Co-Editors of Policy & Politics
To all our authors, reviewers, Editorial Board members, readers, friends and supporters,
We’re delighted to announce that Policy & Politics (P&P) has achieved a 2-year Impact Factor of 3.5 in the 2025 Journal Citation Reports, maintaining its position in the top quartile of journals in both Public Administration and Political Science.
Co-Editors of Policy & Politics
The co-editors invite abstracts for a special issue on Power and Politics in the Policy Process.
Abstract submission (500-750 words) deadline: 1 September 2026
From our perspective as editors of Policy & Politics, there is a clear gap in the literature: politics is either not explicitly addressed or under-integrated in policy process studies. The implication is that if politics is missing, then so is power. Our concern is theoretical, empirical and fundamentally practical: not enough has been done to advance knowledge about how politics influences policy responses to public problems. This is to the field’s detriment, given the increasing tendency toward illiberalism in democratic systems that fractures the pluralist norms that policy process research has long relied on.
Continue readingby Kristin Taylor (co-editor), Elizabeth Koebele (co-editor) & Allegra Fullerton (Digital Associate Editor)
At the recent journal editors’ roundtable at the Conference on Policy Process Research in January 2026 in Bern, Switzerland, we were struck by the number of scholars seeking advice on how to choose the best journal to publish their research in. So, we thought we’d follow up with our top tips on choosing where to publish. Ultimately, the choice of whether a paper is accepted for review or not is at the discretion of the editorial team; however, there are ways to increase your odds of your work being selected to go under review, whether at Policy & Politics or elsewhere.
Firstly, check if your paper aligns within the aims and scope of the journal you are considering. Astonishingly, Policy & Politics desk rejects around 75% of submissions every year primarily due to their lack of fit with our aims and scope. Such rejections are largely avoidable by rigorously reading journal aims, scope, and other summaries or editorial statements on journals’ webpages. It is also worth reviewing the last several months of publications from the journal. Your submission may be more likely to be sent out for review if it engages in or extends an ongoing discourse in the journal, including pointing to areas that need further attention. Journals track debates on issues within their scope over time, so if your research questions are responding to a debate already ongoing in the journal – partly indicated through citations of appropriate articles in your references – you stand a much better chance of your article passing the desk reject stage.
Continue reading
The editors of Policy & Politics invite proposals for a special issue that will make a significant contribution to our understanding of the nexus of public policy and politics.
Proposals submission deadline: 30 April 2026
Policy & Politics has been publishing innovative works at the intersection of public policy and politics for over 50 years. It is a world-leading, top quartile journal that is committed to advancing scholarly understanding of the dynamics of policy-making and implementation. By exploring the interplay between political actors, governing institutions and policy issues, the journal contributes to building policy process theory; and by reflecting on the evolving context in which these interactions occur, it provides timely and fresh insights into the influence of politics on policy and vice versa.
The journal’s co-editors invite proposals for a special issue to be published online and in print that will make a significant contribution to our understanding of the nexus of public policy and politics. The journal only has space to publish one special issue each year, so this is a competitive process.
Continue readingby Sarah Brown & Allegra Fullerton
Policy process theories have long provided scholars with conceptual tools for explaining how policy change occurs or stalls, and how actors, ideas, interests, and institutions interact over time. In celebration of being a sponsor of the Conference on Policy Process Research, we present this Virtual Issue featuring seven articles recently published in Policy & Politics that engage directly with leading policy process frameworks. Read on to see the latest from the Narrative Policy Framework, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, and the Multiple Streams Framework, alongside critical perspectives on policy implementation. Read together, these contributions show how policy process theories are continuously refined through empirical testing, conceptual development, and application across diverse political and institutional contexts.
Continue readingby Sarah Brown and Allegra Fullerton
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.
Continue readingby 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.
Continue readingby Sarah Brown and Allegra H. Fullerton
As you plan reading lists for the coming academic year, this collection of recent articles offers fresh insights for units on emotions in public policy, the politics of environmental policy, and governance networks. Each article draws on cutting-edge empirical research combined with conceptual innovation, making them ideal for both undergraduate and postgraduate modules exploring the politics of policymaking.
We hope these suggestions save you time and effort in mining recent articles while ensuring your course materials reflect the latest research from the frontiers of the discipline.
Continue readingby Sarah Brown and Allegra Fullerton
This quarter’s highlights collection showcases 3 recent articles on policy process theories that make important contributions to this area of policy research and theory development.
