This paper explores PAS actors and policy advice quality dynamics within anticorruption policymaking processes in Kiambu and Nairobi City counties, which are two devolved systems of government in Kenya. It is based on empirical research that sought to determine the level of policy advice quality provided by three critical PAS actors—the state, business, and civil society. These actors were of particular

Policymakers frequently seek scientific expert advice to navigate new and complex policy challenges, but the decisions that must be taken to address these problems often require the cooperation of different levels of government as well as state and non-state actors. While existing literature has acknowledged that the political context influences the processes of scientific policy advice, it lacks the

People sometimes experience intense emotions with maladaptive behavioral consequences (i.e., dysfunctional emotions) that impair their judgment regarding policy problems, policy tools, and/or target populations, leading to the emergence of policy bubbles (i.e., sustained policy over-investment). In this article, I elaborate on three strategies that governments can implement when faced with policy bubbles

The second wave of research on Policy Advisory Systems (PAS) dynamics has induced scholars to rethink the received knowledge about the insider–outsider and technical–political divides in policy advice, leading to more nuanced descriptions of PAS configurations. The long-term structural change of PAS has been the focus of this research agenda. In contrast, a research gap exists in analyzing the role

The environmental impacts of infrastructure projects are widely assessed through a procedure known as environmental impact assessments (EIAs). In many regulatory systems, EIAs are carried out by third-party intermediaries. However, their roles and effectiveness within public policy and regulatory governance remain understudied. This study addresses this gap by examining 24 wind energy projects deliberated

As one of the most established theoretical approaches to public policy, the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) has moored most of its theoretical arguments around a textbook policy conflict consisting of two or more advocacy coalitions in a mature adversarial policy subsystem within an advanced polyarchy. This article steps beyond the textbook by introducing deep core coalitions marked by compounding

The rapid and widespread diffusion of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has unlocked new capabilities and changed how content and services are created, shared, and consumed. This special issue builds on the 2021 Policy and Society special issue on the governance of AI by focusing on the legal, organizational, political, regulatory, and social challenges of governing generative AI. This introductory

Organizations increasingly use Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create strategic documents, legislation, and recommendations to support decision-making. Many current AI initiatives are technology-deterministic, whereas technology co-evolves with the social environment, resulting in new applications and situations. This paper presents a novel view of AI governance by organizations from the

Few policymakers initiate policies that they know are malign, and are contrary to the public interest. Well-intentioned policies may, however, have unintended consequences that over time do make them, at least in part, malign. These policies may continue to produce some positive results for society, but they may also have significant negative consequences. Further, given that the malign nature of the

In an era of post-truth, the legitimacy of policy knowledge is questioned, especially in de-democratizing contexts where governments purposefully engage in post-truth politics to support their regimes. In such contexts, technocratic evidence-based policymaking is undermined, and the role played by policy advice changes. Recognizing the significance of political contextual factors that might differ

The anticipated arrival of autonomous vehicles has created considerable uncertainty for US states because they govern roads. In response, states activated their policy advisory systems. While policy advising at the national level has been studied, less is known about the sub-national level. Similarly, more is known about the use of scientific knowledge by policymakers than about the full range of knowledge

Collaborative governance has gained momentum for its promise to deliver social inclusion, with municipalities viewed as ideal spaces for its success. However, little research critically examines the political conditions under which this is the case. This article theorizes why and how collaborative local governance succeeds or fails in today’s divided democracies. It argues that politicization manifests

This paper conceptualizes the notion of “evidence culture” in evidence-informed policymaking by surveying existing literature that either specifically employs the term or uses adjacent terms such as “epistemic” or “research culture”. It employs mixed-methods scoping review, combining citation analysis using Web of Science data used to identify the key clusters of scholarship with a qualitative thematic

This paper explores different “cultures of evidence” in energy policymaking in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands. The urgent energy system transformation needed to respond to the climate crisis depends on policies informed by technical and engineering expertise, and particularly energy modeling. Such expertise had traditionally been poorly represented in the energy ministries of the Dutch, German

Evidence use across policy sectors is widely believed to vary as each sector espouses a specific and dominant pattern in how it sources evidence. This view privileges the idea that a “culture of evidence” serves as a norm that guides behavior in the entire sector. In this article, we seek to nuance the policy sectoral approach to understanding evidence use by analyzing the results of a large-N survey

