public administration

Annual call for special issue proposals for Policy & Politics 

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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.  

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The value of poll-worker voice in the delivery of elections

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by Toby S. James and Alistair Clark

Two portraits of men speaking, the author's of the article

In their recent article published in Policy & Politics, Toby S. James and Alistair Clark explore how the perspectives of poll workers can inform and improve election delivery. They argue that these frontline workers—often marginalised in both research and practice—hold crucial knowledge about the functioning and fairness of democratic processes. Drawing on Carole Pateman’s theory of workplace democracy, they propose a model that listens to, and learns from, the people who help run elections on the ground.

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New citation metrics for Policy & Politics

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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 4.3, maintaining its position in the top quartile of Political Science journals (19 out of 317 journals) and 9 out of 91 journals in the Public Administration category.

As an editorial team, we are on a journey of diversifying and internationalising the content that we publish in P&P. We want to be known as a home for exciting and inclusive Public Policy scholarship. We know that a 2-year impact factor is a crude and often inaccurate way of measuring success. But we also acknowledge that maintaining a high impact factor is important for us to continue on this journey, attracting the very best research from colleagues at different career stages.

To this end, we are pleased to announce a range of citation metrics for P&P in 2024. Scopus’ Citescore has ranked P&P in the 91st percentile (20 out of 232 journals) in Public Administration. In addition, the Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) rankings place P&P in the top quartile (30 out of 216 journals) in Public Administration.

We are so grateful to all of you in our scholarly community for helping us achieve these excellent results. Thank you!

With best wishes,

Oscar, Claire, Elizabeth and Chris
P&P co-editors

Season’s greetings from the Policy & Politics team!

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simon-pVRnzlO_bbI-unsplashFirstly, a huge thank you to all our authors, reviewers, board members and friends in the unprecedented year that was 2021. 
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Policy & Politics favourites of 2021

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Thea Cook, Journals Marketing ExecutiveThea-Cook

We wanted to share some of our readers’ favourite content that you might have missed. Please enjoy free access to some of our most read and highly cited articles, along with some of our editors’ highlights from recent issues. Continue reading →

Policy & Politics Highlights collection November 2021 – January 2022 – all articles included are free to access

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Sarah_Brown_credit_Evelyn_Sturdy
Image credit: Evelyn Sturdy at Unsplash

Sarah Brown
Journal Manager, Policy & Politics

This quarter’s collection highlights three of our most popular and highly cited articles in 2021 which, based on their readership and citation levels, have clearly made an important contribution to their fields.

The first article, A theoretical framework for studying the co-creation of innovative solutions and public value, forms an introduction to the special issue on co-creation in public policy and governance, guest edited by Jacob Torfing, Ewan Ferlie, Tina Jukić and Edoardo Ongaro, published in April 2021. The central proposition is that the concept of public value carries unexploited potential as a ‘game changer’ for advancing the co-creation of innovative solutions in the public sector. They argue that it allows us to appreciate the many different public and private actors, including service users, citizens and civil society organisations, which can contribute to the production of public value. The authors quip that co-creation is the “new black” because it mobilises societal resources, enhances innovation and builds joint ownership over new public value outcomes. Continue reading →

SPECIAL ISSUE BLOG SERIES: Blog 2 – Co-creation: the new kid on the block in public governance

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Special issue blog series on strategic management of the transition to public sector co-creation

Ansell and TorfingChristopher Ansell and Jacob Torfing

In our recent article in our special issue on Strategic management of the transition to public sector co-creation, we reminisce briefly about the time when bureaucracy with its hierarchical command structure and emphasis on compliance with written rules was the only game in town. This was understandable, since the public sector was tasked with solving simple problems through large-scale provision of services such as schooling, health care and social welfare. This task called for exploitation of the bureaucratic forms of organisation propagated by industrialisation.

Then, from the 1970s onwards, the criticisms of the public sector for being inefficient and delivering poor services and failing governance solutions started to grow and the public sector was confronted with the question whether to ‘make or buy’. As a result, we saw the expansion of quasi-markets where public and private service providers competed for contracts and customers. This development turned citizens into demanding, dissatisfied and complaining consumers expecting service without having to contribute anything themselves towards problem solving. In the increasingly cash-strapped public sector, this development seems to be unsustainable. We need to mobilise the manifold resources of users, citizens and private stakeholders in order to provide needs-based services and create new and better solutions through mutual learning and innovation. Continue reading →

NEW SPECIAL ISSUE BLOG SERIES: Blog 1 – Public value as the game changer for co-creation of innovative solutions in the public sector

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Special issue blog series on strategic management of the transition to public sector co-creation

updated special issue editors co creationJacob Torfing, Ewan Ferlie, Tina Jukić and Edoardo Ongaro

During the 1980s and early 1990s, we were consistently told that the public sector was ossified, incompetent and unimaginative, and squandered value produced by the hard-working and innovative private sector. Government was the problem, not the solution, and we should therefore have less state and more market. The neoliberal onslaught on the public sector had begun and public employees gradually developed an inferiority complex.

This nightmarish development was reversed by Mark Moore’s Creating Public Value (1995) who insisted that the public sector creates its own distinctive value. The public sector creates ‘public value’ defined as what has value for the public and public values. Public managers are not merely engaged in securing compliance with bureaucratic rules, but are entrepreneurs engaged in the exploration of new and better service and policy solutions. In this way, the public sector was redeemed and public managers could re-describe themselves as proud guardians of the public interest and producers of public value.  Continue reading →

Policy & Politics announces the 2021 winners of the Early Career and Best Paper Prizes

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2020 P&P prize winnersWe are delighted to announce the 2021 prizes for award winning papers published in Policy & Politics in 2020.

The Bleddyn Davies Prize, which acknowledges scholarship of the very highest standard by an early career academic, is awarded to:

‘Applying design in public administration: a literature review to explore the state of the art‘ by Margot Hermus, Arwin van Buuren & Victor Bekkers from the special issue: ‘Improving public policy and administration: exploring the potential of design’.

The Ken Young Prize, which is awarded to the best article judged to represent excellence in the field published in Policy & Politics, is awarded  to:

‘When design meets power: Design thinking, public sector innovation and the politics of policymaking’ by Jenny M Lewis, Michael McGann and Emma Blomkamp from the special issue: ‘Improving public policy and administration: exploring the potential of design’.

Brief critiques of the winning articles follow, in celebration of their contributions. Continue reading →

Policy & Politics: Serving and Enhancing our Metacommunities

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Oscar Berglund, Claire Dunlop and Christopher M. Weible

In the study of ecological systems, there is a concept called metacommunities. The idea is that a species might be dispersed in different yet interconnected communities.  These metacommunities might emerge and grow for reasons of fit, space, survival, or chance.  These metacommunities interconnect through some species traversing between them either rarely or habitually. Over time metacommunities might also evolve and adapt to their particular niches. For those who care about supporting ecological systems that might be dispersed in interconnected niches, metacommunities provide a broad language and perspective to help visualize, understand, and govern.

As editors for Policy & Politics, we view this metaphor of metacommunities apt for describing the broadly defined field of public policy, which is dispersed in many communities, each with their own research approaches, lexicons, and traditions.  We also see that some scholars navigate between communities more than others.   In describing academia, we often refer to these metacommunities as silos where some silos are more isolated or connected than others as well as some silos existing within other silos.  Similar to metacommunities, silos might emerge and grow as scholars search for space to develop their ideas, self-sort with others of similar orientations, and more. Continue reading →