Author: PSJ Editorial Team

The Editor

by Creed Tumlison

Once upon office hours dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over stacks of papers written with AI and nothing more –
While battling with my own frustration, looking for proper citation,
Suddenly, a notification, passing through my email’s door –
“Probably a student,” I presumed, “wanting extra credit more –
Check the syllabus, I implore!”

Oh how distinctly I remember, such an email in December
warmed my poor heart’s dying ember and picked me up off of the floor.
Quickly to my email turning, for this news I had been yearning,
Thinking the journal had been spurning – spurning my revisions more.
An email from the Journal Editor –  article accepted, I implore!
But said the Editor, “R&R, and nothing more.”

While I should have been elated, I sat there staring, almost sedated,
Since once again over reviewer comments I must pour.
Reading over suggested revisions, I must make some tough decisions,
And reply with no derisions, to reviewer comments galore.
How should I address these comments and not be a bore?
This is my task, and nothing more.

Then upon my resubmission, I waited through the intermission,
Dreaming of the new addition – adding to my CV more.
When an email notification, filled me with utmost elation,
For it was labeled from the desk of the Journal Editor.
“I’ll go tell my colleagues of acceptance, my journal article number four!”
But, requests the Editor, “Review one more.”


Happy Halloween from the PSJ Editorial Team!

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Introducing Short Articles

We are excited to announce a change at PSJ that we hope will give policy scholars a unique option for developing and refining theory and strengthening our field’s methodological rigor. PSJ is now accepting short articles of 3,000-5,000 words, roughly half the length of our typical manuscripts. Short articles will meet the same high standards for theoretical depth and methodological sophistication as full PSJ articles. The difference is that short articles offer a narrower contribution, concisely communicating new ideas or approaches in policy research.

There are two options for short articles: A research note presents empirical data and analysis, ideally a novel methodology or novel application of a method, or an attempt to replicate previous empirical findings. A perspectives piece presents novel theory or arguments and potentially proposes a related research agenda.

Short articles should be situated in policy science research. They do not need to be strictly rooted in policy process theory, but should explicitly engage a readership interested in policy process theory. Both types of articles must (briefly) make a case for why the data analysis or theoretical arguments they pursue are needed or important; typically this will involve citing policy scholarship.

Like full PSJ articles, the word limit for short articles excludes references. We strongly encourage scholars to cite high-quality scholarship from a diverse range of authors. For further information on our recommendations regarding just and equitable citation practices, please see here. If a short article is accepted, authors commit to writing a PSJ blog post about it.

We are immensely thankful to Dr. Gwen Arnold (PSJ Associate Editor) for taking the lead in this endeavor as the PSJ Short Article Editor. Please reach out to the editorial team (policystudiesjournal@gmail.com) should you have any further questions. We look forward to collaborating with you on this exciting new venture!

Policy Dimension: A New Concept to Distinguish Substance from Process in the Narrative Policy Framework

by Johanna Kuenzler & Bettina Stauffer

The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is a handy tool for policy scholars, shedding light on the strategic uses of narratives in policy debates. However, a critical distinction often remains overlooked in existing literature: the separation of narrative elements focusing on substance from those centered on process. In our study, we emphasize the significance of this differentiation.

When we talk about a policy’s “substance,” we refer to its design — the core problem it addresses and the instruments applied to solve the problem. On the other hand, “process” pertains to the dynamics of influence and power surrounding the policy. To illustrate this distinction, consider the following example:

Narrative 1: We need to stop fossil fuel companies from jeopardizing our children’s future by preventing them from extracting climate-damaging energy sources.

Narrative 2: We need to stop fossil fuel companies from jeopardizing our children’s future by curbing their excessive lobbying against the introduction of a Green New Deal.

Both narratives cast fossil fuel companies as villains, thus signaling to readers that their behavior is problematic. However, Narrative 1 delves into the substance of the issue, focusing on the environmental consequences of the companies’ business. In contrast, Narrative 2 centers on the policy process, highlighting the lobbying practices of these companies that impede progress in climate policy.

