Month: February 2024

A Grammar of Institutions for Complex Legal Topics: Resolving Statutory Multiplicity and Scaling up to Jurisdiction-Level Legal Institutions

by Anthony J. DeMattee

Laws constrain who can vote, what we may consume, what we can choose to do with our bodies, and many other aspects of our daily lives. Understanding a law’s impact on society is oftentimes challenging. A key reason for this is statutory multiplicity: legal domains are frequently governed by numerous laws whose provisions overlap and sometimes contradict each other. Capturing and resolving statutory multiplicity, then, is vital to understanding how laws are interpreted and applied to specific circumstances.

In my paper, I present a method for addressing statutory multiplicity that uses the Institutional Grammar. Originally developed by Sue Crawford and Elinor Ostrom in 1995, Institutional Grammar is a tool for turning provisions found in legal texts (e.g., laws, regulations) into institutional statements – directives about what an actor may, must, or must not do. Those institutional statements can then be broken down into a set of components to capture information about the institution being studied. Crawford and Ostrom’s Grammar had five such components: the Attribute (the actor in the institutional statement), the Deontic (which identifies if an action is required or optional), the Aim (the action in question), the Conditions (the circumstances under which the statement applies), and the Or else (the consequences if the statement is not followed). 

Figure 1. Section 15 of Kenya’s Societies Act of 1968. 

If we conceptualize laws as bundles of legal rules, we can interpret a legal institution that governs a specific domain as a bundle of rules found across multiple laws. We can then use the Institutional Grammar to both describe the features of that legal institution and also detail how the legal institution changes over time. In essence, my method involves “scaling up” from legal provisions to laws, and, ultimately, jurisdiction-level legal institutions.

The method that I outline in my paper has three steps. First, I code laws using IG-based coding protocol items. I do this by taking provisions found in legal texts, reworking them into the institutional statements, and coding all laws using Institutional Grammar (see Figure 1 for an example of this). I assign each statement a numerical value based on whether the rule being coded is permissive/democratic or restrictive/undemocratic. Permissive rules are given a [+1], while restrictive rules receive a [-1]. After coding all laws in the legal corpus, the second step averages coded values for each coding protocol item. This calculates a jurisdiction value for each item in the coding protocol and equals the average value of a particular coding protocol item across relevant laws active in the jurisdiction. The final step estimates values for the jurisdiction-level legal institution. To do so,  I aggregate all values calculated in step two. Aggregation can be done either by simple summation or factor analysis. Each method has its benefits and drawbacks. Simple summation is the more straightforward of the two, though this can come at the expense of a loss of nuance since under simple summation rules with a positive and negative valence would cancel each other out. Factor analysis, on the other hand, allows you to weigh provisions and thus get a more accurate calculation, but is consequently more complicated than simple summation.

I applied this method to laws regulating civil society organizations (CSOs) in Kenya. Throughout its independence, as few as 1 to as many as 13 laws simultaneously affect Kenyan CSOs. I applied both simple summation and factor analysis to calculate the values for the jurisdiction-level legal institutions. Figure 3 compares the results for both techniques at four important moments in Kenya’s post-colonial history, with net permissiveness (dashed line) representing simple summation and latent permissiveness (solid line) representing factor analysis. The latent permissiveness measurement suggests that the permissiveness of Kenyan CSO laws increased significantly in the years immediately following independence and remained relatively steady thereafter, while net permissiveness registered a significant uptick in permissiveness in the 1990s.

Figure 3. Comparing techniques measuring Kenya’s legal institutions. 

Legal institutions have become increasingly complex, defined by numerous laws that intersect with one another. Statutory multiplicity is fertile ground for abuse. For instance, antidemocratic regimes may exploit complexity to engage in “restriction by addition,” where restrictive and undemocratic rules are added to the institution, or “restriction through subtraction,” where an institution is made more restrictive by removing permissive rules. My paper presents an approach that leverages the Institutional Grammar to better account for the many legal rules that comprise a jurisdiction’s legal institution. This method is amenable to any legal topic and is especially appropriate when multiple statutes simultaneously comprise the legal institution in a single jurisdiction.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

DeMattee, A.J. 2023. “A grammar of institutions for complex legal topics: Resolving statutory multiplicity and scaling up to jurisdiction-level legal institutions”. Policy Studies Journal 51: 529–550. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12488

About the Author

Anthony DeMattee is a data scientist in the Democracy Program at The Carter Center, where he develops standards and best practices for election technologies and campaign finance, media literacy, social media analyses, and studies legal institutions regulating speech, corruption, data privacy and protection, and elections. He also supports the Center’s special initiatives by creating research designs that integrate many data types for valid and reliable measurement and credible causal inference. DeMattee completed his joint Ph.D. in public policy from Indiana University, specializing in comparative politics, public policy, and public administration. DeMattee was an Ostrom Fellow during this time and remains affiliated with the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory & Policy Analysis. After graduation, he spent two years at Emory University as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow for Fundamental Research; DeMattee joined The Carter Center in 2022.

