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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Intergovernmental Implementation in a Time of Uncooperative Federalism: Immigration Enforcement and Federal Secure Communities Program, 2011–14

by William D. Schreckhise & Daniel E. Chand

On the first day of his second term, Present Trump signed an executive order taking aim at “so-called sanctuary jurisdictions,” marking his latest attempt to step up immigration enforcement in progressive, pro-immigrant communities. While there’s no universal definition as to what constitutes “sanctuary” jurisdictions, the most accepted definition are communities that limit state and local law enforcement participation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), enforcement program known as Secure Communities (S-Comm).

S-Comm is, essentially, a nationwide immigration screening program. It has long been commonplace for jails to share an individual’s name and biometric information (e.g., photo, fingerprints, etc.) with federal authorities to see if the person has a criminal record or any outstanding warrants when an individual is arrested and booked. S-Comm further shares this information with ICE, which screens the individual for immigration violations.

If ICE suspects an individual of being in the country without proper authorization, it can issue an ICE detainer, which requests the jail to hold the individual for up to 48 hours so that ICE can take custody of the person and begin deportation proceedings. ICE can, and frequently does, detain individuals under S-Comm regardless of whether the charges for the original arrest are dropped. From the time S-Comm became nationwide operational in 2013 through 2020, roughly 700,00 individuals were removed from the country.

S-Comm was (and still is) controversial. Numerous local governments, mostly counties, have passed various measures in opposition to the program. Other governments went further, explicitly prohibiting their officers from contacting ICE and prohibiting their agencies from spending money in ways that otherwise could help ICE. However, other governments essentially did the opposite with some states requiring their counties to honor ICE detainer requests.

In our PSJ article, we examined the extent to which state and local governments play a role in implementing federal policy, focusing on the patterns of interaction between federal actors and nonfederal actors implementing S-Comm. Specifically, we examine the extent to which localities and states could hinder or help with the program’s implementation.

To determine what role these subnational policies could play, we collected county-level ICE removal data and information about which states and localities adopted policies aimed at either helping ICE by mandating their agencies honor detainer requests or hindering ICE’s efforts prohibiting that they cooperate with ICE’s detainer requests.

We found that states and counties can indeed play a prominent role. Taking these various other factors into account, counties that passed so-called “sanctuary” ordinances saw roughly 30% fewer deportations. Counties in states that had passed their own state-level “sanctuary” laws saw a similar decline. States that passed legislation requiring their localities to cooperate with ICE saw 44% more deportations.

We also wanted to determine to what extent the presence of the cooperative and noncooperative policies was reflected in what ICE itself was doing. It is one thing for counties and states to simply refuse to cooperate; it is entirely another for ICE to modify its own behavior because of these policies. To do this, we redirected the variables to determine whether they could help explain the extent to which ICE was making detainer requests in the first place. Again, we found that ICE was making fewer detainer requests in states and counties where cooperation with ICE was prohibited and making more in states where the counties were directed to cooperate.

Considering the ongoing debate over immigration enforcement policies, our findings underscore the significant impact of state and local policies on the implementation of federal initiatives, like S-Comm. The presence of subnational policies not only shape the outcome of the policy, but also how the federal agencies, like ICE, behave when implementing federal programs.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Schreckhise, W.D. and Chand, D.E. (2021), Intergovernmental Implementation in a Time of Uncooperative Federalism: Immigration Enforcement and Federal Secure Communities Program, 2011–14. Policy Stud J, 49: 1160-1188. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12426

About the Authors

William D. Schreckhise is professor in the University of Arkansas’ Department of Political Science. He earned his Ph.D. from Washington State University’s Department of Political Science. His research interests include policy implementation and bureaucratic discretion. His the author of Evaluating American Democracy and Public Policy.


Daniel E. Chand (“Danny”) received his Ph.D. in Public Policy in the Policy Management specialization at the University of Arkansas. His research focuses on the implementation of immigration policy, examining the roles of actors such as immigrant-serving nonprofits, immigration judges, and ICE officers. In addition to PSJ, his work has appeared in journals like Policy Sciences and Voluntas.

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Mixed Messages and Bounded Rationality: The Perverse Consequences of REAL ID for Immigration Policy

by Maureen Stobb, Banks Miller, & Joshua Kennedy

The President and Congress have renewed efforts in the past year to reshape immigration policy. Yet, if history can teach us anything, it is that outcomes in this area tend not to match intent. Our research looks at a clear example of this mismatch, the REAL ID Act, a law aimed at tightening refugee admissions by taking control away from liberal judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Despite its intent, it resulted in more people getting asylum. In our research we ask, what explains this policy gap?