To situate this distinction within the NPF, we introduce the concept of “policy dimension.” This dimension classifies narrative content as either substance-focused or process-focused. To assess its utility, we applied this concept to the case of the Child and Adult Protection Policy (CAPP) in Zurich, Switzerland.

Our methodology involved compiling a comprehensive dataset of parliamentary debates and newspaper articles. We then scrutinized these sources to ascertain the analytical value of the policy dimension within narrative content. Our findings revealed the prevalence of both substance and process narratives in CAPP debates. Additionally, we observed that the context in which a narrative is presented influences its policy dimension. Parliamentary debates, for instance, exhibited higher rates of process-oriented narrative elements compared to newspapers.

In summary, the “policy dimension” concept provides researchers with a more nuanced and precise tool for analyzing how narratives function in the policy process, and we look forward to seeing future applications.

We thank Eli Polley for supporting us in the drafting of this blog post.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Kuenzler, Johanna and Stauffer, Bettina. 2023. “ Policy dimension: A new concept to distinguish substance from process in the Narrative Policy Framework.” Policy Studies Journal, 51, 11–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12482.

About the Authors

Johanna Kuenzler is a research associate for public policy at the German University for Administrative Sciences Speyer. Her main areas of expertise are the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) and organizational reputation. Empirically, she focuses on social and environmental policies as well as on animal welfare.
Learn more at: www.johanna-kuenzler.com
Follow her on X: @jo_kuenzler

Bettina Stauffer is a research associate for public policy at the Center for Public Management of the University of Bern. Her research focuses on policy making and public policy implementation, particularly in the areas of social and health policy as well as child and adult protection.

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The Advocacy Coalition Index: A New Approach for Identifying Advocacy Coalitions

by Keiichi Satoh, Antti Gronow & Tuomas Ylä-Anttila

Often the first step to finding a solution is knowing what the problem is.

In April 2018, Antti Gronow, Tuomas Ylä-Anttila and Keiichi Satoh were attending the Joint Sessions of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) in Nicosia, Cyprus. The session in question was organized by Chris Weible, Karin Ingold and Daniel Nohrstedt and it made Gronow and Ylä-Anttila think of how problematic it is to study advocacy coalitions in a comparative context. Coalitions among political actors are central to politics and policy, which is a fact long recognized within the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF).

In Cyprus, Gronow and Ylä-Anttila realized that previous research lacks a consistent way of identifying and measuring advocacy coalitions. During a break in the sessions, Gronow and Ylä-Anttila shared their concerns regarding the lack of a consistent method for identifying advocacy coalitions with Keiichi Satoh. Three months later, inspired by a figure explaining the fuzzy sets used in the qualitative comparative analysis, Satoh showed an initial sketch of a way to identify coalitions to Gronow and Ylä-Anttila. After intensive discussions, this sketch evolved into the Advocacy Coalition Index (ACI).

How does the ACI work?

The ACI is a combined measure of policy beliefs and coordination of action, based on techniques of social network analysis. It is a standardized method for identifying and analyzing advocacy coalitions that can be applied to comparative research and also to other research contexts involving attribute and relational data.

To use the index, researchers must first obtain information about policy actors’ beliefs and coordination relationships between these actors. Such data can be collected through a survey, public statements, or any reliable method of data collection. Next, the method focuses on identifying homophilous ties (in which like-minded actors coordinate with one another), cross-coalition ties (coordination between actors holding diverging beliefs), and missing ties (ties that do not exist between like-minded actors). The ACI can be expressed as a formula in the following way:

ACI= 1 – (Cross-coalition ties + Missing ties)

Political subsystems with typical, adversarial advocacy coalitions are likely to be closer to the value of one as a result of the calculation. In addition, to characterize different kinds of advocacy coalitions within subsystems, scholars can analyze variation in the homophilous ties score and in the ratio of cross-coalition ties and homophilous ties (the CCH ratio), as illustrated in the figure below. For example, in the case of adversarial coalitions (i.e. typical advocacy coalitions), there are many homophilous ties between like-minded actors (i.e., few “missing ties”), and almost no ties between actors with dissimilar beliefs.

