Editorial Team Introduction

Abstract

Welcome to the new PSJ editorial team’s inaugural issue! And with 10 cutting edge policy research articles within, a great issue we think it is. In what follows, we briefly discuss and summarize the PSJ’s new contributions to the literature, dividing them into three general themes: first, a theme capturing research that tests aspects of major policy theory frameworks, another which explores collective decision making and policy influence, and a third that consists of research addressing education policy. What has become an identifying characteristic of research published within the PSJ is that said research refines, develops, or challenges existing policy theory. In a way, you might say it is a hallmark of the PSJ, distinguishing it from other policy publications and providing the journal with both a distinct identity and core constituency. On the theory front, this issue does not disappoint. Three articles fall into our first theme by explicitly contributing to the development of three major policy process frameworks including the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), and the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF). Research which has been previously published in PSJ examined the role of beliefs in coordination efforts among coalitions and the relationship between beliefs, coordination, and policy change (e.g., Lodge & Matus, 2014; Rietig, 2018; Shanahan, Jones, & McBeth, 2011; Stritch, 2015); this issue continues this tradition with research by Gronow and Ylä-Anttila (2019). Addressing a long-time criticism of ACF—the assumption that collaboration automatically follows shared beliefs (Fischer, 2014; Leifeld, 2013)—and leveraging the work of Ingold (2011), Gronow and Ylä-Anttila (2019) apply network analysis to examine collaboration ties, belief similarity, and the distribution of resources among Finland’s corporatist polities. They test two explanations as to why Finland’s policies toward climate change are the least effective of all Nordic countries. Their findings reveal that weak environmental policies are the result of a coalition structure that prioritizes economic growth. These results contribute to the ACF by highlighting how collaboration and shared beliefs among coalitions are important, but also illuminate that distinct contextual considerations are necessary for understanding policy change. Nearly a decade ago, PSJ introduced the NPF to public policy (Jones & McBeth, 2010). In 2018, the journal published a special symposium issue showcasing NPF research spanning multiple levels of analysis, applying innovative and mixed methodological approaches, and applied to diverse policy areas (Gottlieb, Bertone Oehninger, & Arnold, 2018; Kirkpatrick & Stoutenborough, 2018; Lawlor & Crow, 2018; McBeth & Lybecker, 2018; McMorris, Zanocco, & Jones, 2018; Shanahan, Raile, French, & McEvoy, 2018; Smith-Walter, 2018; Zanocco, Song, & Jones, 2018). In that 2018 special issue, Merry (2018) applied NPF to examine how gun policy organizations used social media messaging to expand or contract the scope of conflict. In the current issue, Merry (2019) once again applies the NPF, but this time examining how shared beliefs within a coalition are strategically used to change policy. Departing from a traditional approach to analyzing a devil/angel shift (Shanahan, Jones, McBeth, & Lane, 2013), Merry (2019) argues that analyses of strategic communications should evaluate the concepts of good/evil separately from that of power. This represents a fundamental change in how the devil/angel shift of advocacy coalition messaging is conceptualized and operationalized. Using content analysis, Merry (2019) identifies four distinct communication strategies (including the Devil Shift/Angel Shift along with two alternative characterizations Devil Diminished/Angel in Distress) around gun policy in the United States, and in doing so, reveals promising new threads of research for both the NPF and ACF. Perhaps the most ubiquitously applied policy process framework (Cairney & Jones, 2016; Jones et al., 2016), MSF is most often used to help explain policy agenda setting (e.g., Liu, Lindquist, Vedlitz, & Vincent, 2010; Winkel & Leipold, 2016). In this issue of PSJ, Engler and Herweg (2019) address several criticisms leveled at previous applications of the MSF by advocating the use of medium to large n studies, cautioning scholars to carefully define dependent variables, and considering marrying data collection with the operationalization of MSF elements, while keeping in mind that routinely used analytical methods, such as regression, entail significant tradeoffs. Overall, the approach and best practices presented in this article are meant to reduce definitional vagueness and facilitate the development of empirically testable hypotheses necessary for continued theoretical development of MSF. Next, we turn our attention to our second theme. This issue of the PSJ presents five articles that can be generally characterized as focusing on decision-making schemes and policy influence, spanning from specific factors affecting political leaders’ policy decisions to citizen participation in the policy process. Though the analysis of polycentric systems of governance is not new to policy research (e.g., Fischer & Maag, 2019; Hamilton & Lubell, 2018; Hileman & Bodin, 2018), Carlisle and Gruby (2019) attempt to provide clarity to the concept by proposing a theoretical model that focuses on institutional features that positively impact functionality. Their model includes two attributes, each with a set of enabling conditions that are likely to lead to the proposed advantages of polycentric