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.
We are delighted to be ending the year on a high note. Submissions are at their highest level for over a decade, we’ve published more diverse scholarship from a far broader range of countries than ever before, and we’ve maintained our top quartile rankings in both Public Administration and Political Science with an impact factor of 4.3, thanks to the huge support of our loyal community. Congratulations to you all!
To celebrate, we have made our top 10 most highly cited articles published in 2024 free to access until 31 January 2025. Happy holiday reading!
Top 10 most highly cited articles published in 2024 – free to access until 31 January 2025
by Evangelia Petridou, Jörgen Sparf and Per Becker
Being an entrepreneur takes effort. It requires energy and presupposes the willingness to stick one’s neck out to bring about innovation. This is what the market tells us and the situation is not much different in politics. In fact, it’s arguable that achieving change in public policy requires even more time and energy, given the glacial speed that is sometimes the core feature of dynamic policy change. And yet, in our recent article published in Policy & Politics on this topic, we show that not all policy entrepreneurs are driven by a focus on intentionality, but by an a priori policy preference that prompts policy actors to seek, grab, and occasionally create opportunities to shepherd their preferred policy solution through the policymaking system.
In our case study, we use the concepts of the proactive and reactive policy entrepreneur (theorised in a previous paper) in Swedish flood risk governance at the municipal level. Proactive policy entrepreneurs, equivalent to market entrepreneurs by opportunity, act entrepreneurially out of a conscious choice. They have other alternatives, but they choose to be entrepreneurial because they have in mind an innovation that they believe will make a difference, and they actively promote it. By contrast, reactive policy entrepreneurs, the equivalent of market entrepreneurs by necessity, act entrepreneurially because it is the best choice available to them, but not their preferred choice. This implies that there are conditions that create a necessity for them to be an entrepreneur. In other words, the difference between these two kinds of entrepreneur is motivation.
The idea of innovation has become one of the most persistent and sought-after today. While too conceptually elusive to pin down to a single statement, innovation can be broadly understood as a process whereby new elements and approaches are introduced to existing ones, in an attempt to solve problems, add value, and contribute to knowledge. Being a problem-solving, value-oriented process, it is no surprise that the concept of innovation is increasingly finding footholds in different theoretical spaces within policy and political sciences, from collaborative arrangements, democratic practices, policy design and experimentation, to behavioural and cognitive theories. Within the public sector, innovation can be understood as the creation of new policies, services, advisory, governance and political arrangements, often leading to the development of novel shared views of what is acceptable and expected by the public as beneficiaries.
Intuitively, policy learning has a family resemblance to policy innovation. It seems almost self-evident that they should be considered together in the explanation of policy dynamics. Yet the two literatures have developed independently of each other. Studies which put them in conversation are few.
by Nadège Carlier, David Aubin, and Stéphane Moyson
In our recent article published in Policy & Politics as part of a special issue on Policy Learning: Types, Mechanisms and Effects, we researched the relative effects of diversity on collective learning in local collaborative networks in Belgium. Collaborative networks represent horizontal structures in public governance that facilitate interactions among diverse stakeholders, including civil servants, businesses, and citizens. These networks play a crucial role in fostering coherence, comprehensiveness, and innovation in cross-cutting public policies such as climate initiatives. However, achieving these benefits is particularly challenging in the aftermath of fragmented public action resulting from new public management reforms. To harness the advantages of collaboration, collective learning — defined as the broadened and mutual understanding of public issues resulting from repeated social interactions — is indispensable but not spontaneous. It requires participants within collaborative networks to update their beliefs and develop a deeper understanding of each other’s constraints, interests, and ideas. The diversity of participants within these networks presents learning opportunities that, while significant, do not always translate into tangible learning outcomes.
To explore how diversity contributes to collective learning in collaborative networks, our study focused on two networks within the city administration of Schaerbeek, Belgium. The first network centred on implementing sustainable procurement practices, while the second aimed to combat discrimination and promote diversity within the municipality. Over a span of approximately three years, public servants from various departments collaborated, exchanged information, and developed public policies.
Policy & Politics Journal Blog 