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Developing a Comprehensive Policy Conference List

Academic conferences are hubs for the latest and most promising research in our field. They provide the opportunity to receive invaluable feedback, to connect with other scholars, and to gain inspiration for future research endeavors. 

However, many of us attend the same conferences every year. Like clockwork, we mark our calendars for the submission deadlines and participation dates for these select few and begin planning from there. It’s true that we have limited resources and time that can be stretched across multiple conferences every year, but there is also another reason we tend to stay the course: keeping up with the full range of conferences within our field can be a daunting task.  

As an editorial team, we asked ourselves: 

  • What annual conference opportunities are out there? And which of these would we as researchers be interested in presenting our own work?
  • Further, as a journal focused on international policy theory development, what are promising conferences located outside the Western hemisphere?

Below we have compiled what we believe to be a comprehensive timeline of public policy and political science conferences happening between March and December 2024. We encourage policy scholars to follow the clickable links for each conference to learn more about its history and foci as well as to access its most up-to-date participation deadlines. 

After reviewing this list, we also ask you: are there international conferences we’ve missed? And what other resources could we provide to make conference information more accessible?

Advocacy Coalitions, Beliefs, and Learning: An Analysis of Stability, Change, and Reinforcement

by Christopher Weible, Kristin L. Oloffson, & Tanya Heikkila 

The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is one of the primary approaches for studying advocacy coalitions, belief systems, and policy learning. While hundreds of empirical studies have confirmed the framework’s major expectations, research is limited by a lack of longitudinal studies, comparisons between panel and non-panel data, and multiple measures of policy-oriented learning in the same study. To fill these gaps, we examine the characteristics of advocacy coalitions in the ever-evolving landscape of energy policy. Three questions guide the exploration: 

  1. What defines the characteristics of advocacy coalitions in the setting of shale oil and gas development, and to what extent do these coalitions exhibit stability over time? 
  2. To what degree do members within advocacy coalitions undergo changes in their beliefs, and how does this impact their sustained alignment within the same coalition? 
  3. What are the prevalent trends regarding advocacy coalition members self-reporting belief changes or expressing a willingness to shift their positions?

In 2013, 2015, and 2017, we conducted surveys of policy actors involved in shale oil and gas extraction in Colorado. The survey participants comprised individuals actively involved or knowledgeable about the pertinent policy issues, including industry stakeholders, government officials, non-profit and community group representatives, consultants, academics, and reporters. Respondents were identified through a purposive sampling approach, utilizing evidence from media reports, online sources, public hearings, testimonies, and recommendations. The survey included measures of policy core beliefs, such as positions on oil and gas development, problem perceptions, coordination, and interactions with other policy actors. 

To analyze the data, we used K-Means Clustering, a method that identifies distinct groups within a dataset. The K-Means Clustering method categorized respondents into two coalitions based on minimizing distances within each cluster.

As illustrated in Figure 2, while beliefs remained relatively constant, specific indicators signaled some movement, reflecting shifts in the policy subsystem’s circumstances. For instance, concerns over public nuisances rose during a period of increased drilling activity, only to subside when drilling declined due to falling oil prices. The coalitional characteristics remained relatively stable across the three time periods, confirming patterns typical for environmental policy issues.

Figure 2. Frequency of belief change for respondents by panels

This analytical approach provides valuable insights into the dynamics of advocacy coalitions, shedding light on their composition and stability over time in the context of shale oil and gas development policy. One key contribution lies in the identification and characterization of two distinct advocacy coalitions, namely the anti-oil and gas coalition primarily comprising environmental and citizen group representatives, and the pro-oil and gas coalition dominated by industry stakeholders. The stability of these coalitions over the five-year period underscores the enduring nature of these groupings. The research also delves into the nuanced realm of belief change and policy learning among coalition members. The findings provide crucial insights into the tendencies of coalition members to either reinforce their existing beliefs or undergo shifts in response to evolving circumstances, contributing to the broader discourse on policy learning. 