governance systems (i.e., enhanced adaptive capacity as compared to more centralized governance systems, the production of institutions that match the problem to be addressed, and the reduced risk of resource losses and institutional failure via redundancy). As a result, this theoretical model offers the prospect of moving us toward a more nuanced and contextualized study of polycentric governance systems as well as the conditions under which they can lead to desired outcomes, particularly in the context of natural resource governance. Continuing with the topic of policy governance, Hawkins and Rosete (2019) deviate from Rorie, Emrey, and Haire’s (2006) work, examining court-to-court influence over policy-making decisions in their analysis of the impact of social science research on Columbian health care policymaking. While investigating a country that has become increasingly dependent on judicial action for policy-making change, the authors seek to determine the extent to which judges utilize research as evidence in their policy judgments that have significant policy and budgetary consequences. They combine a broad discussion of Columbia’s health system with contemporary literature on evidence-informed policymaking, arguing that the judicialization of health policymaking in this case largely fails to meet the overall objective of evidence-informed policymaking and whose outcomes may thereby fall short of original policy expectations. Further analyzing the functioning of government through the political decisionmaking of individual governmental actors, Vakilifathi (2019) examines the role legislative term-limits play on a bureaucrat’s statutory discretion. Specifically, the author finds that when states enact legislative term-limits, legislatures increase the use of bureaucratic control via ex ante means. Overall, Vakilifathi’s (2019) findings indicate that, contrary to prior perceptions, legislatures that are term-limited are not necessarily less able to exert control over the bureaucracy but instead shift their control from ex-post to ex-ante form. Switching focus to the citizen participation literature, Mewhirter, Coleman, and Berardo (2019) break from the exploration of the effects of citizens’ participation on specific policy outcomes (e.g., Newig, Challies, Jager, Kochskaemper, & Adzersen, 2018) to test competing hypotheses related to how the breadth of an actor’s forum participation impacts their own perceived influence within their primary policy forum. Using survey data, the researchers find that an increase in the breadth of forum participation increases the influence of actors in primary forums. However, this increase in the breadth of forum participation does not increase the influence of actors in non-primary forums—a finding that has significant consequences for how we understand the connection between citizen participation and policy influence. Continuing along this line of research of citizen–government relations, Kim and Lee (2019) examine the relationship between citizens’ participation in various phases of local government policymaking and corresponding perceptions of the extent of that government’s transparency. Analyzing in-person and online participation, the authors utilize a two-stage least squares approach to find that, though both are associated with a more positive assessment of transparency, online participation channels have less of an impact than offline, and that participation in the agenda setting and evaluation policy phases, in particular, have a positive effect on transparency assessment. This inaugural issue’s final two articles address topics of educational policy, one focusing on multiple factors affecting school success, and the other on one specific element that may affect success at the individual student-level. Building upon the previous work of Percy and Maier (1996), Ford and Andersson (2019) explore the role of policy innovation through means of public entrepreneurship, specifically focusing on the failure rates of schools within the Milwaukee School Voucher Program. Using 25 years’ worth of data from 1991 to 2015, Ford and Andersson (2019) find that start-up voucher schools have substantial difficulty overcoming their “liability of newness” (Stinchcombe, 1965), leading the authors to conclude that school failure rate can be attributed to risks associated with high levels of entrepreneurial activity. Finally, Holt and Gershenson (2019) utilize representative bureaucracy theory (previously applied by Naff, 1995) to examine whether student–teacher demographic mismatch impacts student absences and suspensions for primary school students in North Carolina. Using a two-way fixed effects strategy, the authors find that both absences and suspensions are increased when there is a demographic mismatch between the student and teacher. Further, this relationship was stronger for both male and non-white students, with the largest effects occurring for non-white male students assigned to white teachers. Overall, these findings provide support for representative bureaucracy theory and suggest that having demographically representative bureaucracies will likely lead to better outcomes, particularly in the case of the racial match between student and teacher. We would like to thank the readers for taking the time to read the inaugural introduction to the new PSJ editorial team’s inaugural issue. We believe the 10 articles contained herein continue the PSJ tradition of presenting top-shelf policy research that both contests and enhances our theoretical understanding of public policy while also offering important real-world relevance. But you do not have to take our word for it. Read the articles!