We contend that part of the answer lies in the REAL ID Act’s ambivalent language, a common characteristic of policy concerning undocumented immigrants. The law gave the street-level bureaucrats who decide asylum cases —immigration judges (IJs)— more discretion to deny bogus asylum claims. They no longer had to point to an inconsistency undermining a key aspect of the persecution claim to find the applicant not credible. They could deny based on inconsistencies such as birthdays and wedding dates that have no connection to the asylum claim. At the same time, the law required IJs to consider all the circumstances, potentially reincorporating some of the former rule.

What did IJs do in this situation? They are supposed to follow the precedent in the circuit with jurisdiction over where they sit, but the President controls their hiring and firing, and Congress writes the law and determines their budget. We argue that IJs, behaving in a bounded rationality framework, relied on their professional training as lawyers as a shortcut and were considerably more deferential to the circuit courts who read every opinion they write.

We find just that. As the figure below shows, the adoption of the REAL ID Act’s credibility standard enabled significantly closer ideological control by the courts. Before REAL ID, there was very little relationship between the presumed aggregate preferences of the appellate courts on asylum cases and IJ decision making in that circuit. But after the REAL ID Act is implemented by the circuit through the adoption of its standard in precedent, as the percentage of the circuit that is Democratic increases so too does the likelihood of an IJ granting asylum. The impact went from 3 to 52 percentage points.

Image Description

Figure 1: REAL ID & the Circuit Courts

We saw an increase in influence for Congress and the President, but it was not nearly as large. We also show this is not just a result of the uniqueness of the first Trump administration.

The findings suggest that any attempts to restrict asylum access through immigration courts during Trump’s second term would require precisely written policies. If the administration and a Republican-controlled Congress pursue such restrictions, vague or ambiguous language could backfire. In cases of unclear policy, IJs will turn to federal courts for guidance—potentially leading to interpretations that run counter to the administration’s goals.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Stobb, Maureen, Banks Miller, and Joshua Kennedy. 2023. Mixed messages & bounded rationality: The perverse consequences of real ID for immigration policy. Policy Studies Journal 51: 667–684. https://doi-org.echo.louisville.edu/10.1111/psj.12486

About the Authors

Maureen Stobb is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia Southern University. Her research focuses on the expansion of judicial power relative to the legislature and the executive, particularly in the policy areas of immigration and citizenship. Her research has been published in various outlets including The Journal of Law & Courts, and Justice System Journal.

Banks Miller is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research focuses on judicial decision making, intellectual property policy, and immigration policy. Recent work has been published in the Journal of Law & Courts and American Politics Research.


Joshua B. Kennedy is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia Southern University. His research of late focuses on political control of the administrative state, and he has also published in the area of unilateral presidential power. His research has appeared in American Politics Research, Research & Politics, and Presidential Studies Quarterly, among other outlets.

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Partisan Collaboration in Policy Adoption: An Experimental Study With Local Government Officials

by Yixin Liu

Collaboration among local governments is crucial for tackling shared challenges like environmental management and economic development. Partisanship significantly shapes these collaborative efforts. In my recent paper, I investigate how partisanship affects local policymakers’ decisions to collaborate and whether political identity moderates the importance of key collaborative attributes like resource allocation, reciprocal trust, and policy outcomes. This work bridges gaps in the existing collaborative strategies literature by focusing on individual-level preferences rather than aggregated patterns.

This study sought to address two primary research questions:  

(1) Does partisanship influence local policymakers’ willingness to adopt collaborative sustainable development programs?  

(2) Does partisanship alter how policymakers weigh other collaborative attributes, such as trust or resource sharing, in their decision-making?  

To test these questions, I designed a conjoint experiment targeting municipal officials across the United States. Participants were asked to evaluate hypothetical sustainable development programs proposed by cities with varying partisanship and collaborative attributes—such as the balance of resource contributions (resource allocation), the expected number of jobs created by the program (policy outcome), and past collaborations with the partner city (reciprocal trust). By randomizing these attributes, I was able to isolate the effect of partisanship while controlling for other factors.  

Image Description

The sample included 772 local government officials, representing a broad cross-section of U.S. municipalities. These officials represented 535 municipalities and covered offices from 49 states and the District of Columbia. I used my data to test two hypotheses:

Co-­partisanship Hypothesis (H1): The collaborative program proposed by co-partisans will increase the interest of municipal officials in adopting it, compared to the same program proposed by out-­partisans.

