The article presents two models of public policy evaluation: one named idealistic and the other named pragmatic. In the former, social progress occurs when changes in the form of how society is organised bring us closer to social institutions and public authority conduct considered ideal. In the latter, social progress occurs if the prevailing social state (postchanges) is taken to be better than the previous social state (prechanges), according to certain pre-established judgement criteria. It is argued that the adoption of different models is one of the main obstacles to clarity in the public debate on the implementation of public policies, namely, that of making the points of disagreement explicit. The article presents a defence of the pragmatic model, which is considered more compatible with the use of scientific criteria in order to assess the effectiveness of policies.

Shared beliefs are seen as a basis for policy coordination in the literature. Actors sharing beliefs coordinate their activities in order to translate their beliefs into policies. However, the literature shows that actors also coordinate for policy change across such belief coalitions for diverse reasons. Drawing on the literature on incentives in collective action organisations, we systematise these motives. We argue that rational motivations, such as access to material resources, as well as relational motivations, including power and reputation gains, may convince actors to coordinate. Based on 25 semi-structured expert interviews, we illustrate our propositions with a case study on the motivations that led actors to coordinate and support a vocational education and training (VET) programme for refugees in Switzerland. Coordination between a coalition of VET actors and a coalition of migration actors succeeded despite divergent policy beliefs, mainly due to rational motivations.

Indicators are important sources of information about problems across many policy areas. However, despite a growing number of indicators across most policy areas, such as health care, business promotion, or environmental protection, we still know little about if, how, and when such indicators affect the policy agenda. This article develops a theoretical answer to these questions and examines the implications using a new large-n dataset with 220,000 parliamentary questions asked by government and opposition MPs in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. The data contain information on political attention to 17 problems, such as unemployment, C02 emission, and crime from 1960 to 2015. Across this wealth of data, the article demonstrates that politicians respond to the severity and development of problem indicators over time and in comparison to other countries. Results also show that politicians respond much more when problem indicators develop negatively than when they develop positively.

As implementers, public officials have historically enjoyed substantial influence in the public policy process, but little attention has been paid to the effect of psychological elements on their attitudes towards implementing policy instruments. The authors argue that from a behavioural public administration perspective, public officials’ attitudes towards implementing certain policy instruments are not rational, but instead biased. Using two survey experiments on 1,024 Chinese public officials, this study examines the cognitive and motivational bias of public officials’ attitudes towards implementing policy instruments. The findings indicate that when public officials are presented with risk information in a negative framing, they are more reluctant to implement indirect policy instruments than direct ones, and this phenomenon becomes more pronounced when their public interest orientation is activated, rather than their personal interest orientation. The findings contribute to the theoretical understanding of the effect of psychological biases on public officials’ attitudes towards policy implementation.

What explains different rates of positive asylum decisions in Western democracies? Legislators and bureaucrats respond to public preferences on immigration, though studies have not accounted for salience amplifying preferences. Using autoregressive models, I find relationships between salience, preferences, and asylum recognition rates in Germany and the UK, indicating that asylum administration responds to public opinion. High salience and more open immigration preferences are associated with increased asylum recognition rates in Germany, while lower rates in the UK follow high salience and restrictive preferences. Applications rejected under these adverse conditions precede increases in successful appeals, suggesting political pressure or their own preferences lead bureaucratic actors to reduce rates in the UK. These results do not support lobbying or a culture of disbelief as influences on immigration policies. Rather, they raise questions about Western democracies’ adherence to an international rules-based asylum system and highlight mechanisms by which policy responds to public opinion.

Asylum seekers are often portrayed as “bogus refugees” who try to abuse a destination country’s generosity and protection. We scrutinise the use and effect of such a constructed abuse policy narrative in Swiss asylum referendums by examining the conveyance of this narrative by political elite actors (meso-level) and its effect on citizens’ opinion formation (micro-level). On the meso-level, our analysis shows that political organisations rely more strongly on the abuse policy narrative (1) if a referendum proposal contains more tightening as opposed to streamlining policies and (2) if their political ideology is to the right. While the first finding also applies at the micro-level, voters from both the right and the centre are likely to base their decision on the abuse policy narrative. The fact that this narrative is convincing for centrist voters is particularly important as they usually play a decisive role in the outcome of asylum referendums.

This research investigates the role of public sector innovation outcomes, e.g. trademark innovation, information and communication technology (ICT), renewable energy, and governance, in the sustainable development of Bangladesh during 1980–2019. Utilising the dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (DARDL) simulation approach, this study divulges a favourable long-term influencing profile of public sector innovation outcomes, i.e. trademark innovation, ICT, and renewable energy on sustainable development, while governance has a heterogeneous impact. Besides, the findings from the DARDL simulations area plots display 10% counterfactual shocks to the public sector innovation outcomes on sustainable development. Furthermore, the Kernel-based regularised least square machine learning algorithm approach used in the study examines the marginal effects of the public sector innovation outcomes on sustainable development for robust findings. Therefore, the policy suggestions are solely concerned with the public sector’s adoption of more innovation dynamics through appropriate policy formulation.

In 2010, the United States Congress placed a moratorium on earmarks – congressionally mandated spending projects. But did the earmark moratorium actually rid public policy of earmarks? I use earmark data and 2010–2020 state-level highway funding metrics to examine the relationship between previously expired transportation earmarks and federal highway funding during the earmark moratorium. Earmarks in the 2005 surface transportation law (SAFETEA-LU) continued to benefit certain states in 2020, even though the projects technically expired in 2009. This is because the funding “formulas” established by all post-2009 surface transportation laws were fully determined by the highway allocation percentage each state received in the preceding year, inclusive of earmarks. Further, I find the relationship between SAFETEA-LU earmarks and state funding disparities strengthened from 2010 to 2020, meaning the expired earmarks increased in policy significance during the moratorium. Highly earmarked states became even more advantaged after the earmarks were institutionalised into the highway funding formula.

What makes immigration a salient issue among Latinos? We focus on immigration – one of the most pressing issues facing the United States (US) – and evaluate the factors that motivate immigration salience among Latinos over several election cycles. Although immigration policy has been linked with the Latino electorate over the period of our study due to high foreign-born rates and mixed-status families within this community, immigration policy has actually not been the dominant issue for the majority of Latino voters over this time period. Using survey responses from the 2008, 2012 and 2016 elections, we test multiple theories of issue salience by exploring social, political and individual determinants of policy salience among Latino voters. We find that in addition to nativity, consumption of ethnic media and group identity are associated with reporting immigration as a salient issue. These findings provide a valuable addition to literature of public opinion on immigration and the origins of policy issue salience among ethno-racial minorities in the US.