by Liliana D. González-Viveros and Verónica López Guerra
Policy dismantling is a growing field in public policy analysis. Scholars approach this topic from different perspectives, such as exploring why it occurs and analysing the strategies used to achieve it. However, the effects of policy dismantling on the policy-making process, particularly in multilevel governance frameworks, remain unclear. In their recent article published in Policy & Politics, Liliana D. González-Viveros and Verónica López Guerra explore what happens when national policies are dismantled—not just in terms of services lost, but in how policy-making itself adapts in response.
In their recent article published in Policy & Politics, Johanna Kuhlmann and Peter Starke demonstrate how a focus on emotions helps us to better understand important policy dynamics. Specifically, they examine how anger shaped public responses to the French pension reform of 2019–20. While welfare state reforms are usually explained by institutional or materialist theories, the authors turn to appraisal theory of emotion to explore how the reform process—and the interaction between government, trade unions and citizens—generated one of the largest protest movements in recent French history.
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.
New research highlights the subtle but persistent role of stigma in shaping public support for welfare benefits.
Public support for welfare benefits often hinges on perceptions of who is “deserving.” Are recipients viewed as victims of circumstance—or as somehow responsible for their own misfortune? A new Policy & Politics article by Kaila Witkowski and Stephen R. Neely asks how HIV stigma may influence these judgements, with important implications for social policy.
by Janna Goijaerts, Natascha van der Zwan, Jet Bussemaker
Policies often set ambitious goals for social services, envisioning a welfare system that is preventative, tailored, and complementary. Yet, as middle managers in street-level organisations know all too well, reality frequently falls short of these ideals. In our recent research article, just published inPolicy & Politics, we explore the discrepancy between policy goals and actual service delivery, shedding light on the role of middle managers within this gap.
We’re excited to welcome Kristin Taylor as a new co-editor of P&P in January! In anticipation, we caught up with her to find out a bit about her motivation for joining our team…
SB: Hey Kristin, we’re thrilled to have you joining our illustrious team in 2025 and wanted to hear what made you want to take on a co-editor role for P&P, and what you hope to get out of it?
KT: I’m glad the feeling is mutual! I was quite humbled when the editorial team approached me about the role. I have always held P&P in high regard because of the incredibly collegial and constructive review process. Given all the thoughtful effort the co-editors have devoted to the quality of P&P, I am honored to join the team. With that being said, I haven’t thought so much about what I hope to get out of being a co-editor of P&P, but I have thought quite a bit about what I can contribute to the journal and the editorial team. One of the aspects of my career that I have relished as I’ve become more established is the opportunity to mentor the work of new, up and coming scholars of public policy. I’m excited about the chance to contribute to the journal by fostering the work of new voices in the literature.
SB: We know that balancing priorities such as research, teaching and administration is more pressurised for prolific researchers like you, so what do you anticipate the benefits of the role will be for you?
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 Sarah Brown, Journal Manager with Dr. Elizabeth Koebele, co-editor
The theme of this quarter’s highlights collection from Policy & Politics is Policy Feedback Theory (PFT), an increasingly popular theory of the policy process that is featuring more regularly on public policy syllabi. In a nutshell, PFT considers how past policies (re)shape the political context in which new policies are formed.
Our first article in this collection has been one of our most popular and highly cited since its publication in 2022: New pathways to paradigm change in public policy: Combining insights from policy design, mix and feedback by Sebastian Sewerin, Benjamin Cashore and Michael Howlett. Here, the authors argue that policy science scholarship is better at explaining policy change in retrospect, rather than formulating forward-looking recommendations about how to achieve major or paradigmatic change. Potentially even more concerning, existing scholarship emphasises the importance of external shocks in initiating major policy change, which doesn’t augur well for proactively tackling the major problems of our time such as climate change. In their article, the authors identify two conceptual and theoretical gaps that might limit how policy scholars think about major or paradigmatic change: 1) a lack of shared understanding of what ‘policy change’ is, and 2) a focus on (changing) policies in isolation rather than on policies as part of complex policy mixes. Against this background, they argue that combining insights from policy design, policy mix and policy feedback literature allows us to identify other pathways towards initiating and achieving policy change.
Conditional cash transfers, or ‘CCTs’, constituted the backbone of Mexico’s poverty reduction policy for more than twenty years. CCTs provided cash benefits targeted at poor people, conditional on the compliance of certain requirements, like school attendance by children and participation in health promotion activities and check-ups by all family members. The objective of CCTs was to fight poverty through the formation of human capital. The approach was a social policy investment seeking to mould the behaviour of beneficiaries in desirable ways.
Cash transfers were commonly paid to the mother of the family, to secure an adequate use of the additional income within the household. CCTs were pioneered in Mexico, the first country to introduce them at the national level, becoming the backbone of anti-poverty policy for more than two decades. Maintained and expanded by three federal governments of different political parties, the policy reached almost a quarter of the population and yielded significant improvements across many health, education and nutrition indicators, prompting its diffusion around the globe. The stability and positive results of CCTs might have presaged their continuity, but the government that came to power in December 2018, swiftly dismantled them with virtually no opposition.
Policy & Politics Journal Blog 