Month: March 2025

Not a Public Good, but a Public Responsibility: Rethinking AMR Governance

by Isaac Weldon

Governance failures often stem from a fundamental error: misdiagnosing what needs to be governed. As Nobel Prize laureate Elinor Ostrom argued, different types of goods—whether private, public, or common-pool—create distinct collective action problems, each demanding tailored solutions. When policymakers misidentify a resource or conflate its nature with how it should be governed, they risk applying the wrong tools and crafting ineffective policies. These misdiagnoses plague many of today’s biggest challenges, from climate change to biodiversity loss and global health.

Effective governance begins with defining what resources are being managed, how they are being depleted, and what institutional arrangements are necessary to sustain them. In a recent Policy Studies Journal article, my co-authors and I applied this logic to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), one of the world’s most pressing health challenges.

AMR—the third leading cause of global mortality—occurs when microbes evolve resistance to antimicrobial drugs like antibiotics, rendering treatments ineffective. Every use of antimicrobials increases this risk, and millions still lack access to these lifesaving medicines. AMR governance requires balancing conservation with equitable access and innovation, yet current policies struggle because they misdiagnose the problem itself.

Central to AMR are two distinct types of goods:

  • Antimicrobials (the physical pills) are private goods: They are excludable (they require prescriptions and money to access) and rivalrous (one person’s use prevents another from using the same dose). Historically, the default governance model for antimicrobials has been market-driven, relying on intellectual property protections and pricing mechanisms to incentivize production and ration use.
  • Antimicrobial effectiveness (the ability of these drugs to work over time) is a common-pool resource: It is non-excludable (difficult to prevent people from benefiting from it) and rivalrous (overuse diminishes effectiveness for all). Markets fail to govern this resource because firms and individuals benefit from selling and consuming more antimicrobials, not from ensuring long-term effectiveness.

But the nature of a resource does not dictate how it should be governed. Just because antimicrobials are private goods does not mean they should be left to market forces alone. Many excludable and rivalrous private goods—such as electricity and water—are publicly regulated because they are essential and generate widespread externalities. However, the fact that antimicrobial effectiveness is critical for public health does not mean it should be framed as a public good. Unlike true public goods, antimicrobial effectiveness is rivalrous—a distinction that shapes its governance. The pill (a private good) and its effectiveness (a common-pool resource) are distinct but interconnected, and their governance must reflect this.

In short: antimicrobials are private goods, antimicrobial effectiveness is a common-pool resource, and their governance must be a public responsibility.

AMR is not an isolated case. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and global health challenges all suffer when the wrong governance model is applied to the wrong kind of resource. Misidentifying the nature of a resource, or conflating its nature with its optimal governance regime, leads to mismatches that render solutions ineffective.

Better governance starts with better problem definitions. If we fail to define what is being governed, we will continue applying the wrong solutions—at great cost to human health and the planet.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Weldon, Isaac, Kathleen Liddell, Susan Rogers Van Katwyk, Steven J. Hoffman, Timo Minssen, Kevin Outterson, Stephanie Palmer, A. M. Viens and Jorge Viñuales. 2024. “ Analyzing Antimicrobial Resistance As a Series of Collective Action Problems.” Policy Studies Journal 52(4): 833–856. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12552.

About the Author

Isaac Weldon is an Assistant Professor of Law with the Centre for Advanced Studies in Bioscience Innovation Law (CeBIL) at the University of Copenhagen and an Investigator with the Global Strategy Lab at York University, Toronto. His research investigates antimicrobial resistance, emerging pandemic threats, and sustaining our planetary health. Recent works have also been featured in Perspectives on Politics and Globalization and Health.

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The Power of Political Will in Driving Policy Innovation

by Shiran Victoria Shen

In a world facing climate crises, pandemics, and geopolitical shifts, governments must embrace bold policy innovation.  Scholars have long examined the drivers of policy change—ranging from economic conditions to policy diffusion and entrepreneurial leadership. Yet, one critical but underexplored factor is political will.

In my recent Policy Studies Journal article, I argue that political will is a key driver of drastic policy innovation—policy changes so bold that they redefine governmental priorities and novel policy instruments that any jurisdiction has rarely tested in the country. Using China’s low-carbon city experimentation as a case study, I show that strong political will among local leaders significantly increased the likelihood of drastically innovative climate policy measures being adopted and implemented.

What Is Political Will?