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Weible, C. M., Olofsson, K. L. and Heikkila, T. 2023. “Advocacy coalitions, beliefs, and learning: An analysis of stability, change, and reinforcement.” Policy Studies Journal 51: 209–229. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12458

About the Authors

Chris Weible is a professor at the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs. His research and teaching center on policy process theories and methods, democracy, and environmental policy. He is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Center for Policy and Democracy (CPD) and Co-Editor of Policy & Politics. He teaches courses in environmental politics, public policy and democracy, policy analysis, and research methods and design. Recent and current research includes studying policy conflicts in energy issues (e.g., siting energy infrastructure and oil and gas development), the role of emotions in public discourse, the institutional configurations of public policies, politics involving marginalized communities, and patterns and explanations of advocacy coalitions, learning, and policy change. He has published over a hundred articles and book chapters and has been awarded millions of dollars in external funding. His edited volumes include “Theories of the Policy Process,” “Methods of the Policy Process,” and “Policy Debates in Hydraulic Fracturing.” He regularly engages and enjoys collaborating with students and communities in research projects. Professor Weible earned his Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California Davis and a Master of Public Administration and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Washington. He has an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy and a Visiting Professor position at Luleå University of Technology (LTU), Sweden. Before coming to CU Denver, Professor Weible was an Assistant Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer.

Dr. Kristin L. Olofsson’s research focuses on public policy, institutional design, and stakeholder participation. She specializes in policy process scholarship through the lens of environmental and energy justice to focus on the dynamics of policy coalitions and networks of policy actors. Dr. Olofsson explores differentiation in institutional settings to better understand how the people involved in the policy process shape policy outcomes. Her research questions how decisions are made in contentious politics, using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Professor Tanya Heikkila’s research and teaching focus on policy processes and environmental governance. She is particularly interested in how conflict and collaboration arise in policy processes, and what types of institutions support collaboration, learning, and conflict resolution. Some of her recent research has explored these issues in the context of interstate watersheds, large-scale ecosystem restoration programs, and unconventional oil and gas development. Prof. Heikkila has published numerous articles and books on these topics and has participated in several interdisciplinary research and education projects. She enjoys collaborating with faculty and students, especially through the Center for Policy and Democracy (CPD) at CU Denver, which she co-directs. She also serves as a member of the Delta Independent Science Board for the state of California. Prior to coming to CU Denver, Prof. Heikkila was a post-doctoral fellow at Indiana University’s Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis and an Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. A native of Oregon, she received her BA from the University of Oregon and then learned to appreciate desert life while completing her MPA and PhD at the University of Arizona.

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How to Write a Good Review

Whether you’re a graduate student or a full professor, or somewhere in between, participating in the peer review process by serving as a manuscript reviewer provides an essential service to the wider scholarly community. It’s an opportunity to use your expertise to help fellow researchers strengthen their contribution to their field.

But in addition to agreeing to review a manuscript, it’s also important to provide a review that will both help the authors revise their manuscript and help the editors decide its fate. We asked members of the PSJ editorial team for their advice on crafting a strong review.

  1. Follow the Golden Rule. Treat other scholars like you want to be treated. There are real people behind the manuscript you’re evaluating: be constructive, not destructive. Write a review such that you wouldn’t be embarrassed or ashamed if your name was publicly attached to it.

  2. Triage your critiques. It can be helpful for reviewers to categorize their critiques as major versus minor, so that the editors and authors get a sense of the weight to assign to the critique.

  3. Point the authors in the right direction. If you recommend literature that the authors should discuss, provide enough detail for the authors to find the citations you suggest. Relatedly, be specific about the scholarship with which you want the authors to engage. Something like “needs to have a strong literature review” is not helpful.

  4. Engage the authors on their terms. Evaluate the paper that was submitted, not the paper that you wish was submitted. Admittedly, this is a blurry line. But if heeding your advice would require a near-total overhaul, you’ve probably gone too far. In that situation, you may want to recommend that the journal reject the manuscript.

  5. Give the editors comments too. If you have overall thoughts or concerns or praise related to a manuscript, particularly as it relates to the broader literature or discipline or state-of-the-art of a method, don’t hesitate to take advantage of the option to provide separate comments to the editors (which are blinded to the authors). This is where you can raise issues that you can’t necessarily expect authors to address because they may be too fundamental.

  6. Keep an eye on the big picture. Think about how a paper adds to the broader literature or scholarship and discuss this in your review. This may not be essential for the authors, who already ought to know how they contribute, but it can be very helpful to the editors who make final decisions about a manuscript.

  7. Say something positive. If a manuscript is sent out for peer review, it’s because the editors see potential in it. Accordingly, even if you feel that the manuscript isn’t the best fit for the journal, or you identify crucial flaws or oversights, odds are that the manuscript still has some redeeming qualities. Make sure to highlight these even as you lay out your concerns.

