Contenu du sommaire : Regular Issue

While many policy process theories mention emotions, they have remained mostly unexplored theoretically and empirically, even as broader social science literature incorporates emotions into understanding policy process-related phenomena such as political beliefs and behaviors. This paper introduces the theoretical arguments and a method for studying advocacy coalitions using a combination of emotions and beliefs within the Advocacy Coalition Framework. An application is illustrated in a natural gas pipeline siting conflict in the US using data from news media coverage. The empirical results show that coalitions express emotions and beliefs differently, and that the dyadic relationship between emotions and beliefs significantly distinguishes coalitions rather than emotions by themselves. This paper takes a significant step forward in integrating emotional and belief expressions into the ACF, adding to coalition identification methods, providing a foundation for advancing theory, and contributing to the broader community of policy studies.

Policy transfer is increasingly recognised as a process that occurs through networks of organisations and actors (Pal & Spence, 2020), but challenges persist in recognising and applying appropriate methodological tools to unpack and scrutinise this process (Stone, 2020). This paper addresses this challenge by examining the usefulness of Social Network Analysis (SNA) for policy transfer research, which is a methodology that focuses attention on networks as the central structure of social systems and foregrounds relationships between actors as the primary unit of analysis. The paper reviews the literature where SNA is applied to critique and analyse transnational policy transfer processes. The main finding demonstrates that SNA can serve as both the principal methodological framework for researching transnational policy transfer, as well as being a supplementary method. As a result, this paper argues that SNA uncovers overlooked aspects of transnational policy transfer research, making it an important component of the toolkit for policy transfer researchers.

This paper explores the merits and pitfalls of involving people with lived and living experiences of a phenomenon of interest (e.g., poverty, hunger, housing deprivation) in Participatory Action Research (PAR). As researchers who have conducted PAR and community-based research for several years, the authors have gained deep insight into the value of having lived/living experience members in PAR projects, as well as the challenges attendant to such work. Using a collaborative autoethnographic methodology, this paper provides an overview of PAR, including its purposes and objectives. Aiming to move past tokenistic inclusion, issues associated with meaningful participation, including relational (e.g., issues of power), ethical (e.g., risks of participation), emotional (e.g., research triggers), economic (e.g., remunerating contributions and financially supporting participation), representational (e.g., whose perspectives are advanced), and structural barriers (e.g., time, technological connectivity, etc.) are discussed using concrete examples. Bringing together people who may hold disparate perspectives, community ties, worldviews, and visions associated with a research undertaking can create challenges, but not including those who experience the phenomenon of study can create even more challenges.

Transparency studies are characterised by critical insights into the contextual determinants as well as the consequences of open and accountable processes. In the realm of fiscal governance, studies of transparency have focused on a variety of issues, ranging from budget efficiency to investment opportunities. However, since fiscal transparency remains a deeply interdisciplinary field, emphasis on determinants and context-dependency occupy a secondary role in the scholarship. Transparency is seen as a pre-condition for other governance and development outcomes – most causal studies analyse this directionality, whilst few consider other factors that mediate transparency. Against this backdrop, I survey the literature on fiscal transparency, systematically review a sample of 35 empirical studies, and present the results of a meta-analysis of the reported effects. I analyse these results emphasising a proposed typology based on the distinction between normative and experienced effects of transparency. The findings support my claim that transparency outcomes heavily depend on the aspects of observed and measured transparency policies, which are not consistent across the literature, and that the perceived effects of transparency, vis-a-vis the normative ones, are strongly overestimated in the literature. I discuss the implications and point to further research avenues in this area.