Political will is the commitment of key decision-makers (i.e., elected politicians in democracies or political leaders in autocracies) to enact and implement policies, even at political or financial risk. It consists of three key components:

  1. Authority – The power to enact and enforce policies
  2. Capacity – The fiscal, human, and administrative resources to implement them effectively
  3. Legitimacy – Stakeholder acceptance, which is crucial for garnering support and reducing resistance

Political will is distinct from political power.  While power provides the means, political will determines whether leaders use that power to drive bold policy change.

How Political Will Shapes Drastic Policy Innovation

China’s low-carbon city pilot provides a suitable setting to study political will. Unlike many centrally led pilots, this initiative required cities to voluntarily apply and commit their own resources. My research examines the second batch of pilot cities, which were selected based on leadership engagement, demonstrability, and locally driven decarbonization strategies.

Political will is gauged by the Leader of the Low-Carbon City Construction Leading Group (LCCLG). I found that cities where the prefectural party secretary—the highest-ranking local official—steered the LCCLG were significantly more likely to introduce and implement drastically innovative climate policies. These leaders not only set ambitious goals but also effectively mobilized resources and overcame bureaucratic resistance. In contrast, cities where their low-carbon city pilots were led by lower-ranking officials demonstrated a weaker commitment, resulting in fewer innovative policies proposed or implemented.

Why Institutionalizing Political Will Matters

A critical insight from my study is that when political will is institutionalized, policy innovation persists despite leadership turnover. In China, this was achieved through LCCLGs, which maintained policy continuity even when key officials changed.

This challenges the conventional wisdom that leadership changes disrupt policy innovation.  Instead, embedding political will within the leadership structure sustains transformative policy efforts over time.

Lessons for Policymakers Worldwide

Although my case study focuses on China, the implications extend beyond authoritarian regimes. In democracies, political will is shaped by electoral incentives, coalition-building, and public advocacy, requiring a different approach to measurement. In authoritarian states, political will aligns closely with leader rank and authority, whereas in democracies, multiple veto points necessitate a broader set of variables.

Yet the core principle remains: bold policy innovation depends on committed leadership willing to take risks and overcome resistance.

For policymakers and scholars, political will should be explicitly considered as a critical driver of policy innovation. Whether tackling climate change, public health, or economic shock, fostering and institutionalizing political will enables governments to implement transformative policies that endure.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Shen, Shiran Victoria. 2025. “ Political Will As a Source of Policy Innovation.” Policy Studies Journal 53(1): 185–200. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12571.

About the Author

Shiran Victoria Shen is a senior research scholar and the lead for the China Energy Program at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.  Her research examines how incentives and institutions shape climate and environmental actions.  More broadly, she is interested in key issues in public policy and governance.

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Call for Papers: PSJ Special Issue on Policy Diffusion 

The Policy Studies Journal (PSJ) invites submissions for a special Issue focusing on policy diffusion. Since Walker’s groundbreaking work 65 years ago, policy diffusion research has both burgeoned and stagnated at times (Mooney 2021). It continues to be a key policy process theory that has experienced significant advancements in the last decade in data (Boehmke et al. 2020), methods (e.g., Linder et al. 2020), theory (e.g., Colvin and Jansa 2024), and broadening from the American federal context (e.g., Cao 2010, Zhang and Zhu 2019).

This special issue invites papers that engage on any of the four fronts listed above: data, methods, theory, and context. Importantly, the aim is not to publish studies of a single policy using conventional methods (e.g., Event History Analysis) that confirm existing theory. We are looking for work that continues to push the boundaries of policy diffusion research. Papers should aim to explain diffusion broadly and should only focus on a single policy if it is a unique case that illustrates the boundaries of existing theory. These could include papers that:

  • Provide methodological and/or theoretical advancements on our specification and understanding of the key mechanisms of diffusion.
  • Explore diffusion dynamics in contexts beyond the American federal system and Europe. These could be new within-country contexts or underexplored regions like Africa.
  • Propose new methods for conducting diffusion research.
  • Link the macro-level patterns most commonly observed in diffusion studies (e.g., number and timing of adoptions) with the micro-level behavioral foundations that are assumed to be generating those patterns.
  • Builds bridges between policy diffusion and other major policy process theories.
  • Make greater use of the State Policy Innovation and Diffusion (SPID) database (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/spid).

We also invite shorter pieces (3,000 – 5,000 words), including those that wrestle with the translational and practical implications of policy diffusion research for policymaking and governance. These will be published together in Policy Theory & Practice (a rolling special issue associated with PSJ) and will be bound with the PSJ special issue through our editorial introduction. This allows us to leverage all opportunities offered by PSJ to advance our thinking about policy diffusion.