Conditional hypothesis (H2): The importance of resource allocation, reciprocal trust, and policy outcomes will weaken if the collaborative program is not proposed by co-­partisans.

Image Description

The co-partisanship effect was clear: Programs proposed by co-partisans were 12.75 percentage points more likely to be adopted than those proposed by out-partisans, supporting H1 (see Figure 2). Moreover, my analysis yielded support for H2. My results showed that the influence of collaborative attributes was indeed conditional on whether it was proposed by a co-partisan. For example, respondents favored programs that required lower resource contributions or had higher job creation potential, but these attributes were weighed less heavily when the proposal was made by a partner city in the out-party (see Figure 3). It is also important to note that the influence of partisanship was consistent across subgroups, suggesting its deep roots in political identity rather than professional roles or ideologies.

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This study highlights the importance of understanding the role of partisanship in collaborative governance. Future research could explore the long-term impacts of partisanship on collaborative governance or expand the scope to other policy areas. Additionally, combining experimental methods with observational data could enhance our understanding of how partisan dynamics evolve over time in real-world settings.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Liu, Yixin. 2024. “ Partisan Collaboration in Policy Adoption: An Experimental Study With Local Government Officials.” Policy Studies Journal 52(4): 955–967. https://doi-org.echo.louisville.edu/10.1111/psj.12551.

About the Author

Yixin Liu is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics & International Affairs at Northern Arizona University. His research investigates cross-sectoral collaborative governance in environmental management. Prior to joining NAU, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He completed his PhD at Florida State University.

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Are bureaucrats’ interactions with politicians linked to the bureaucrats’ policy entrepreneurship tendencies?

by Mariana Costa Silveira, Nissim Cohen, & Gabriela Lotta

Policy entrepreneurs – individuals who seek to shape policy outcomes that they could not otherwise achieve on their own – play a crucial role in the policymaking process. Typical examples of policy entrepreneurs include lobbyists, consultants, and even politicians. Bureaucrats, too, can also be policy entrepreneurs.

Our paper looks at the relationship between bureaucrats’ interactions with other policy actors – specifically politicians, peers, and non-state actors – and how confident the bureaucrats feel about engaging in policy entrepreneurship activities. At a broad level, we know that these interactions impact whether bureaucrats act as policy entrepreneurs, but we don’t have studies that have looked at how these interactions might be related to bureaucrats’ perceptions of their own policy entrepreneurship skills. We also assess how the reputation of a bureaucrat’s organization impacts their self-efficacy. The below research model outlines our hypotheses.

Image Description

Figure 1. Research model.

To test our hypotheses, we used a survey of 2,000 bureaucrats in Brazil taken between October and December 2017 by the country’s National School of Public Administration, of whom approximately 30% completed the survey. The survey asked respondents about their levels of confidence performing different sorts of tasks, their frequency of interactions with actors from different groups (e.g., politicians, private companies, unions, etc.), and their motivations for doing their jobs.

In the course of analyzing the data, we found that the bureaucrats surveyed sorted into three profiles, based on their levels of interactions as well as with whom they interacted: brokers, who have high levels of interactions inside and outside of their organization with both state and non-state actors; insiders, who have high levels of interactions mainly inside their organization, with other state actors; and loners, who have low levels of interactions across all actor types. 

We found that bureaucrats who interacted more regularly with peers and politicians displayed more confidence about their ability to engage in policy entrepreneurship. As far as non-state actors were concerned, we found positive – and statistically significant – relationships as regards interactions with the press and unions, but not statistically significant relationships with other non-state actors, such as private companies. Lastly, bureaucrats’ self-efficacy was also positively correlated with the reputation of their organization. We observed some variation across the three bureaucrat profiles: interactions with politicians were most strongly associated with feelings of self-efficacy among brokers than either insiders or loners. Regarding bureaucrats’ motivations to engage in policy entrepreneurship, we found that both the desire to advance the public good and their own careers were associated with greater policy entrepreneurship self-efficacy. This suggests that public- and self-interest motivations aren’t mutually exclusive, and that both can drive policy entrepreneurship. 

We want to caution that, when it comes to bureaucratic self-efficacy about policy entrepreneurship, we have identified correlations rather than causations. The dataset used for this study does not allow us to conclude whether, for example, frequent interactions with politicians makes bureaucrats more confident about engaging in policy entrepreneurship, or whether those bureaucrats already confident in their abilities as policy entrepreneurs are more likely to seek out interactions with politicians. 

