Editorial Note

Abstract

The mission of the Policy Studies Journal is to develop and extend theories of policy making processes, which provides an extensive palette for scholars to explore a wide variety of research questions and policy topics. This issue reflects the diversity of theoretical approaches, methods, policies, and research questions that the PSJ embraces. Furthermore, the issue represents important research grounded in data from Costa Rica, Europe, Kenya, and the United States, illustrating a breadth of applications. Three manuscripts focus on the relationships between public preferences and public policies. Wlezien (2017) distinguishes among representation, responsiveness, and congruence. As he notes, substantial attention has been devoted to the correspondence of public policy positions of representatives and their constituencies. That is, how well do representatives represent the preferences of their constituents? Somewhat less attention has been devoted to how responsive public officials are to public preferences. Is policy changed in response to changes in public opinion? But much less attention is paid to how closely public policies correspond to, or match public preferences. Wlezien (2017), in addition to providing an excellent literature review, examines notable challenges of studying congruence (compared to representation and responsiveness) and different approaches for addressing these challenges. Breznau (2017) takes up the challenge of responsiveness by exploring the simultaneous feedback between social policy and public opinion. Using public opinion data from the International Social Survey Program, and spending on social programs from the OECD, Breznau (2017) finds that both thermostatic and positive returns processes are at play. As Breznau (2017, p. 583) concludes, “This work provides theoretical and empirical evidence that equilibrium is part of the story of positive returns, or what is more generally known as institutional path dependency.” Finally, Flavin and Franko (2017) examine representation. In particular, they explore not policy adoptions, but policy agendas. Are the issues that citizens find most important the issues that appear on government agendas? Do those issues and do governments’ attention to them differ by citizens’ wealth? Flavin and Franko (2017), comparing across U.S. states on several policy issues, provide a qualified yes to the latter question. On some issues, governments are more responsive to the priorities of more wealthy citizens. Read together, the three manuscripts provide interesting theoretical and substantive insights on the performance of democracies. Rivera, Naranjo, Robalino, Alpizar, and Blackman (2017) and McCord, Dell'Angelo, Baldwin, and Evans (2017) examine two different forms of community-based governance. Rivera et al. (2017) examine the performance of a voluntary environmental program, the Ecological Blue Flag Program in Costa Rica. They find that voluntary cooperation to provide public benefits of enhanced environmental performance and green reputation of businesses is more likely among communities that can draw upon greater levels of economic, social, and political capital. The manuscript makes a valuable contribution to the voluntary environmental governance literature by examining a community level program in contrast to the more common programs that target individual firms. McCord et al. (2017), provide an important empirical test of a polycentric system. They examine the governance of water by user groups nested in a multitiered system in the Mount Kenya region of Kenya. Drawing on the IAD and SES frameworks, the scholars examine whether the polycentric governing arrangements imposed in a top down fashion by the government encouraged water managers and water users to act polycentrically. They find that some water user groups began experimenting with rules, limiting access to water systems that had the benefit of stabilizing water flows. In addition, they find that officials across levels and groups have begun to coordinate water management activities, although there is a coercive element supporting the coordination, which has created some tension. As the authors conclude, given the rising interest in polycentricity, more empirical studies that examine the performance of different dimensions of polycentric systems are needed. Finally, Hurka, Adam, and Knill (2017) extend theorizing on morality policies by testing for policy punctuations across manifest and latent morality policies among 19 European countries. Manifest policies are grounded in first principles; examples include abortion and euthanasia. Latent policies are grounded in multiple dimensions, not only touching on first principles, but economic or social considerations as well. Examples include guns and gambling. They find that all morality policies are punctuated, but that as hypothesized, manifest policies are more so compared to latent morality policies. Furthermore, they do not find that type of governing system affects the magnitude of punctuations. Thus, they conclude that the characteristics of policies, rather than the institutional characteristics of governing systems account for punctuations in different types of morality policies.