Building Blocks of Polycentric Governance

by Tiffany H. Morrison, Örjan Bodin, Graeme S. Cumming, Mark Lubell, Ralf Seppelt, Tim Seppelt, & Christopher M. Weible

Many governance systems are plagued by coordination problems. Polycentricity is often presented as key to resolving such problems.  Polycentric systems are characterized by a decentralized and self-organized style of governance, where actors operating across diverse venues work together to make decisions through collective action. But despite their pervasiveness, as well as numerous studies that have looked into different polycentric governance arrangements, we still don’t have tools for studying how coordination within a polycentric governance system changes over time, and how those changes impact the success or failure of that system.

Our paper, “Building blocks of polycentric governance,” introduces a “building blocks” model for understanding polycentric governance. It treats polycentric governance as a network of decision-making venues, governance actors, and policy issues that are linked to one another. Our model focuses on three permutations of those linkages: venue-to-actor, venue-to-issue, and venue-to-actor-to-issue. If a polycentric governance system has certain permutations of venues, actors, and issues that appear regularly, we refer to those as building blocks. Those building blocks can then be used to study how coordination in that system evolves over time. Figure 1 shows different kinds of building blocks that can emerge in a polycentric system.

Figure 1. Proposed typology of building blocks of polycentricity

We applied our model to study the polycentric system that governs the Great Barrier Reef. We chose the Great Barrier Reef because of its longevity (it dates to the 1970s), the wealth of publicly available quantitative and qualitative data, the presence of prior studies, and its status as an innovator in polycentric governance. We mapped out the network for three years: 1980, 2005, and 2015. Figure 2 shows the results.

Figure 2. 3-Mode network models of the polycentric Great Barrier Reef regime

Our network analysis yielded several findings. First, between 1980 and 2015, coordination among actors participating in the same venue increased. Across that same period, there was also greater coordination between venues and issues, meaning that venues became increasingly specialized in the specific governance issues that they tackled. That said, venues were more crucial in coordinating actors than issues. This suggests that it’s easier for venues to bring actors together than to evolve to take on new issues. Finally, the governance system became more polycentric over time, as new policy issues resulted in new actors joining the system and new venues were created to address those issues. However, those newcomers have been at a disconnect from the other actors, issues, and venues in the system, operating independently rather than embedding themselves within pre-existing relationships.

By capturing the linkages among actors, venues, and issues and showing how they change over time, our building blocks model reveals the key role that venues play in facilitating – and hindering – coordination within a polycentric governance system. On the one hand, venues can help bring diverse governance actors together and facilitate specialization on specific policy issues. At the same time, the introduction of new venues can cause the governance system to fragment: actors who participate in new venues may not necessarily work with actors in other venues, or new venues will focus on a specific policy issue (or set of issues) without considering its relationship to other issues.

The Great Barrier Reef governance system is small and has changed slowly over time. Additionally, in the interest of presenting an application of our model that was easy to digest, we focused narrowly on actors, venues, and issues. We welcome studies that apply our building blocks model to larger and more dynamic polycentric governance systems. There are, of course, many more variables present in any polycentric governance system, and we would love to see future studies that incorporate that complexity into applications of our model. Benefits of extending our building blocks approach therefore include: (1) understanding how structure and agency influence environmental efforts (for example, if a new ‘polycentric’ governance system is only partially successful, are its failures due to structural inadequacies?); (2) detection of threshold effects and feedbacks (for example, does a system need to be strongly polycentric in order for a particular social process to occur?); and (3) more direct comparison between different case studies, facilitating practical insights for policymakers and other stakeholders interested in improving the performance of a specific environmental governance system.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Morrison, Tiffany H., Örjan Bodin, Graeme S. Cumming, Mark Lubell, Ralf Seppelt, Tim Seppelt, and Christopher M. Weible. 2023. Building blocks of polycentric governance. Policy Studies Journal 51: 475–499. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12492

About the Authors

Tiffany Morrison holds professorial appointments in the School of Geography, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at Melbourne University, the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University & Research, and the College of Science & Engineering at James Cook University. Her expertise is in the governance of environmental change, policy responses to warming ecosystems, and governance of new interventions in warming ecosystems. She has twenty years of experience conducting innovative interdisciplinary research spanning human geography, political science, climate science, and ecology.

Örjan Bodin is a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, Sweden. He employs a cross-disciplinary approach, integrating methods from various scientific disciplines to study social-ecological systems. He is particularly interested in using network analysis to study various aspects of ecosystems governance.