Nevertheless, in identifying these correlations, we draw attention to those factors that likely impact whether – and to what extent – bureaucrats engage in policy entrepreneurship. Our findings suggest that expanding opportunities for bureaucrats to grow their networks and interact with different types of actors – such as politicians and those outside of the government – is important for cultivating policy entrepreneurship among bureaucrats. Ultimately, more research will need to be done to identify the precise causal mechanisms at play. Moreover, our study looked only at bureaucrats in Brazil, so additional case studies will confirm the extent to which our findings are generalizable. 

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Silveira, Mariana Costa, Nissim Cohen and Gabriela Lotta. 2024. “ Are Bureaucrats’ Interactions With Politicians Linked to the Bureaucrats’ Policy Entrepreneurship Tendencies?.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (3): 533–559. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12536.

About the Authors

Mariana Costa Silveira is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) at Lausanne University. Her research interests include behavioral public administration, organizational behavior, policy entrepreneurship, and collaborative governance.

Nissim (Nessi) Cohen is a professor of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Haifa. His research interests include interactions between politicians and bureaucrats, public administration reform, street level bureaucracy and policy entrepreneurship.

Gabriela Lotta is an Associate Professor of Public Administration at Fundação Getulio Vargas’s Sao Paulo School of Business Administration. Her current research interests include policy implementation, street-level bureaucracy and bureaucratic politics.


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Institutional Fit and Policy Design in Water Governance: Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts 

by Tomás Olivier & Sechindra Vallury

Water governance is a critical challenge that demands locally tailored solutions to address diverse social and ecological conditions. Our new paper explores this through Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts (NRDs)—a basin-level governance arrangement created to manage groundwater resources. We investigated how well NRDs design policies to fit their local social-ecological contexts and the influence of broader institutional mandates on those policies.

The overarching goal of our research was to bridge the gap between institutional fit and policy design literature. To do this, we aim to better understand the drivers behind institutional fit—how well governing arrangements address local resource challenges—and the mechanisms shaping policy design in decentralized governance systems like Nebraska’s NRDs. Our research question was: how do actors in governing arrangements design policy outputs to fit to their social, ecological, and institutional environment?

Image Description

Figure 1. Nebraska’s Natural Resource Districts and the status of their Integrated Management Plans. The map was generated using data provided by the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources.

Nebraska’s NRDs are an ideal case for examining institutional fit. Established in 1972, these districts are defined by river basins and tasked with managing shared resources like water, soil, and land. Each NRD develops its own management plans and groundwater rules, which vary widely due to differing local conditions such as precipitation, population, and agricultural needs. This setting allows for a comparative study of how context influences policy design across NRDs.

Using topic modeling, k-means clustering, and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we analyzed Integrated Management Plans (IMPs) and Groundwater Management Rules and Regulations (GMRRs) produced by 23 NRDs. We found evidence that the design of NRD outputs (plans and rules) aligned with local biophysical conditions. NRDs in areas with higher precipitation or greater groundwater demand tended to emphasize water management priorities tailored to those conditions. For instance, NRDs in drier western Nebraska prioritized policies addressing groundwater scarcity, as illustrated by their IMPs’ focus on water quantity controls (see Figure 2).

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Figure 2. Topic model of stemmed text from Integrated Management Plans of 23 Natural Resource Districts.

Our results also suggested that NRDs with a state mandate to develop Integrated Management Plans (IMPs) produced more distinct, context-sensitive policy outputs than those without mandates. NRDs with state-mandated IMPs showed lower textual similarity across their policy outputs, indicating more tailored responses to local conditions. Voluntary IMPs, on the other hand, often relied on boilerplate language, reflecting less contextual customization.

The fsQCA analysis identified multiple pathways for achieving institutional fit, involving combinations of factors like population size, precipitation, and state mandates. For example, NRDs with large populations and high precipitation but no state mandate tended to produce outputs with less focus on enforcement mechanisms, highlighting how context shapes policy emphasis (see Table 2).

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This study underscores the importance of institutional fit in natural resource governance. It shows that decentralized systems like Nebraska’s NRDs can successfully tailor policies to local contexts, particularly when supported by state-level guidance. However, the reliance on voluntary planning can lead to inconsistent levels of customization, raising questions about equity and effectiveness across districts.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Olivier, Tomás and Sechindra Vallury. 2024. “ Institutional Fit and Policy Design in Water Governance: Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (4): 809–832. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12550.

