Policy Studies Journal Blog

How do we determine if democracy is succeeding or failing? Is it people “watching” politics or “doing” politics or both? These are questions that Dr. Andrea Felicetti engages with in his perspective piece, as traditional understandings of civic responsibilities in democracy are reconsidered. According to Felicetti, behaviors once deemed problematic to the health of a … Continue reading "Toward a …

How does the itinerary of topics that the government chooses to focus on change over time at the local level? The everyday life of citizens has been directly impacted by decisions made at the local level, with the issues being spotlighted on the agenda reflecting local priorities. Scholarship has understudied the development of policy agendas … Continue reading "Agendas and Instability in America…

Consider these questions: How involved are women in the negotiation and implementation of peace agreements? Are the rights and well-being of women well-reflected in peace programs? The protection of women’s rights has been a cornerstone of recent discussions in post-war peacebuilding, as recent scholarship has begun to explore the extent to which women have a … Continue reading "Does the Implemen…

The role of algorithims in influencing and channeling the type of information that people have access to today is unprecedented. Algorithimic tools such as social media platforms, AI recommendations, and search engines perform an important role in organizing and selecting content that shapes discourse on policy matters. However, the growing dominance of algorithims has invited … Continue reading …

In Policy Paradox, Deborah Stone (1989) argues that the work of policy analysis is too often divorced from the politics of the democratic process. To truly understand policies and their effects, one must consider politics. Yet, many areas of policy research remain siloed including from understanding the politics of the process. We believe there is … Continue reading "Linking Policy Design and Dif…

Policy outcomes and concerns about social and racial equity have long been discussed in policy scholarship. A question that often arises is why disparities persist even though scholars and practitioners have increasingly paid attention to equity in policy design. In this article, I argue that policy design is not only a standalone process. The way … Continue reading "Centering Critical Race Theor…

How do countries strike a balance between keeping government budgets in check and providing strong social safety nets for their citizens? As the world becomes more interconnected and demands for services grow, governments must find a way to satisfy this. Scholars have overlooked the connections between government and citizens driving changes in policy design, especially … Continue reading "The Pl…

Public policies rarely rely on a single solution. Instead, they often combine multiple tools—like incentives and regulations—to tackle complex problems. The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) is an effective way to explain how policies get on the agenda and are eventually adopted, but it usually looks at ideas in isolation. This article asks: Do policy ideas … Continue reading "Mixing and matching:…

Despite many citizens in the United States first experiencing welfare policies during adolescence, we have yet to uncover the extent to which welfare participation during this period affects political participation in adulthood. While scholars have long studied the political consequences of adult program participation, we know relatively little about adolescent program participation. What are the…

Last January, the editorial staff of PSJ asked me to think about how the new Trump administration might affect policy process research. This is a huge task full of landmines – not only would I need to write something that engaged a vast policy process literature, but I’d have to do something that political scientists … Continue reading "Four More Years! (of Policy Process Research in a Trump Admi…

Governments around the world use local content requirements (LCR) to boost domestic industries by requiring renewable energy projects to use a certain share of locally-made components. The idea is simple: create jobs and build local supply chains. But the results have been mixed—some countries became major exporters of wind and solar technology, while others struggled. … Continue reading "Does po…

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced states to rethink election administration across the United States. To make voting safer, many states expanded mail voting options like no-excuse absentee voting (NEAV) and universal vote-by-mail (UVBM). While some scholars have studied how these reforms affect turnout, few have examined whether they influence voters’ trust in government itself. … Continue re…

Immigration policy used to be a bipartisan issue, but now it is one of the most divisive in American politics. This study explores how lawmakers’ behavior changed as immigration became a party-defining issue–and what that means for the way Congress represents the foreign-born population. Using immigration bills in the House of Representatives from 1983 to … Continue reading "The dynamics of const…

In 2017, Amazon launched a high-profile competition to choose a location for its second headquarters (HQ2). More than 230 U.S. cities submitted bids, many offering huge incentive packages to lure the tech giant. While researchers have long studied why governments offer these economic development deals to corporations, one question remains: Does making these bids public … Continue reading "When su…

Public support is critical for reaching net-zero goals, yet most research treats climate policies as a single, homogenous category. This approach effectively overlooks how climate policies differ in how much they reflect people’s cultural values and sense of personal freedom. This article therefore asks: Does support for climate policies in the UK depend on the … Continue reading "Climate policy …

The peer review process can be confusing and intimidating, especially for researchers who are new to academia. This blog post provides an overview of the peer review process in theory and practice, specifically in reference to the Policy Studies Journal (PSJ). Our goal is to sketch a roadmap for emerging policy scholars interested in publishing … Continue reading "So You Want to Publish in a Poli…

Democratic governments provide a range of goods and services as “public enterprises” that recover all or part of their costs through user charges. Unlike commercial firms, which set prices in a competitive market, public enterprise pricing is a matter of public policy. This article explores public enterprise pricing as a redistributive policy, with governments setting … Continue reading "Public e…

Social movements rely on narratives to frame their struggles and mobilise support. How they craft these narratives is especially intriguing in electoral autocracies, where political competition exists to a degree but democratic freedoms are curtailed. Our article (Celebi & Yilmaz, 2025) builds on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) by analyzing the policy process within an … Continue reading "Th…

Existing research focuses predominantly on inequality among individuals. But inequality also has a territorial dimension. This article seeks to better understand the drivers of regional inequality in education, a key area in modern knowledge-based societies. The article specifically explores the conditions that shape regional differences in student enrolment and educational attainment across 14 O…

Beyond conveying information about policy instruments, established government programs shape beliefs and expectations about policy benefits and burdens, as well as how individuals will be affected by existing policies. Social groups can then react to the information embedded in the design of policies, which, in turn, may strengthen or weaken them. The case study reported … Continue reading "Polic…