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.
In a recent article published in Policy & Politics, Georg Wenzelburger explores how a landmark criminal justice reform in Virginia during the 1990s combined apparently contradictory approaches to sentencing—and why that matters today.
The reform in question abolished parole and sharply increased sentences for violent offenders—hallmarks of a “tough on crime” agenda. But, surprisingly, it also introduced data-driven risk assessments to help divert non-violent offenders away from prison. This mix of punitive and preventative measures was unusual for the time and has since played a key role in the rise of more measured, evidence-informed criminal justice reforms in the United States.
The United Nations Development Programme has described 2024 as a global elections “Super year”. However, while that may be the case, younger generations across many established democracies remain deeply disillusioned with mainstream electoral politics. This is hardly a revelation, but reflects the findings from a large body of existing research identifying low levels of youth voter turnout. By way of contrast, very little attention has been paid to how young people can – and occasionally do – engage with politicians and officials between elections on issues of importance to them. Even when parties attract overwhelming youth support, such as the Labour Party in 4 July UK General Election, they often have little idea of how to govern for - let alone with - young people. In our recent article for Policy & Politics, we argue that youth engagement with local policy-communities on issues that have meaning for their everyday lives offers a potential antidote to this democratic malaise.
So first the good news. Our research points to an increasing willingness of policymakers to engage with young people – particularly in the area of environmental policy. Less positively, policymakers struggle to provide opportunities for meaningful and sustained engagement. Our article explores where the problems lie and suggests how these might be resolved.
Policy & Politics Journal Blog 