About the Authors

Tomás Olivier is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration and the Assistant Director of the Center for Policy Design and Governance at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Follow him on Bluesky: @tomasolivier.bsky.social

Sechindra Vallury is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy at the Odum School of Ecology and the Director for Policy at the River Basin Center, University of Georgia. 

Follow him on Bluesky: @sechindra.bsky.social


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Narrative Strategies in a Nondemocratic Setting: Reflections on Conducting Policy Process Research in Autocracies

by Caroline Schlaufer & Dilyara Gafurova

Our article Narrative strategies in a nondemocratic setting: Moscow’s urban policy debates explored how narratives are strategically used in authoritarian contexts to promote or contest policy reforms. Focusing on three contentious urban policy debates in Moscow—housing renovation, public transport reforms, and waste management policies—we found stark differences in narrative strategies between government actors and their opponents. The Moscow government employed narratives that framed itself as a hero delivering widespread public benefits while avoiding acknowledgment of policy problems or villainizing opponents. In contrast, oppositional narratives depicted the government as a villain and emphasized the costs and exclusivity of governmental policies. The difference between the governmental and opposing narrative strategies, for example, between the angel and devil-shift scores of the two sides of the debates (see Table 2 of our article), is very large and much higher than in democratic contexts, indicating a strong polarization of the debate. A “debate” in an authoritarian context is less a dialogue but rather parallel monologues with governmental narratives dominating.

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The research is based on a quantitative content analysis of online sources that were written between 2012 and 2020. Since conducting our research, Russia’s policy context has transformed dramatically. The ongoing war against Ukraine has accelerated autocratization and exacerbated repression in Russia. These developments have fundamentally altered the space for public policy discourse and almost obliterated oppositional voices. The majority of the actors whose online narratives we analyzed (see Appendix A of our article) are now silenced—whether by exile, imprisonment, death, organizational closure, or the inaccessibility of platforms like Facebook within Russia. This means that replicating our study is not possible anymore, as conducting the same research today would yield far fewer critical perspectives on Moscow’s urban policies.

The shrinking space for public debate has also been accompanied by increasing restrictions on academic freedom. Many scholars who worked on our research project on narratives in Moscow have since left Russia due to safety concerns and the hostile environment for empirical social research. The closure of HSE University’s Public Policy Department, where this research was conducted, epitomizes the growing difficulties faced by academics in the country.

Our findings demonstrated that the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), initially designed for democratic settings, is a robust tool for understanding discursive strategies in authoritarian contexts, even as genuine public debate disappears. While our research cannot be replicated in today’s Russia, the lessons it offers remain relevant—not only for autocracies but also for liberal democracies that increasingly experience polarization of public debates and attacks on academic freedom. However, our study and experience also raise critical questions about the boundaries of conducting policy process research in autocracies. Scholars must navigate significant ethical and safety concerns to protect team members and data sources, but at the same time meet high scientific standards and publish research even though access to data and possibilities to conduct research are extremely restricted.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Schlaufer, C., Gafurova, D., Zhiryakova, E., Shikhova, M. andBelyaeva, N. 2023. “Narrative strategies in a nondemocratic setting: Moscow’s urban policy debates.” Policy Studies Journal 51: 79–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12445

About the Authors

Caroline Schlaufer is a senior researcher at the KPM Center for Public Management and head of the Ethics and Policy Lab of the Multidisciplinary Center of Infectious Diseases at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Her research focuses on the role of narratives and of science in policy processes and on public policy in authoritarian contexts. She worked as a Professor at the Public Policy Department at HSE University in Moscow between 2017 and 2021.

Dilyara Gafurova heads the team of the Sphere foundation that focuses on fostering LGBTQ+ rights in Russia. She is a political scientist and worked on this research project on policy narratives in Moscow during her Master’s at HSE University in 2018-2020.

Submitter Guidelines for Recommending Reviewers

After surpassing 500 submitted manuscripts in 2024, PSJ’s need for reviewers is at an all-time high. With this, our editorial team is immensely grateful to those who continue to contribute to our field by serving as manuscript reviewers. This commitment is central to our work as policy scholars and is essential to ensure publication of high-quality scholarship. We have relied heavily on many of you to provide valuable feedback on promising manuscripts, and we do not take the time you have dedicated lightly. 

