Pub Date : 2025-12-04DOI: 10.1007/s11077-025-09591-8
Allegra H. Fullerton
{"title":"Coalition stability and cohesion in a transgender policy conflict","authors":"Allegra H. Fullerton","doi":"10.1007/s11077-025-09591-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-025-09591-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145680290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-01DOI: 10.1007/s11077-025-09595-4
Magni Szymaniak-Arnesen, Adela Gąsiorowska
Deliberative minipublics (DMPs), such as citizens’ assemblies (CAs), comprising randomly selected citizens, have become an increasingly popular means to complement traditional political decision-making. DMPs are claimed to overcome the challenges of liberal democracy by democratizing policy-making and enhancing the epistemic value of public decisions. To date, research has largely focused on DMPs’ internal processes or their role within the broader political system. There is, however, still a limited number of studies analyzing the substantive outputs of such deliberative fora, i.e., their policy recommendations. This research note proposes a categorical framework for analyzing and comparing DMPs’ recommendations across cases. It was built on existing theoretical approaches to public policy outputs and policy advice. To adapt the theory to the specificity of DMPs, we used the insights from nine in-depth interviews and two focus groups conducted with citizens, policy experts, stakeholders, and civil servants, who evaluated recommendations from ten CAs in Poland. A total of 20% of recommendations from ten Polish CAs ( n = 130) were initially pilot-coded to refine the framework and then to test its reliability. The study provides an easily applicable tool for comparative analysis of DMPs’ outputs across cases without requiring contextual data. The provided categories of recommendations may help further research on the relationship between DMP designs and the quality of their recommendations, also contributing to the study of DMPs’ policy impact.
{"title":"Assessing the substantive outputs of deliberative minipublics: a categorical framework for policy recommendations","authors":"Magni Szymaniak-Arnesen, Adela Gąsiorowska","doi":"10.1007/s11077-025-09595-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-025-09595-4","url":null,"abstract":"Deliberative minipublics (DMPs), such as citizens’ assemblies (CAs), comprising randomly selected citizens, have become an increasingly popular means to complement traditional political decision-making. DMPs are claimed to overcome the challenges of liberal democracy by democratizing policy-making and enhancing the epistemic value of public decisions. To date, research has largely focused on DMPs’ internal processes or their role within the broader political system. There is, however, still a limited number of studies analyzing the substantive outputs of such deliberative fora, i.e., their policy recommendations. This research note proposes a categorical framework for analyzing and comparing DMPs’ recommendations across cases. It was built on existing theoretical approaches to public policy outputs and policy advice. To adapt the theory to the specificity of DMPs, we used the insights from nine in-depth interviews and two focus groups conducted with citizens, policy experts, stakeholders, and civil servants, who evaluated recommendations from ten CAs in Poland. A total of 20% of recommendations from ten Polish CAs ( <jats:italic>n</jats:italic> = 130) were initially pilot-coded to refine the framework and then to test its reliability. The study provides an easily applicable tool for comparative analysis of DMPs’ outputs across cases without requiring contextual data. The provided categories of recommendations may help further research on the relationship between DMP designs and the quality of their recommendations, also contributing to the study of DMPs’ policy impact.","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":"112 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145651558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-26DOI: 10.1007/s11077-025-09596-3
Liz Richardson, Catherine Durose, Paul Cairney, John Boswell
{"title":"How should policy actors respond to buzzwords? Three ways to deal with policy ambiguity","authors":"Liz Richardson, Catherine Durose, Paul Cairney, John Boswell","doi":"10.1007/s11077-025-09596-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-025-09596-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145599886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-20DOI: 10.1007/s11077-025-09597-2
Riya Kumbukattu Alex, Preetha Sadasivan, Thomas Maes, Suja Purushothaman Devipriya
{"title":"Quantitative evaluation of global microbead policies: a PMC index approach towards microplastic pollution","authors":"Riya Kumbukattu Alex, Preetha Sadasivan, Thomas Maes, Suja Purushothaman Devipriya","doi":"10.1007/s11077-025-09597-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-025-09597-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":"162 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145553299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-15DOI: 10.1007/s11077-025-09594-5
Darren Nel, Araz Taeihagh
