issues, using online petition data and fiscal expenditure records. 

We focused on a relatively new channel for assessing public opinion, namely online petitioning via official platforms. These represent a new tool for public expression, distinct from more traditional institutionalized and non-institutionalized channels. On the one hand, compared to traditional petitioning, they provide greater accessibility. As long as there is internet access, members of the public can easily leave online messages. On the other hand, compared to public opinion expressed on social media, online petitioning is subject to specific regulations and demonstrate a certain level of official moderation, rather than relying solely on unmoderated input from the public.  

Response agencies, the department within local government responsible for collecting and responding to these public opinions, bridge the gap between the public and policy makers and act as a “transit point” to help organise the process of converting public opinion into policy action. Using a theoretical framework that analysed the roles of different response agencies in converting public opinion into policy action, we focussed on two dimensions: political authority and interest homogeneity. Specifically, policy responsiveness improves significantly when government response agencies demonstrate a high level of political authority and share homogeneous interests with citizens. 

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Crisis management in English local government: the limits of resilience

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By Tania Arrieta and Jonathan S. Davies

In our recently published article in Policy & Politics, we explore the context for local authorities in England that have been pushed to develop “resilience.” This has been as a result of the austerity policies that have led to the phasing out of the Revenue Support Grant (e.g., a grant given to local authorities to finance expenditure on any service), increased service demand and the need to absorb more responsibilities in their communities. Whilst having a reduced capacity, local authorities also faced the challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living-crisis. Several have issued Section 114 “bankruptcy” notices indicating that they cannot balance their budgets as required by law, further escalating pressure on local services in responding to the growing inability of many to meet basic subsistence costs, such as the cost of food and housing.

Exploring resilience through the lens of crisis management, our article investigates in what ways and for whom resilience generates positive, zero and negative- sum outcomes. We believe this is a crucial moment in understanding the medium and longer-term consequences of resilience measures deployed by councils to ameliorate the effects of austerity, as they face rising financial hardship with a severely depleted resource base. Our work centres on four resilience strategies used by two unitary authorities in the East Midlands in England: Leicester City Council and Nottingham City Council. These resilience strategies are savings, reserves, collaboration, and investment.  

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Policy & Politics highlights collection on feminist politics: free to access from 1st February – 30 April 2024

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by Sarah Brown, Senior Journal Manager


In our first highlights collection of 2024, we are delighted to feature three topical open access articles illuminating several different perspectives on feminist politics. All three emphasise the importance of considering intersectionality in politics and policymaking, which we’ve underlined in our previous spotlight features, for example with Professor Julia Jordan-Zachary and Dr Tiffany Manuel. 

In the first article, Charlène Calderaro explores the racialisation of sexism, looking at how race frames shape anti-street harassment policies in her case studies from Britain and France. 

To introduce her research, Calderaro points out that, while gender-based violence is increasingly addressed through public policy, it also follows a process of ‘othering’ marked by racialisation in many European contexts. This racialisation process is particularly evident when examining the problem of gender-based violence in public spaces, for example, street harassment, where sexism is often attributed to migrant men or men from ethnic minorities. However, the extent of this racialisation process varies significantly across national contexts. 

The findings show that the racialisation of sexism in policy-making against gender-based violence can be exacerbated by nationally embedded ideas on race and racism. It also suggests that, by extension, these different conceptions of race can affect the ability to prevent “femonationalism”, which refers to the increasing use of women’s rights to foster nationalism in the form of racial exclusion.  

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Policy integration in local government: what are the barriers?

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by Nicolai De Wulf, Joris Voets and Astrid Molenveld

Cities nowadays are confronted with a wide range of complex societal issues and, correspondingly, the expectations and challenges for local governments have grown. Within this context, they are often praised for their dynamism and their ability to achieve results. As a consequence, local governments often enjoy a large degree of trust from their citizens. But what are the barriers local policy makers face when trying to coordinate and integrate policies? Our recent article in Policy & Politics, entitled ‘Policy coordination and integration in local government: perspectives on barriers’ shows that three distinct perspectives emerge, which we describe in more detail below.