To lessen our reliance on our current pool of reviewers while still ensuring a timely review process, the PSJ editorial team has instituted a new policy for those submitting manuscripts to our system: moving forward, every submitter will be required to recommend five (5) reviewers. 

With this change, our team wanted to share guidelines that can assist submitters in selecting applicable reviewers. When considering reviewers, we ask submitters to keep in mind the following: 

  1. First, please make sure that the reviewers collectively cover the three critical aspects of your manuscript: theory, methodology, and the substantive topic.
  2. Second, please try to mix senior and emerging scholars. This diversity enriches the review process with varied perspectives and experiences.
  3. Third, the reviewers should be those who can uphold the highest standards of editorial integrity, as this is of utmost importance to us.
  4. Finally, please make sure that the selected reviewers do not have any obvious connections to you or other authors. This will help maintain anonymity and impartiality in the review process. 

Thank you in advance to all submitters for supporting your individual manuscript’s review process, and we look forward to your submissions!


Link to Geoboo’s LinkedIn post about surpassing 500 manuscripts: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/geoboo-song-%EC%86%A1%EA%B1%B0%EB%B6%80-08215359_weve-just-received-our-500th-new-submission-activity-7253819572598841344-tKQi?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

How do public policies diffuse, and how can diffusion processes be actively governed without direct coercion?

by Kai Schulze

Diffusion has emerged as an important concept for studying how public policies spread across jurisdictions. Scholars have identified several mechanisms that drive policy diffusion, including learning, competition, emulation, and coercion. At the same time, policy diffusion is also a popular governance approach, particularly for higher levels of government that want to promote certain policies at lower levels, but do not want to or cannot mandate policy action. However, the governance potential of policy diffusion is poorly captured by the prevailing mechanism-centered concept, which is difficult to measure and typically emphasizes direct coercion or “hard” interventions, such as preemptive legislation or conditional funding. It therefore risks overlooking important less coercive or “soft” interventions that higher levels of government can use to promote policy development at lower levels. 

This neglect of soft interventions limits the analytical value of the diffusion concept, especially in multilevel environments with varying levels of authority and in policy areas where direct coercion is unavailable or undesirable, including in climate policy. For example, in many countries, higher levels of government lack the constitutional authority to mandate local climate action, or local authorities lack the capacity to comply with such mandates, so they resort to various interventions that are scattered throughout the literature but have not yet been compared more systematically.

To address these issues, I present a new channel-centered framework that distinguishes between six soft policy diffusion channels that can be broadly placed on a continuum of coerciveness or state intervention: autonomous, collaborative, exemplary, persuasive, organized, and funded diffusion (see Table 1). Autonomous diffusion refers to voluntary and noninstitutionalized exchanges between jurisdictions at the same level of government, collaborative diffusion to the bottom-up creation of formal networks, exemplary diffusion to policy development by higher-level governments to set an example, persuasive diffusion to the provision of informational resources, organized diffusion to networks created by higher-level governments, and funded diffusion to financial incentives and the provision of additional resources.    

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I probe the framework by studying local climate change adaptation policy using original survey data collected from the administrations of 190 municipalities located in the central German state of Hessen. The regression results indicate that the local institutionalization of adaptation in Hessen such as the development of adaptation plans and new staff dealing with adaptation is associated with several interventions by higher levels of government, including the provision of a policy model, a municipal climate network, and grant programs. However, the density of concrete adaptation measures–such as the creation of open-air corridors, education programs, drainage and retention areas, and surface unsealing–is associated with noninstitutionalized exchanges between municipalities. These results demonstrate the usefulness of the framework for distinguishing and comparing different diffusion channels and thus for understanding policy diffusion as a governance approach. In particular, the results suggest that different types of interventions may be needed to support adaptation policy development at the local level. This is important information for the efficient allocation of scarce (local) resources and for policymakers seeking to capitalize on policy diffusion.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Schulze, Kai. 2024. “ The Soft Channels of Policy Diffusion: Insights From Local Climate Change Adaptation Policy.” Policy Studies Journal 52(4): 881–906. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12555.

About the Author

Kai Schulze is an Adjunct Professor with the Institute of Political Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany leading the Junior Research Group on Integrated Systems Analysis. His research focuses on comparative public policy and politics, particularly in the fields of energy, climate, and environment. His work has appeared in journals such as Climate Policy, European Journal of Political Research, Global Environmental Politics, Regional Environmental Change, Regulation & Governance, Review of Policy Research, WIREs Climate Change.

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