The ACI can be applied in many different contexts in a consistent way. A standard way of measuring advocacy coalitions thus allows scholars to compare their results with studies conducted in other countries or other policy subsystems.

Our work also has implications outside academia. Policymakers and analysts now have a tool to reliably detect coalitions involved in policy processes, which helps in designing policy proposals that are politically feasible. Policy can be designed, implemented, and evaluated with a clearer understanding of the kinds of coalitions that are involved, as long as appropriate data exists. 

We are confident that our systematic, data-driven approach will be a useful contribution to the field of public policy research. We also hope that the ACI will be used as a tool in the policy process.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Satoh, K., Gronow, A. and Ylä-Anttila, T. 2023. “The Advocacy Coalition Index: A new approach for identifying advocacy coalitions.” Policy Studies Journal 51: 187–207. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12450

About the Authors

Keiichi Satoh is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University, Japan. His research interests include climate and energy policy, social movements, and political processes using network theory and methods. His research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Social Movement Studies, Urban Studies, and Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis.

Antti Gronow is a Senior Researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. His research interests include climate policy, advocacy coalitions, social network analysis, and political polarization. His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Global Environmental Change, Governance, Policy Studies Journal, Public Administration, and JPART. Follow him on X: @AnttiGronow

Tuomas Ylä-Anttila is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Helsinki. He currently leads four research projects on policy networks, communication networks and climate change politics, and chairs the 14-country comparative research effort Comparing Climate Change Policy Networks (see compon.org). His work has appeared in journals such as Global Environmental Change, Public Administration, Policy Studies Journal, Governance, and British Journal of Sociology.

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Call for Applications for Guest Editor(s) of a Policy Studies Journal Special Issue on Homelessness

Policy Studies Journal, the premier outlet for scholarship developing and refining public policy theory, is seeking scholars to guest edit or co-edit a special issue on homelessness policy. Homelessness is a critical, complex societal challenge that requires creative and determined policy action. We hope to publish a collection of papers which meaningfully advance public policy theory by addressing questions such as (though not limited to): What factors shape the adoption of particular policies addressing homelessness? How do homelessness policies affect their target populations? What factors shape the stringency or laxity of these policies? How do unhoused people experience homelessness policies, and with what consequences? Can we predict the types of policy designs that will  be used in this policy domain, and why? We expect the special issue ultimately to contain at least 10 rigorous papers. Special issues typically take 18-24 months from the acceptance of a guest editor application through final publication.

An application for guest editorship should include:

  1. Name and affiliations of the proposed guest editor(s) (maximum of three) and an explanation of the homelessness policy expertise and editorial experience (as applicable) that equip the proposed guest editor(s) to manage this special issue (1-2 paragraphs per proposed guest editor).
  2. A description of the proposed guest editors’ vision for the special issue, not exceeding one page. This statement should discuss why the special issue will interest PSJ readers and highlight its expected novel contributions to public policy theory.
  3. Details on 15 or more high-quality and theoretically meaningful papers around homelessness policy that the proposed editors expect to be submitted for peer review. For each paper, these details should include an abstract and names and affiliations of its authors.
    • Although we understand that sometimes unforeseen events arise, the guest editor(s) should do their best to ensure that these authors are firmly committed to submitting their proposed papers to the special issue. 
    • The proposed papers should: Propose theoretical frameworks or concepts; empirically test theoretical frameworks or concepts using quantitative or qualitative methods; or provide a comprehensive review of relevant policy literature, identifying key themes and synthesizing key findings. 
    • During the process of developing the special issue, guest editors can solicit additional abstracts/papers not included in the original proposal. 
  4. A proposed timeline for accomplishing the guest editorship tasks described here. 