How do city-level policymakers build support for substantive action in policy domains characterized by low levels of national salience and limited local capacity, and which evidentiary resources support as well as reflect these uses? Despite much attention to policymakers’ engagement with evidence, existing work tends to focus on domains where the issues at stake attract high levels of input and influence

Evidence-informed policy-making is seen by many as crucial for formulating effective solutions to the complex challenges facing societies today. However, scholarship on evidence and policy-making has repeatedly noted that the use of evidence in government policy-making is highly uneven across policy areas and organizations. Still, we have surprisingly little systematic empirical knowledge about how

This paper explores the evidence culture in one of the key global knowledge institutions—the World Bank. Framing itself as a “Knowledge Ban,” the World Bank is a leading organization in data and evidence provision around poverty and inequalities, and as such, it shapes the broader evidentiary standards and knowledge infrastructures around the world. Drawing on a rich qualitative study of 46 semistructured

This study examines how generative AI impacts low-skilled workers in their daily professional lives, how it changes the nature of their work, and what, if any, strategies they develop to cope with this new reality. Emphasis is placed on call center agents—an occupational group facing a particularly high automation risk. Drawing on Constructivist Grounded Theory and semistructured interviews in an Austrian

How can we explain the worldwide spread of evidence-based policymaking despite continuous criticism? What are the underlying mechanisms of its persistence on a global scale? This article aims at answering these questions by focusing on the cultural constellations in which evidence is imbued with political as well as epistemic authority. Evidence cultures are discursive and institutional forces (re-)producing

An important aspect of policy integration is the need for policymakers to establish integrative capacity. However, very few scholars who refer to this concept have explained what integrative capacity is and what aspects of the policy process policymakers need to focus on to establish that capacity. In this paper, we define integrative capacity and introduce an “integrative capacity framework” that

The Canadian policy style has been described as one of overpromising and underdelivering, where heightened expectations are often met by underwhelming outcomes. Here, we examine the evidentiary style of Canadian policy-making which undergirds and reflects this policy style, particularly the nature of the policy advisory system that contributes to this pattern of policy-making. We do so by assessing

This study focuses on street-level managers’ (SLMs) compliance with COVID-19 measures in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and Israel, in order to better understand their role during policy implementation. Responsible for the direct delivery of public services, street-level organizations serve as the operational arm of the state in general and as the frontline of government policy in times of crisis. SLMs

The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 led to major controversies about the governance of generative artificial intelligence (AI). This article examines the first international governance and policy initiatives dedicated specifically to generative AI: the G7 Hiroshima process, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development reports, and the UK AI Safety Summit. This analysis is informed by policy

Introduced by the United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim at facilitating inclusive sustainable development. Responsiveness to SDGs is considered a key to addressing pressing development problems. The current literature focuses on the responsiveness of varied public organizations to SDGs, whereas SDGs’ responsiveness of policy innovation labs (PILs) is understudied. Aiming to address

This paper brings insights into ideational robustness to bear on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) fiscal policy thinking. It advances understanding of both the IMF and the concept of ideational robustness by focusing on economic ideas as they are put into practice by expert economic institutions. The IMF has traditionally enjoyed a reputation as a hawkish enforcer of neoliberal doctrine and conservative

For over two decades, scientists have documented the alarming decline of global Peatland ecosystems, regarded as the planet’s most crucial carbon sinks. The deterioration of these unique wetlands alongside their policy attention presents a puzzle for policy scientists and for students of anticipatory policy design. Two contrasting explanations have emerged. Some argue that pressures from economic globalization

This article examines the challenges of regulating artificial intelligence (AI) systems and proposes an adapted model of regulation suitable for AI’s novel features. Unlike past technologies, AI systems built using techniques like deep learning cannot be directly analyzed, specified, or audited against regulations. Their behavior emerges unpredictably from training rather than intentional design. However

The concept of robustness has received increasing scholarly attention regarding public policy and governance, where it has enhanced our understanding of how policies and governance are adapted and innovated in response to disruptive events, challenges, and demands associated with heightened societal turbulence. Yet, we know little about the robustness of the ideas undergirding the efforts to foster

This article draws on rich qualitative data from two national parliaments—the UK House of Commons and the German Bundestag—to examine knowledge practices in political institutions. This is an important topic, not only because parliaments play a significant role in democratic decision-making, but because it sheds light on debates about how such decision-making is based on and interacts with knowledge