Complex societal issues mentioned are difficult to approach from within one single policy domain. Take, for example, the issue of sustainable mobility, which encompasses mobility, sustainability and the environment, urban planning, the local economy and so forth. Policy issues that span multiple policy domains (horizontally), also involve multiple political and administrative actors and interests (vertically). As such, complex societal issues challenge the traditional modes of collaboration between politics and administration.

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Analysing the contextual factors that promote and constrain policy learning in local government

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Kristin Taylor, Nathan Jeschke & Stephanie Zarb

authors 2

In spite of the best efforts of government, sometimes policies do not work as designed. As scholars of the policy process and citizens in a representative democracy, our normative expectation is that government should learn when policies do not work to improve outcomes for communities. This is especially true in the wake of a natural disaster. Disasters can serve as an opportunity for governments to engage in policy learning by updating beliefs about policies and learning lessons about policy tools, instruments, and politics. Often, disasters can reveal physical and social vulnerabilities and gaps in preparedness that unevenly distribute the risk of damage within a community. In our recent article in Policy & Politics , we investigate which conditions constrain or promote policy learning. Understanding these conditions is of critical importance in gaining a better understanding of why some governments learn to improve policies after a disaster and some do not.

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Updating your course reading lists? Check out our essential reading recommendations for Public Policy, Politics and Social Policy from Policy & Politics

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All articles featured in this blog post are free to access until 31 October 2021

KoebeleIntroducing Elizabeth Koebele: our new Digital Associate Editor for Policy & Politics, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Nevada, Reno.

I am thrilled to have begun serving as Digital Associate Editor for Policy & Politics in January 2021. I have spent the last few months taking over this position from my colleague, Oscar Berglund, who now serves as one of the journal’s co-editors. As many of us are beginning to plan for our policy and politics-focused courses next semester, I figured what better way to celebrate joining the P&P team than to share with you some of my favorite Policy & Politics articles that make a great fit on a variety of syllabi? I 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.

My initial suggestions are structured around two general topics that I hope many of you find yourself teaching or studying: one focused on knowledge, and one focused on actors/influence. I’m also sharing my top picks for readings on an increasingly popular policy topic: policy diffusion/transfer. In each case, I’ve recommended three articles that represent some of the most significant research we’ve published recently. Please let me know what you think when you’re compiling your reading lists for the start of the academic year. I’d value your feedback and suggestions for future topics to cover! Continue reading →

Virtual issue on Central-local relations

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Sarah_Brown_credit_Evelyn_Sturdy
Image credit: Evelyn Sturdy at Unsplash

Sarah Brown
Journal Manager, Policy & Politics

In our second virtual issue of 2021, we focus on central-local relations and feature some of the latest research on that topic from a range of different perspectives and three quite different political systems. Against a backdrop of austerity coupled with an imminent global recession resulting from the pandemic, the politics of central-local relations and their impact on policy are, we believe, even more topical than ever. So we hope that you enjoy this short collection featuring some of our most recent scholarship on this theme. Continue reading →

What happens when policymakers limit increases in property taxes?

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Yarram et alSubba Reddy Yarram, Brian Dollery and Carolyn Tran

In our recent article in Policy & Politics,  we examine the impact of a ‘cap’ on property taxes in the local government system of the Australian state of Victoria. ‘Fair Go rate capping’ was introduced in Victoria from 1 July 2016. Prior to this, general rates charged by local councils in Victoria had grown by an annual average of 6% over a 10 year period. Under the Fair Go policy, the Minister for Local Government sets a maximum permissible rate increase on the advice of the Victorian Essential Services Commission. The actual rates cap was set at 2% for 2016-17 and 2.5% for 2017-18 based on the forecast Consumer Price Index.

In principle, the rate caps limit the ability of local councils to raise revenue required to fund their ongoing operations, often in the hope that this will stimulate increased operational efficiency. In our article, we empirically investigated two main questions: What were the short-term impacts of the Fair Go rate capping on different types of municipal expenditure? Did Fair Go rate capping have a differential impact on the different categories of Victorian local councils? Analysis of these questions can shed light how best to frame local government policy tailored to accommodate different categories of local council facing different expenditure constraints. Continue reading →