The guest editor(s) should commit to:

  1. Soliciting papers around homelessness policy that are high quality and make a meaningful theoretical contribution to public policy scholarship.
  2. Reviewing and providing feedback on each manuscript before it is submitted for review at PSJ, and/or coordinating a pre-submission review process wherein authors offer comments on each others’ work.
  3. Writing an introductory piece that frames and highlights the interconnections among papers ultimately included in the special issue and proposes an agenda for future policy scholarship on homelessness.

The PSJ editorial team will:

  1. Work closely with the guest editor(s) to ensure a smooth editorial process.
  2. Ensure the editorial process follows PSJ submission protocols, including double-blind review and resubmission within six months of a “revise and resubmit” decisions.
  3. Make final decisions about accepting or rejecting manuscripts. The PSJ team may confer with guest editor(s) about these decisions or may make them independently.
  4. Reserve the right to reject special issue paper submissions that do not meet journal standards and to cancel the special issue, if an insufficient number of high-quality submissions is received within a reasonable timeframe.
    • If the special issue is canceled, papers submitted pursuant to the special issue call, and which received an acceptance upon peer review, will be slated for inclusion in a regular PSJ issue. 

Applications for guest editorship should be submitted as a Word document to policystudiesjournal@gmail.com by January 29, 2024. Questions about the special issue or its editorship should be directed to the same address. The PSJ editorial team expects to make a decision concerning applications in late January or early February 2024.

Linking Issues for Long-Term Governance Success

by Dana A. Dolan

Governments frequently grapple with a perpetual cycle of reacting to immediate crises, leaving little room for proactive, long-term policy development. The concept of long-term governance, characterized by policies promising future benefits but incurring short-term costs, often faces challenges in securing priority amid more pressing issues. 

Nonetheless, the importance of long-term governance cannot be understated, given its historical successes and its relevance in addressing contemporary global challenges. For instance, the establishment of America’s National Park System was a clear investment in preserving nature for future generations. Today, nations worldwide confront a mounting array of long-term challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, immigration reform, and extreme economic inequality.

Lessons from Australian Climate Adaptation Policy

In a 2021 Policy Studies Journal article, I examined the process leading to Australia’s 2007 Water Act, one of the world’s earliest national climate adaptation policies, for insights into achieving long-term governance goals. The case presented several theoretical puzzles: why did Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a known climate science skeptic, champion this policy? Why did the conservative Howard Government support a policy that aimed to redirect water resources from lucrative agriculture to environmental conservation, contrary to its usual priorities? Why did the proposal garner public and political support during a severe decade-long drought, when all water users fiercely protected their allocations?

I applied Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework, analyzing the evolution of problem, policy, and political streams, and the process of coupling these streams to favor policy change over the status quo. After analyzing each of the three streams in depth, this study delved deeper into the coupling process. Its unique insight highlighted the interplay among “partial couplings” (illustrated in Figure 1 below) that connected pairs of streams for multiple policy issues. 

Figure 1. Alternative Approaches to Coupling All Three Streams.

In the Australian case, climate change rose on the policy agenda and became law under the 2007 Water Act, despite not all three streams being ready for coupling. This departure from basic expectations was explained by the policy entrepreneurial strategy known as issue linking. This strategy rhetorically connected the three streams of problems, policies, and politics through partial couplings involving three related issues: climate change (a valid problem with public demand but no viable policy solution), water management (a salient problem with a feasible solution but lacking political will), and adaptive governance (an accepted solution with political backing but no salient problem).

This configuration of multiple partial couplings allowed proponents of policy change to construct a convincing argument for legislative action. For a recent explanation of the MSF theory behind the coupling process, refer to Dolan and Blum’s work (2023/in press)

Issue Linking through Multiple Partial Couplings  

Issue linking emerges as a pivotal strategy for overcoming the challenges of long-term policymaking, where problems are recognized, viable policy solutions exist, but political will is lacking. However, not every combination of issues proves effective. Linked issues only succeed when the combination connects all pairs of streams through multiple partial couplings. In essence, issue linking serves as a guiding principle for policymakers navigating the complexities of long-term governance, where decisions today can shape a better and more sustainable tomorrow.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Dolan, Dana A. 2021. “Multiple Partial Couplings in the Multiple Streams Framework: The Case of Extreme Weather and Climate Change Adaptation.” Policy Studies Journal 49(1): 164–89. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/psj.12341#

Other References

Dolan, Dana A., and Sonja Blum. 2023/in press. “The Beating Heart of the MSF: Coupling as a Process.” In The Modern Guide to the Multiple Streams Framework, eds. Nikolaos Zahariadis, Nicole Herweg, Reimut Zohlnhöfer, and Evangelia Petridou. Edward Elgar.