Complexity science offers valuable conceptual and analytical tools for addressing multifaceted socio-technical challenges in policymaking, promoting a holistic, dynamic, and adaptive framework that moves beyond traditional linear approaches. Despite its potential, complexity science has struggled to gain traction in the mainstream policy debates. This article examines the non-technical-human and organisational-barriers impeding the adoption of complexity science in policymaking and proposes strategies to overcome these obstacles. The barriers fall into three categories: management, institutional, and political challenges; communication and trust issues; and ethical considerations. The article synthesises insights from 37 interviews with complexity and policy experts to understand challenges and identify effective strategies. The findings reveal that entrenched governance structures, short-term political incentives, and limited awareness of complexity concepts among policymakers hinder the adoption of complexity-informed approaches. Additionally, a preference for simpler, more immediate solutions further obstructs the integration of complexity science into policymaking. Ethical considerations, such as data privacy and potential biases within models, also present significant challenges. Several strategies are identified to overcome these barriers, including fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, enhancing transparency in model development, and establishing experimental policy labs. The findings highlight the need for targeted training programs to equip policymakers with the skills to navigate complex systems and emphasise the importance of establishing platforms for interdisciplinary dialogue. These strategies aim to build capacity, improve understanding, foster trust, and encourage more adaptive and holistic policymaking approaches, ultimately facilitating the integration of complexity science into mainstream policymaking.
{"title":"Tackling the soft non-technical challenges of the adoption of complexity science in policymaking","authors":"Darren Nel, Araz Taeihagh","doi":"10.1007/s11077-025-09594-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-025-09594-5","url":null,"abstract":"Complexity science offers valuable conceptual and analytical tools for addressing multifaceted socio-technical challenges in policymaking, promoting a holistic, dynamic, and adaptive framework that moves beyond traditional linear approaches. Despite its potential, complexity science has struggled to gain traction in the mainstream policy debates. This article examines the non-technical-human and organisational-barriers impeding the adoption of complexity science in policymaking and proposes strategies to overcome these obstacles. The barriers fall into three categories: management, institutional, and political challenges; communication and trust issues; and ethical considerations. The article synthesises insights from 37 interviews with complexity and policy experts to understand challenges and identify effective strategies. The findings reveal that entrenched governance structures, short-term political incentives, and limited awareness of complexity concepts among policymakers hinder the adoption of complexity-informed approaches. Additionally, a preference for simpler, more immediate solutions further obstructs the integration of complexity science into policymaking. Ethical considerations, such as data privacy and potential biases within models, also present significant challenges. Several strategies are identified to overcome these barriers, including fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, enhancing transparency in model development, and establishing experimental policy labs. The findings highlight the need for targeted training programs to equip policymakers with the skills to navigate complex systems and emphasise the importance of establishing platforms for interdisciplinary dialogue. These strategies aim to build capacity, improve understanding, foster trust, and encourage more adaptive and holistic policymaking approaches, ultimately facilitating the integration of complexity science into mainstream policymaking.","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":"185 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145515849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-11DOI: 10.1007/s11077-025-09593-6
Steffen Hurka, Stefanie Rueß, Mike Cowburn, Constantin Kaplaner
Legislation shapes every aspect of public life and stands at the core of governance. Despite sustained attention on a variety of aspects of legislation, we still lack a comprehensive and integrated framework of legislative design. To address this gap, we introduce a novel conceptual framework that analyzes legislative design along two dimensions— versatility and precision —using six indicators: objects, subjects, instruments, dilution, derogation, and delegation. Taken together, these two dimensions offer four ideal types of legislative design which we conceptualize using the metaphor of blades. Some laws resemble Swiss army knives, highly versatile and precise; others are scalpels, precise but narrowly scoped; machetes are versatile but imprecise; and scythes are imprecise but focused. We demonstrate the validity of our framework by applying it to environmental and macroprudential legislation in the European Union, identifying laws that approximate each ideal type. By focusing on the internal architecture of legislation, our framework offers a tool to comparatively analyze legislative design across policy domains, institutional settings, and time.
