science and policy

Advancing policy scholarship: Quarterly highlights from Policy & Politics 

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By Allegra Fullerton & Sarah Brown 


Policy scholarship continues to evolve in response to increasingly complex public challenges. As policy researchers seek to better understand how governments collaborate, use expertise and navigate contested policy processes, they are also refining the theories, concepts and methods that underpin the field itself. This quarterly collection brings together five recent articles from Policy & Politics that each advance policy scholarship in different ways. Together, they demonstrate how theoretical development, methodological innovation and empirical research can deepen our understanding of policy making.  

Our first featured article, A new framework for collaborative climate governance: linking consensus building and collective action, by Cheng Zhou and Clare Richardson-Barlow, addresses one of the central questions in collaborative governance: how does collaboration move from dialogue to meaningful collective action? Drawing on extensive fieldwork and evolutionary game modelling, the authors develop a new framework that conceptualises collaboration as a dynamic process in which consensus building lays the foundations for joint action. By focusing on the behavioural dynamics that shape collaboration, the article offers a more process-oriented understanding of how governance arrangements develop and why collaborative efforts can produce very different outcomes across policy contexts.

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When crises become the new normal: eroding expert influence during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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by Eric Montpetit, Antoine Claude Lemor, Maria Alejandra Costa, and Louis-Robert Beaulieu-Guay

4 individual portrait photographs of the 4 authors of the article: Eric Montpetit (male), Antoine Claude Lemore (male), Alejandra Maria Costa (female) and Louis-Robert Beaulieu-Guay (male).

Some might say that people can grow accustomed to almost anything—even the worst crises. Indeed, human beings learn to cope with disruptions that initially provoke serious fears, but over time become a “new normal.” This capacity to adapt can be so strong that it undermines the influence of expert knowledge guiding decisions in times of crisis. That is precisely what we observed in Quebec (Canada) during the COVID-19 pandemic, as discussed in our recent article published in Policy & Politics.

Experts often believe that raising alarms about an impending catastrophe is an effective way to heighten awareness among both the public and policymakers regarding the risks of inaction. While fear-based strategies can yield results early in a crisis, they may become counterproductive later on.

In March 2020, many epidemiologists warned decision-makers that, without the swift implementation of strict lockdown measures, COVID-19 would spread exponentially—leading to a horrific number of casualties. In several countries, immediate lockdowns followed, with little consideration for the associated economic costs or unprecedented restrictions on individual freedoms. By highlighting the gravity of the threat, epidemiologists initially exerted considerable influence on both the public and policymakers.

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