About the Author

Dana A. Dolan is a policy fellow and adjunct faculty member at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. She is also a professorial lecturer in international affairs at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Her research focuses on long-term governance issues, the politics of policymaking, and refining Kingdon’s Multiple Streams theory of the policy process. Her theory-driven work has been featured in top journals like Policy Studies Journal and Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment.

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Tips From the Editors

In the last few weeks, we have explained a few key pieces of advice that our editorial team thought would be helpful for prospective authors. This week, we will highlight a couple more suggestions from our team.

Tip #3: Don’t Bury the Lede

Tell the reader why your work is important! Associate Editor Gwen Arnold pointed out, “Authors, myself included, often write initial drafts similar to how they might tell a story, building a narrative arc and reaching a climax and then a resolution that delivers a moral or message.” She goes on to explain that this approach can cause authors to explain the most important aspects of their work later in the paper. Instead, make it clear to readers why your work is innovative and novel. State the key takeaways of your paper in the abstract, the introduction, the discussion, and then again in the conclusion. Don’t make reviewers, editors, and readers dig around for the lede; make it obvious so that you can grab their attention and keep them reading.

Tip #4: Intellectual Identity

Every journal, researcher, and individual work has what Editor-in-Chief Geoboo Song calls an “intellectual identity.” This includes the questions investigated, the methods used, and the topics and theories of focus. We recommend putting in the effort to make sure your work’s intellectual identity aligns with the journal’s. Read through a journal’s recent publications, social media posts, and website to gain a grasp on its identity. After that, take a look at the editorial team. Try to look through their research to discover their individual identities — after all, they are the ones who make most of the manuscript decisions. Finally, go back over your paper. Does it seem to fit with the collective intellectual identity? Would this journal’s readers be interested in your work? 

Academic publication is a competitive process, especially at journals like PSJ that receive a large volume of submissions. Hopefully, these tips from our editorial team will be of use to you when you are submitting your next paper.

Tips From the Editors

We have previously discussed how authors should engage with the ongoing academic conversation in the journal in which they hope to be published. Our editors pointed out that good papers tend to incorporate and build upon the key questions and developments in the field. Here we address the logistics of manuscript processing.

Tip #2: Pay Attention to the Details

Academic journals get hundreds of submissions every year. Each paper that is submitted must be read and evaluated by a member of the editorial team. Editorial Associate Ben Galloway said, “I think one of the most important things I have learned as a part of the editorial team is the process behind manuscript processing and sorting-specifically.” There are several characteristics of a paper, aside from the quality of the writing and research, that are considered within this process.

Originality is always a top priority. Ensure that your work is your own. Any research from other scholars used in your work should be properly cited. Double-check that quotations and concepts are attributed to their original author and source. The same advice applies when you are referencing your own work!

Also make sure you submit an anonymized version of your paper, and pay attention to the journal’s instructions for authors, including style guidelines and word limit.

Finally, don’t forget the cover letter. Authors may underestimate the impression a well-written cover letter can have on the editorial team. “I always read cover letters very closely,” says Editor-in-Chief Geoboo Song. Use your cover letter as an opportunity to make a strong case for your paper to be published. Explain how your paper fits well in the journal and why your work will be of interest to its readers.

Tips From the Editors

Getting your research published can be a difficult and daunting task. We asked our editorial team to draw on their experiences as editors to offer some advice to scholars. In this ongoing series, we will compile, summarize, and relay our editorial team’s thoughts and observations with the goal of helping prospective authors as they prepare to submit their work for publication.

