ABSTRACT Over the last decade, an important field of inquiry has emerged around the notion of promissory legitimation. It focuses less on the fulfillment of collective promises than on their production and reception. This paper aims, first, to foreground its relevance for – critical- policy studies, by highlighting the decisive role that promises can play in the (re)production of hegemony. Second, and more specifically, it seeks to identify some practices of promise adjustment: the everyday strategies by which governing actors adapt, modify and re-assert their promises when their credibility is under stress, in order to reproduce the hegemony of the same groups in society. I explore these practices in the case of an irrigation megaproject in Morocco, where a developmentalist promise is proving insufficient to defuse tensions surrounding future water access. I show that a key adjustment mechanism is to add new promises on top of the first one – in this case, a clientelist promise and a laissez-faire promise. The coexistence of different promises, however, displays the same chronic contradictions as policy in general, with the same attendant limitations in the hegemony it attempts to uphold.

ABSTRACT This essay critically examines recent attempts to build methodological and epistemological ‘bridges’ between positivism and interpretivism in policy research. While often presented as gestures of dialogue or pluralism, such efforts frequently conceal power asymmetries that privilege positivist logics. The result is what I term domesticated hybrids – works that adopt the language of interpretivism while neutralizing its critical and political force. Drawing from the sociology of science and critical interpretivist perspectives, the essay argues that epistemic disagreement is not a flaw but a constitutive condition of knowledge production. In its final section, I call for implicated, value-laden, and situated policy research – a form of inquiry that refuses methodological pacification, embraces conflict as a source of understanding, and reclaims the political and reflexive heart of doing science in public life.

ABSTRACT This article examines recent developments in Switzerland’s policies for long-term care (LTC), focusing on housing for older adults that includes care. Like many European countries seeking to reduce institutional care costs as their populations age, Switzerland has developed housing options that lie somewhere between institutions and individual homes. Since the late 2000s, these have been the focus of several social and health policy reforms. In this paper, we draw on documentary sources and nineteen semi-structured interviews, conducted in 2022, with officials responsible for implementing these housing policies in various Swiss cantons. Using the narrative policy framework, we show how decentralized governance produces divergent care narratives and modes of public intervention. We identify three models of housing with social care policies that reflect standardization, diversification, and government nonintervention. We also explore how the interplay of narratives regarding the state’s role, target populations, and the type of support required shapes policy design, housing supply, and resource distribution. In investigating a policy area that has received little attention in social care policy analysis, our findings contribute meaningfully to the LTC policy literature.

ABSTRACT The global competition for talent has become paramount in migration policies across the world, with expansive expectations on its economic outcomes. International talents are simultaneously expected to respond to demographic crises, create innovation, and accelerate economic growth. By studying Finnish migration policy documents, I argue that constantly evolving imaginaries of talent construct and sustain hierarchical migration regimes. Leaning on Cultural Political Economy and migration studies, I illustrate how the adoption of talent in policy discourse has contributed to the neoliberalization of hierarchical migration regimes, forming a complex rationale of selectivity, combining elements of personal merit and group-based targeting. Widely shared imaginaries, in other words visions of the future, view migrants as essentially bearers of human capital, which are conditioned to changing political ideals. Thus, I have divided the guiding imaginaries into three phases. First, the introduction of migration as a solution for managing societal changes, second, internationalization and growth, and thirdly, growth and control. This leads to an imaginary of talent that combines elements of abstract geographical and social attributes, of self-sustenance, and a constant requirement of earning one's place in the host society.

ABSTRACT In accounting for the lack of political will to meaningfully tackle environmental crises at a global level, a growing number of scholars argue that we must take seriously the role emotional and unconscious attachments play in policy discourse. In this paper, we argue that the psychic dimension of international environmental sustainability discourse (IESD) remains under-explored compared to the scholarly attention given to the structural and normative dimensions of international environmental politics. We draw on political discourse theory and critical fantasy studies to develop a framework within which to characterize and critically examine the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic upon IESD. We treat the pandemic as a dislocation, arguing that it provides a particularly productive vantage point from which to explore the fantasmatic underpinnings of IESD. We present an illustrative discourse analysis of relevant UN documents and media productions in 2020-22, foregrounding the political significance of fantasy in international environmental discourse.

ABSTRACT Achieving policy coherence between conflicting objectives of sustainable development has long been on the agendas of policymakers, practitioners and researchers alike. Turning the ideational analysis of policy studies to the focus of policy coherence, and particularly coherence in implementation of potentially conflicting sustainability goals, this paper addresses a conceptual and an empirical research gap. This study departs from the empirical example of domestic aviation in Sweden, a topic which is characterized by diverging ideas of sustainability. The polarized idea of sustainability provides a particularly fruitful base to address how ideas of policy coherence impact process and outcomes; by applying a simplified framework of analysis of observed ideational and implementation incoherence. The study finds that formulated coherence on a national level does contribute to perceived clarity of responsibility and cooperation, but that this legitimizes business as usual around ideas of growth and development. On the other hand, ideas regarding incoherence are closely linked to perceptions of justice and fairness in policy processes and ultimately an understanding of outcomes as illegitimate and unfit for rural realities; contributing to our understanding that despite a shared idea of the need for sustainable development certain sustainability policies may still face backlash.

ABSTRACT This study examines how animal-related concerns are (de)politicized within the city councils of Helsinki, Tampere, and Joensuu (Finland). Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), it identifies four discourses: (1) animals as resources, (2) animals as subjects of consideration, (3) animals as part of nature and city environments, and (4) animals as emissions. The findings show that animal-related policy concerns were often addressed without reference to animals. They became politicized when linked to broader agendas, such as climate, health, culture, or economy, but otherwise tended to be treated as technical or administrative matters. Animal rights concerns were rarely politicized and often absent. The study advances debates in animal politics and critical policy studies by demonstrating how discursive and institutional structures delimit political space while also revealing openings for more inclusive policymaking.