Policy Learning

PSJ 54/3 2026-08-12 Original A Narrative Walks Into a Forum: Bridging the Narrative Policy and Ecology of Games Frameworks Rachel McGovern, Danielle M. McLaughlin, Jack Mewhirter, Michael D. Jones

AJPS — 2026-08-10 Original Endogenous coalition formation in policy debates Philip Leifeld, Laurence Brandenberger Abstract Abstract Political actors form coalitions around their joint normative beliefs in order to influence the policy process on contentious issues such as climate change or population aging. Policy process theory maintains that learning within and across coalitions is a central predictor of policy change but has yet to explain how policy learning works. This article explains the formation and maintenance of coalitions by focusing on the ways actors adopt policy beliefs from other actors in policy debates. A policy debate is a complex social system in which temporal network dependence guides how actors contribute ideological statements. Belief adoption matters in three complementary ways: bonding , which exploits cues within coalitions; bridging , which explores new beliefs outside one's perimeter; and repulsion , which reinforces polarization between coalitions and cements their belief systems. We formalize this theory of endogenous coalition formation in policy debates and test it on a micro‐level empirical data set.

PSJ — 2026-06-21 Original Policy Learning: Mapping the Conceptual Minefield Bishoy Zaki Abstract ABSTRACT Policy learning has become a central and widely deployed lens in public policy and administration research. Yet policy learning's success has also produced paradoxical effects. Decades of scholarship have generated a dense conceptual terrain populated by numerous constructs and learning descriptors that are often unclearly positioned and frequently collapsed into the broad label of “learning types.” The result is persistent conceptual ambiguity that limits comparability and hinders cumulative knowledge production, leaving policy learning widely experienced as a “minefield” of overlapping constructs. This article addresses that problem by mapping the policy learning terrain through building an Archimedean device that develops four construct categories, forms , modes , mechanisms , and types of learning , anchored in two reference points: the occurrence of learning, defined as the deliberate pursuit and processing of policy‐relevant knowledge by policy actors, and learning outcomes, meaning what learning produces, ranging from stability to varying degrees of change. It maps a selected set of prominent constructs into these categories to provide a construct‐identity crosswalk and shared analytic grammar that support clearer specification, more defensible operationalization, and the space for more consistent cross‐study synthesis without erasing theoretical pluralism, and that can be layered onto existing learning frameworks for additional analytical leverage and theory development.