For details on PSJ article types and their requirements, see https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/15410072/homepage/forauthors.html.

**The deadline for submitting a manuscript for the Special Issue is December 1, 2025**

Potential contributors to the Special Issue may participate in a “Peer Paper Exchange” in the spring of 2025, through which authors can obtain informal feedback from peers who also plan to submit a paper to the Special Issue and opt to participate in the Exchange. For the exchange, papers will be paired together so the authors can exchange and provide each other with feedback. It is not a formal workshop. Participation in the exchange is intended to support the development of papers but has no bearing on the peer review process that will be undertaken by PSJ once papers are submitted to the journal. That review process is formal and entirely independent of the Peer Paper Exchange.

To participate in the Peer Paper Exchange, please submit a one-page abstract that explains your research question, the contribution of your research to policy diffusion, and the data and methodological approaches you plan to use to answer your research question, along with the paper title and author information. This is due by April 1st. Notifications of acceptance to participate in the Peer Paper Exchange will be made by May 15th.

Authors participating in the Exchange must share their draft papers with fellow participants by September 1st. Comments from the Exchange review will be returned to the authors by October 1st.

To apply for the Peer Paper Exchange, please visit: https://uark.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5vwfxRpAF5NKeVM

Special Issue Schedule Summary:

  • April 1, 2025: One-page proposal for peer exchange
  • May 15, 2025: Decisions sent for inclusion in peer exchange
  • September 1, 2025: Paper shared with peer exchange
  • October 1, 2025: Comments returned from peer exchange
  • December 1, 2025: Deadline for submitting to PSJ

If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Dan Mallinson at policystudiesjournal@gmail.com

Unpacking Core Components of Interventions: A Comparison of Synthesis Approaches

by Sebastian Lemire & Allan Porowski

Evidence reviews have become a key tool for evidence-based policy, helping policymakers make informed decisions about which interventions to implement. Traditionally, these reviews have focused on the outcomes of entire interventions. However, the growing interest in the specific elements that drive intervention effect has over the past ten years led to a focus on core components—the key features that contribute to an intervention’s effectiveness. Core components refer to the essential features of an intervention—such as activities, services, or practices—that available evidence shows are effective in driving outcomes. Identifying these core components can help create more effective interventions by highlighting the features that contribute most to desired outcomes. Identifying with greater precision what works, in which contexts, and for which populations can help policymakers assess which existing policies and interventions are (or are not) likely to be effective and better understand why policies or interventions that share similar characteristics may achieve different results.

In our PSJ research note, we describe four evidence synthesis approaches—distillation and matching model, meta-regression, framework synthesis, and qualitative comparative analysis—to identify these core components. Each approach offers unique advantages depending on the available data and intervention context. Understanding the various approaches, along with their respective advantages and limitations, can help researchers select the most appropriate analysis method based on the purpose of their evidence review, the intended audience, and how the findings will be applied.

To further enhance the use of core components analysis, we call for advancements in improving reporting conventions, using multi-phased designs, and expanding applications of core component analysis. Providing more detailed reporting of the intervention characteristics, setting, participants, implementation, and costs in primary studies provides for a stronger foundation for core components analysis. To enhance core components analyses even further, a multi-phase approach can be used. In the first phase, researchers analyze evidence in a specific field, and in the second phase, they collaborate with practitioners to design field trials based on the findings to evaluate the effectiveness of core components Finally, applying core components analysis across a broader range of interventions, practices, and policies, with more diverse populations, and in a variety of settings can help policymakers understand how evidence-based interventions and policies should be designed to ensure that they promote positive outcomes in diverse contexts.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Lemire, Sebastian, Laura R. Peck, Allan Porowski and Allison Dymnicki. 2025. “ Unpacking Core Components For Policy Design: A Comparison of Synthesis Approaches.” Policy Studies Journal 53(1): 171–184. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12567.

About the Authors

Sebastian Lemire is a Senior Scientist at Abt Global. His research focuses on systematic evidence reviews, alternative approaches to impact evaluation, and evaluation capacity building. He currently serves on the executive board of the American Evaluation Association and on the editorial advisory boards of Evaluation and the American Journal of Evaluation.

Allan Porowski is a Principal Associate at Abt Global. He is a leading expert in the design, execution and analysis of randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental studies and national cross-site evaluations of education, health, and other social interventions.


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