More collaborative and human-centered approaches to tackle social problems of entrenched disadvantage have been introduced in many countries, including Australia, but with mixed results. Traditional programs that reinforce existing political and bureaucratic processes have been seen as blockers to collaborative modes of policymaking, governance, and delivery. Drawing on collaborative governance perspectives

In this contribution, we identify how the framing strategies employed by policy and political actors make policy ideas robust. We examine the policy ideas of solidarity and sustainability to show how framing strategies that took advantages of the valence and polysemy of both ideas shaped them into robust policy ideas. Both ideas began as wide-ranging concepts designed to build coalitions in debates

To better understand why bureaucracy is still going strong despite a century of scorn, this article asks: How has the bureaucratic governance paradigm managed to achieve its ideational robustness in the face of consecutive waves of criticism and societal challenges? This question is answered by studying the combination of a broad range of ideational robustness strategies that have enabled bureaucracy

As artificial intelligence (AI) policy has begun to take shape in recent years, policy actors have worked to influence policymakers by strategically promoting issue frames that define the problems and solutions policymakers should attend to. Three such issue frames are especially prominent, surrounding AI’s economic, geopolitical, and ethical dimensions. Relatedly, while technology policy is traditionally

Is it possible to develop a robust crisis management response in a system where governance is characterized by coercive power and adversarial bargaining rather than the diversity, inclusion, and openness highlighted by extant scholarship as conducive factors for robustness? Using two instances of crisis in the European Union—the Eurozone crisis (2010‒2015) and COVID-19 pandemic (2020‒2022)—the paper

Policies aimed at upskilling, motivating and/or disciplining the unemployed have remained a cornerstone of most OECD countries’ employment policies since the 1990s. Central to these policies is the idea of activation – i.e. the premise that benefit entitlement is conditional on one’s participation in some kind of activity. This article seek to understand how this idea of activation has proven so enduring

The growing digitalization of our society has led to a meteoric rise of large technology companies (Big Tech), which have amassed tremendous wealth and influence through their ownership of digital infrastructure and platforms. The recent launch of ChatGPT and the rapid popularization of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) act as a focusing event to further accelerate the concentration of power

The Covid-19 pandemic sparked unprecedented political responses dramatically affecting societies, markets, and the lives of individuals. Under great uncertainty and turbulent conditions, governments adopted far-reaching political interventions to curb the pandemic. These interventions might therefore be expected to challenge key ideas underpinning liberal democracy. We analyze and compare how the political

This article examines the interplay between uncertainty, emotions, and scientific discourse in shaping COVID-19 policies in Quebec, Canada. Through the application of natural language processing (NLP) techniques, indices were developped to measure sentiments of uncertainty among policymakers, their negative sentiments, and the prevalence of scientific statements. The study reveals that while sentiments

The paper focuses on the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) in promoting a healthy world population as a generative and robust idea within health policy. The WHO’s health credo transcends national boundaries to promote health globally. It is embedded in norms, values, and standards promulgated by the organization and contributes in shaping the health responses of national governments. Ideational

In the policy world, the idea of ideational robustness deals with why and how policy elements can be maintained over time and the implications this has for government strategy and activity. Past approaches to ideas and their influence on public policy stressed the disparate roles of multiple policy mechanisms such as path dependency or the nature of policy networks in either driving policy change forward

Two critical policy questions will determine the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the knowledge economy and the creative sector. The first concerns how we think about the training of such models—in particular, whether the creators or owners of the data that are “scraped” (lawfully or unlawfully, with or without permission) should be compensated for that use. The second question

Conceptually, advocacy coalitions are referenced in several policy process theories and frameworks to describe groups of actors that share beliefs and coordinate efforts to influence public policy. In the past decades, advocacy coalitions have received increased attention as a concept and a theoretical approach to understanding collective action in the policy process. In this study, we argue that despite

This Special Issue and its seven contributions seek to shift the gaze of public policy scholarship toward the authorities, legitimacies, and influences of transnational actors on the creation and implementation of global policy and its transnational administration. It is, in large part, both a demonstration of the analytical and explanatory value of accounting for the influence of non-state actors

Global policymaking often seeks to create processes for the effective delivery of public goods and services. What happens when individuals critique or dissent such policies? In this paper, we examine the case of two activists—Greta Thunberg and Disha Ravi—who have been mobilizing attention toward climate change since their teenage years, and who have been both celebrated and vilified for it. While