Graeme S. Cumming is an academic and researcher with a background in Zoology and Entomology. He is currently a Professor and Premier’s Science Fellow at the University of Western Australia. Graeme has a wide range of interests, centering around understanding spatial aspects of ecology and the relevance of broad-scale pattern-process dynamics for ecosystem (and social-ecological system) function and resilience. He is also interested in the applications of landscape ecology and complexity theory to conservation and the sustainable management of natural resources.

Mark Lubell is Professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis and the Director of its Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior. Lubell studies cooperation problems and decision making in environmental, agricultural, and public policy. His research topics include water management, sustainable agriculture, adaptive decision-making, climate change policy, local government policy, transportation behavior, plant disease management, invasive species, and policy/social network analysis.

Ralf Seppelt is a professor for landscape ecology and Resource Economics at Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, where he lectures course on Environmental Modelling. He is head of the department for Computational Landscape Ecology. His major research focus is land resources management based on integrated simulation and modelling systems. He thus is interested in the interactions and interrelationship of anthropheric and biospheric processes. 

Tim Seppelt is a fourth-year PhD student at RWTH Aachen University. He is interested in graphs and more specifically in theoretical and algorithmic notions concerning the similarity of two graphs. A central theme of his PhD is homomorphism indistinguishability, which describes the similarity of graphs in terms of numbers of homomorphisms.

Christopher M. Weible is a Professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver. His research focuses on policy process theories, contentious politics, and environmental policy. He is the Editor of Theories of the Policy Process (Routledge, 2023), Co-Editor of Methods of the Policy Process (with Samuel Workman, Routledge, 2022), Co-Editor of Policy & Politics, and Co-Director of the Center for Policy and Democracy.

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Policy Feedback via Economic Behavior: A Model and Experimental Analysis of Consumption Behavior

by Gregory S. Schober

Policy feedback scholars have done extensive work to understand how public policies affect mass behavior (the feed) and subsequent policy outcomes (the back). Thus far, this literature has focused mainly on political behavior feeds. However, the impact of these policies extends beyond the realm of politics, influencing the economic behavior of individuals and, in turn, shaping future policy outcomes.

In my paper, I develop a policy feedback model of consumption behavior in mass publics. Illustrated in Figure 1, the model shows how policies influence consumption capacity and preferences, which in turn affect future policy decisions. For example, social assistance policies transfer resources to beneficiaries, thus altering their spending decisions and influencing government policy responses (see path A-C-F-H).

I use this theory to investigate how targeted cash assistance policies (TCAPs) influence not just the immediate consumption patterns but also the subsequent policies. To do this, I analyzed the effects of Progresa—a Mexican TCAP that aimed to reduce poverty—by utilizing data collected during a randomized field experiment. I performed downstream analysis on the data to estimate the effects of Progresa.

In the short term, Progresa positively influenced private consumption of basic utilities. When households received the cash transfers, they used them to purchase private access to drainage (via septic tanks). However, in the medium term, a startling shift occurred. In communities where Progresa was implemented and private access to drainage increased, the government began making less of an effort to maintain the public water system.

My work offers key insights into the complex relationship between short-term consumption changes and (unintended) medium-term policy outcomes. It emphasizes that while consumption effects did occur swiftly, leading to increased private access to drainage, the subsequent impact on government policy ultimately led to reductions in basic utility access.

An intriguing question arises when considering the medium-term results: are targeted cash assistance policies—which generally are administered at the national level—letting local governments off the hook in terms of basic utility provision? When program beneficiaries use cash transfers to invest in private access to basic utilities, they in turn may be disincentivizing local governments from investing in public utility systems.

The implications of this study reverberate across various domains of policy feedback research. It highlights the need to broaden the scope of policy feedback analysis beyond political spheres to include economic mechanisms. These findings prompt further exploration into how economic feeds could influence future political behavior and policy outcomes.

In conclusion, this research breaks new ground by unraveling the ripple effects of social assistance policies, shedding light on how they influence consumption patterns and government policies regarding basic utilities. Understanding these intricate dynamics between policy, consumption behavior, and subsequent governance decisions is crucial for designing effective, holistic policies that address poverty while ensuring sustained access to essential services for vulnerable populations.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Schober, Gregory S. 2023. “Policy feedback via economic behavior: A model and experimental analysis of consumption behavior.” Policy Studies Journal 51: 607–627. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12474.

About the Author

Gregory S. Schober is an Assistant Professor in the Rehabilitation Sciences Program at The University of Texas at El Paso. His research examines social policy, political and economic behavior, and health in developing countries and the United States.


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