{"title":"Laws as blades: A conceptual framework of legislative design","authors":"Steffen Hurka, Stefanie Rueß, Mike Cowburn, Constantin Kaplaner","doi":"10.1007/s11077-025-09593-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-025-09593-6","url":null,"abstract":"Legislation shapes every aspect of public life and stands at the core of governance. Despite sustained attention on a variety of aspects of legislation, we still lack a comprehensive and integrated framework of legislative design. To address this gap, we introduce a novel conceptual framework that analyzes legislative design along two dimensions— <jats:italic>versatility</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>precision</jats:italic> —using six indicators: objects, subjects, instruments, dilution, derogation, and delegation. Taken together, these two dimensions offer four ideal types of legislative design which we conceptualize using the metaphor of blades. Some laws resemble Swiss army knives, highly versatile and precise; others are scalpels, precise but narrowly scoped; machetes are versatile but imprecise; and scythes are imprecise but focused. We demonstrate the validity of our framework by applying it to environmental and macroprudential legislation in the European Union, identifying laws that approximate each ideal type. By focusing on the internal architecture of legislation, our framework offers a tool to comparatively analyze legislative design across policy domains, institutional settings, and time.","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145485620","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-11DOI: 10.1007/s11077-025-09592-7
Stephan Huber, Nihit Goyal, Thomas Hoppe, Tamara Metze
{"title":"How issue salience and political leadership facilitate policy integration: The adoption of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive in the European Union","authors":"Stephan Huber, Nihit Goyal, Thomas Hoppe, Tamara Metze","doi":"10.1007/s11077-025-09592-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-025-09592-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145485610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-30DOI: 10.1007/s11077-025-09579-4
Emma Scheetz, Tanya Heikkila, Carrie Makarewicz, Robert Hobbins
{"title":"Policy learning over the legislative process: insights from a statewide housing policy debate in Colorado","authors":"Emma Scheetz, Tanya Heikkila, Carrie Makarewicz, Robert Hobbins","doi":"10.1007/s11077-025-09579-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-025-09579-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":"354 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145396859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-10-24DOI: 10.1007/s11077-025-09590-9
Jie Liu
{"title":"Designing duality: from procedural policy instrument to the statecraft of hybrid sovereignty","authors":"Jie Liu","doi":"10.1007/s11077-025-09590-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-025-09590-9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145382293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-05-10DOI: 10.1007/s11077-025-09575-8
Kate Mattocks
This article examines the relationship between policy experiments, a form of policy innovation, and policy change. Despite a great deal of scholarship on experiments, little is known about how experiments lead to change. For example, what factors make change more likely? How can experimentation best be governed so as to lead to policy change? These questions are answered using data from a case study of 45 policy experiments in Canadian arts and cultural policy. The article highlight six factors crucial to enabling mainstreaming and scaling in this case: leadership, the scope of experiments, congruence with existing policy priorities, alignment with an existing modernization program, expanded relationships and stakeholder collaboration, and creative space. Each of these factors is linked to one or more of McFadgen’s (Ecol Soc 24:30, 2019) four pathways to policy change via policy experiments. The article’s findings have broader implications for the study and understanding of how to achieve change in risk-averse policy settings.
{"title":"Can policy experiments achieve policy change? The politics of experimentation in Canadian cultural policy","authors":"Kate Mattocks","doi":"10.1007/s11077-025-09575-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-025-09575-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines the relationship between policy experiments, a form of policy innovation, and policy change. Despite a great deal of scholarship on experiments, little is known about how experiments lead to change. For example, what factors make change more likely? How can experimentation best be governed so as to lead to policy change? These questions are answered using data from a case study of 45 policy experiments in Canadian arts and cultural policy. The article highlight six factors crucial to enabling mainstreaming and scaling in this case: leadership, the scope of experiments, congruence with existing policy priorities, alignment with an existing modernization program, expanded relationships and stakeholder collaboration, and creative space. Each of these factors is linked to one or more of McFadgen’s (Ecol Soc 24:30, 2019) four pathways to policy change via policy experiments. The article’s findings have broader implications for the study and understanding of how to achieve change in risk-averse policy settings.</p>","PeriodicalId":51433,"journal":{"name":"Policy Sciences","volume":"126 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143931022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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