The intensification of efforts by state and nonstate actors to address issues affecting global health has produced a patchwork of transnational regulatory governance. Within this field, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are expected to perform authoritative roles in holding business actors to account and enhance the democratic legitimacy of institutions via their participation in governance processes

Global public–private partnerships (PPPs) have become prominent in efforts to address global challenges, particularly in the health field. In the scholarly literature, global PPPs have been conceptualized as arenas for voluntary public–private cooperation rather than agents of global governance. This paper challenges this approach, arguing that a sub-class of highly institutionalized partnerships have

Public support for ambitious climate policies and carbon prices that have direct costs for voters may depend on policy sequencing. Policy sequencing theory suggests that the strategic ordering of policies into sequences that initially create benefits can subsequently increase support for higher carbon prices. However, systematic quantitative evidence about the effects of sequencing on public support

Government information activities are often thought to be motivated by a classic calculus of blame minimization and credit maximization. However, the precise interactions of “blame” and “credit” communication activities in government are not well understood, and questions abound about how they are deployed in practice. This paper uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) machine-learning sentiment analysis

Few scholars have dedicated their attention to the role of think tanks as policy experts within captured states. We investigate how, why, and to what extent think tanks are used in the captured states in the Western Balkans. Our assumption was that think tanks could become party to the processes of “capture”. However, original findings from focus group and interviews with think tankers show that think

“Global Commissions of Inquiry” have usually been associated with the multilateral initiatives of governments and international organizations. However, various styles of “global commission” have emerged over time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, global commissions have been a key aspect of the COVID-19 international policy landscape, quickly emerging, in 2020 and 2021, to corral knowledge and evidence

Policy advice has been the subject of ongoing research in the policy sciences as it raises fundamental issues about what constitutes policy knowledge, expertise, and their effects on policymaking. This introduction reviews the existing literature on the subject and introduces the themes motivating the articles in the issue. It highlights the need to consider several key subjects in the topic in the

In the face of the complexities of problem-solving , experts are gaining centrality in policymaking (Weiss, 1979). At the same time, they are increasingly challenged in their legitimacy, which is not only technical but also political. Challenges to the legitimacy of experts suggest that other types of legitimacy are important for policymaking. Issues of legitimacy are particularly important for sound

In looking at the complex relationship between expertise and power in policymaking, what is amiss are studies on how the expertise exchange bargain between politicians and bureaucracy works in practice, especially in antidemocratic contexts. To deal with this limitation, we use Christensen’s (Christensen, J. (2022). When bureaucratic expertise comes under attack. Public Administration) expertise bargain

Extending previous works on major changes in policy advisory systems (PASs), such as externalization (locus) and politicization (government control), this study examines whether and how democratization (citizensourcing) of PASs works based on the case of the Kwanghwamun Citizensourcing Policy Platform, which operated for 4 years under the Moon Jae-in administration in South Korea. Analyzing more than

This paper examines the relationship between policy compliance, the emergence of alternate epistemes and authorities in online spaces, and the decline of trust and legitimacy in democratic institutions. Drawing on insights from public policy, regulation theory, and political theory, the paper critically engages with scholarship on “policy-takers” to illuminate the tensions of compliance and legitimacy

This article examines the inquiry reports from the commissions charged with investigating government crisis management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway and Sweden. Such postcrises commissions have been a common feature in many countries as they seek to systematize their experiences and learn from the crisis. In this article, we used various dimensions of governance capacity and governance legitimacy

Foundations are one of the oldest organizational forms globally; their number and resources, as well as their socio-political and economic importance, have steadily continued to grow. Yet, foundations’ attributes, activities, and actual achievements remain underexplored and poorly understood. This is particularly noticeable in the context of global policy and transnational administration, an area where

The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban)—Housing for All mission (PMAY-U), a flagship mission of the Government of India, aims to address the need for affordable housing in urban areas through five different schemes. One of these schemes is a housing subsidy scheme, the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS), which has significantly contributed to the success of PMAY-U. However, the design of the CLSS scheme

So far, interest in policy and political sciences has mostly centered around the varieties of policy advisory systems (PASs) and knowledge regimes in consolidated democracies rather than in consolidated autocracies, which largely remain as black boxes. Drawing on a hybrid literature review, this article aims to fill this gap. It reviews selected articles published between 1992 and February 2023 in