In our first article, ‘Organisation, information processing, and policy change in US federal bureaucracies , authors Samuel Workman et al examine policy change in the US federal bureaucracy. They build on Punctuated Equilibrium Theory’s premise that institutional friction and limited attention are prime influences on policy change, and they introduce a new approach for measuring and modelling these dynamics. This new approach incorporates the centralisation of information, decision-making, and the complexity of the policy, into the architecture of different organisations. Specifically, it measures how different sized organisations delegate federally regulated agenda items across the US federal bureaucracy from 2008-2016.
Their findings suggest that larger bureaucracies may handle change and problem definitions more easily than smaller organisations. These bureaucracies are not forced to shift attention to each new problem. This is because being part of a department provides more capacity to handle various problems as they emerge onto the agenda. Additionally, the division of attention within these structures allows for a broader range of strengths and expertise to tackle problems better. These findings challenge the typical view that smaller, nimble organisations manage change better.
Our second article, by Johanna Kuenzler and co-authors, considers how the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) helps in understanding how policy narratives impact public policy processes. It offers a systematic analysis of the historical development of NPF research, examining the use of the NPF’s theoretical elements over five time periods. The article provides insight into the foundation of NPF, highlighting the influence of positivist and interpretivist approaches throughout its development.
Figure: Number of published articles according to historical stages of the development of the NPF
As illustrated in the figure above, the article highlights the unique contributions of key NPF publications across each of the time periods of its development. The findings indicate a consistent focus on the core theoretical components and methodological innovations, demonstrating the framework’s robustness.
Finally, the article suggests avenues to further develop the framework, drawing from past lessons such as the introduction of the beneficiary character, and proposes further investigation of character and narrative dynamics. It also encourages additional work to bridge positivist and interpretive approaches and outlines the strengths of each. In summary, the article is a welcome contribution and has much to offer to both those who are fluent and new to the NPF.
Our final article in this collection provides another systematic review but this time of the Multiple Streams Framework in the context of policy processes in China. Its central research question asks ‘why do policymakers address some societal issues but not others?’
For decades, the authors explain, public policy researchers have tried to answer this question by using the policy theory called the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) which was originally developed to understand policymaking in the USA. Taking an overview of 178 studies that use the MSF to analyse policymaking and implementation in China, the authors found that scholars have increasingly used the MSF to examine how policies are made and implemented in China, as illustrated in the figure below.
Figure: China-focused MSF articles (N = 178) published per year.
Since the appearance of the first article that used the MSF to analyse policymaking in China (Zhou & Yan, 2005), almost two hundred journal articles have used the framework to identify the driving forces behind policymaking and policy implementation (or the lack thereof) in China. Based on the authors’ analysis of these studies, they offer important guiding principles for those who would like to use the MSF to analyse policy processes in China.
To conclude, the article identifies a range of under-examined areas for future policy research, such as banking, finance, energy, and health. In addition, more comparative studies are needed that help identify how policy processes in China are different from that in other political systems. The authors hope this article will help to inspire more studies that use the multiple streams framework to deepen our understanding of policymaking and implementation in China.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this quarter’s collection of articles focusing on a range of perspectives on different policy process theories. We wish you a relaxing break and look forward to bringing you more of the latest research from Policy & Politics in 2025!
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at:
Kuenzler, J., Stauffer, B., Schlaufer, C., Song, G., Smith-Walter, A., & Jones, M. D. (2024). A systematic review of the Narrative Policy Framework: a future research agenda. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000046
van den Dool, A., & Qiu, T. (2024). Policy processes in China: a systematic review of the multiple streams framework. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000038
Workman, S., Robinson, S. E., & Bark, T. (2024). Organisation, information processing, and policy change in US federal bureaucracies. Policy & Politics, 52(2), 278-297 https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2023D000000013
by Jonathan Lewallen
Attention in the policy process—among individuals, among institutions and organisations, and within political systems—is a scarce resource. Paying attention to one or even a few issues means other issues go unaddressed.
Making a decision and choosing an alternative requires something called the “serial shift”: moving from addressing multiple issues at once, say within a legislative committee system or set of bureaucratic offices, to focussing on one issue at a time. Prioritising an issue on the agenda also means prioritising the advocates and policy conflicts associated with them.
We know a lot about how issues reach the decision agenda. Policy entrepreneurs and coalitions redefine existing issues and try to couple problems with alternatives; media coverage can attract elite attention and contribute to a sense that something should be done; policymakers schedule some issues to periodically recur so that they’re sure to receive attention some time, even if not right now.
We know less about how the serial shift feeds back in to the agenda setting process. Does the serial shift legitimise and certify conflict, signalling which conflicts are considered more legitimate? Or does restricting the decision agenda to one set of conflicts create a flow of attention to other issues?
Continue reading
Policy & Politics Journal Blog 