Tip #1: Engage with the Literature

Several members of our editorial team emphasized the importance of engaging with the existing literature. The works featured in PSJ are theory-driven pieces of policy research that often build upon one another. It is clear that the authors published in PSJ have incorporated the developments and key questions presented in the journal into their own work. It is imperative that researchers ask new questions and supply the community with new ideas; however, one must ensure that the questions and ideas presented fit into the scholarly conversation. As Associate Editor Gwen Arnold put it, “…it has to be a real conversation, not a monologue.”

A quick way to gauge how well you have participated in a journal’s academic conversation is to check your bibliography. For an article to sufficiently engage with the intellectual essence of a given journal, it should reference several works published in said journal. This will, of course, only give you a surface-level evaluation of how well the piece has incorporated the relevant literature. Associate Editor Holly Peterson points out that manuscripts can do a good job at drawing on previous developments and adding to the common themes and topics, but a particularly strong manuscript “builds these themes into the very thinking of the piece, not just in the framing of the research, but in its foundations, conceptualizations, and substantive findings.”

In summary, while drafting your article, consider how well you engage with a journal’s existing literature. Try to make this engagement obvious. Readers should be able to plainly see how your work adds to the ongoing conversation and understand how your research contributes to its progress. “Making the findings of the article clearly connected to ongoing conversations in the journal,” Associate Editor Aaron Smith-Walter says, “is an excellent way to elevate the chances that the piece finds a home in its pages.” Keeping this in mind before submitting your paper can help your work stand out and give it the nudge it may need to be on its way to publication.

Just and Equitable Citation

For many of us, the reference list we assemble at the end of a paper is one step above an afterthought: generated by citation management software, hopefully formatted correctly by the same. For me, the exception occurs if my paper exceeds the page or word limit for a journal I’m targeting. To avoid cutting precious text, I’ll comb through my citations, trying to find places where I could use one instead of three, getting rid of less-than-crucial examples, excising the “see also” and “e.g.” In a low moment a few years ago, wrestling with an unwieldy reference list, I actually tried to convince myself that nobody really needs their middle initial. That was when it dawned on me that citation is not a neutral practice. Collectively, our choices about who to include and exclude, and how and why, shapes our literature: who counts in it, and how much.

Other folks got the memo before me. A number of studies show that citations in political science journals tend to underrepresent female and minority scholars (Bruening and Sanders 2007; Dion et al. 2018; Dion and Mitchell 2020; Teele and Thelen 2017) as do journals in other disciplines (Bertolero et al. 2020; Caplar et al. 2017; Chatterjee and Werner 2021; Dworkin et al. 2020; Maliniak et al. 2013; Odic and Wojcik 2020; Roberts et al. 2020; Wang et al. 2021). This phenomenon appears to be driven by some combination of:

Building a diverse, equitable, and vibrant community of policy scholars requires that we try to mitigate these biases. But how? Fundamentally we need major changes in how we train, hire, and support scholars, so that academia welcomes rather than erects barriers for women, minorities, non-traditional and first-generation scholars, and other groups subject to discrimination and bias. This should be shared goal we all strive to achieve. A small but actionable step forward is to consider explicitly the composition of our reference lists and, to the extent we find gender or racial imbalances, make a conscious effort to cite more scholarship by women and underrepresented minorities. We encourage all PSJ authors to take this step. Some tools to help in that assessment include:

PSJ has taken another small but nonetheless important step. In 2021, we stopped counting reference lists in the overall word count for an article. Limiting reference lists may cause authors to sacrifice newer scholarship, which may be produced by diverse scholars, in favor of older, core scholarship produced by less diverse authors. Our continuing aim is to eliminate this incentive.

Are there other steps that you would like to see PSJ or other political science or policy science journals take to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion in our scholarly community? Do you have recommendations for how we as individual scholars can tackle this charge, or how we should approach it when acting collectively? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

-Gwen Arnold, Associate Editor

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