What if, instead of viewing legislators as distant or indirect audiences for public writing, we shifted to engage them as community partners, collaborating in a mutually beneficial relationship to develop fresh policy ideas from voices that are often missing in lawmaking? This article tells the story of a partnership between a college composition…

This contribution takes up and discusses topology as a relational approach to better understand and empirically trace policy mobilities in federal education systems. While topology echoes other relational approaches in its simultaneous focus on ongoing change and the "making" of stabilized forms (e.g., policy scales), it also brings…

The last 25 years have seen a dramatic shift in tuition fee policy in England. This paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis to understand the motivations behind policy setting, comparing the pivotal reviews undertaken by Dearing, Browne and Augar. It concludes that four themes may have influenced tuition fee policy making: national politics and…

This paper seeks to connect the work on policy mobility in education and that in other fields through a review of literature. Drawing on material from political science, international relations, geography, and economic and social development, it discusses different forms of policy mobility like traveling policies, policy borrowing, and silent…

There is increasing international focus on system-wide schemes of teaching excellence in higher education. In this article, I explore national policy instruments intended to promote and measure teaching excellence. There appears to be very limited knowledge about what underpins the effective design of policy instruments for teaching excellence.…

The main theories of the thriving field of study of public policies have been formulated at institutions of developed countries, mostly by the American academy, based on the particular conditions of policy-making processes of their own country. However, its heuristic premises are considered, initially, as universal and are used extensively in…

In July 2021 the Chinese Government unexpectedly released what has become known colloquially as the 'Double-Reduction' policy. The policy decreed the reduction of homework pressure on students and greater control of private tutorial companies. In this paper, we set out to understand why the Chinese central government launched the…

The article seeks to refine two central concepts in scholarly accounts of national policy responses to international data: 'selectivity' and 'instrumentalisation'. It does so by broadening, firstly, the empirical focus of research to include forms of international data other than the performance data of global learning metrics and international…

This article discusses the growth of neoliberal student activism in Brazilian higher education, considering the role of organisations called neoliberal think tanks. The following questions are addressed: why and how do these think tanks operate in the field of higher education? How do they articulate and promote student activism? The study…

Despite the fact that our knowledge on how policies are designed has substantially improved during the last two decades, prescriptive literature on policy formulation remains largely disconnected from these new findings. The article examines five major assumptions upon which policy formulation is still predominantly based: (a) there is one way…

Whether the relationship between policymaking and science has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic remains unclear. The success scientists have enjoyed in dealing with the virus and hopes they will develop a vaccine may increase the status of some experts whilst damaging populist anti-science sentiment. Some may call for increased…

Global disruptions are marking our days and calling on individuals, institutions, and the State for institutional change. Given the need to understand changing processes and their implications for society and public policy, it is vital to equip Public Administration students with the knowledge of relevant theories to assess the complexity of such…

Implementation has long been a vexed issue in the mainstream public policy literature. The literature has remained more concerned with the design of policy and evidence of its impact than on the process by which it plays out. While implementation is often portrayed as a simple process of adopting best practice, experiences indicate that it is a…

Over the past three decades, governments have recurrently intervened in higher education. Over time, significant changes have occurred in inherited national governance modes. These reforms have been assessed in different ways, such as by emphasising the shift to the more supervisory role of the State, or the increasing privatisation and…

The use of robust research findings in public health policy has been strongly encouraged for bridging the evidence-policy gap. To assess and further promote evidence uptake, understanding how research evidence is being used by decision makers is very important. This systematic review examined primary studies exploring the use of research evidence…