Publishing with a purpose

Prizes

	The Ken Young Best Paper Prize	The Bleddyn Davies Early Career Prize
2021	Jenny M Lewis, Michael McGann and Emma Blomkamp When design meets power: Design thinking, public sector innovation and the politics of policymaking	Margot Hermus, Arwin van Buuren and Victor Bekkers Applying design in public administration: a literature review to explore the state of the art
2020	Selen Ercan, Carolyn M Hendriks and John S Dryzek Public Deliberation in an Era of Communicative Plenty	Joram Feitsma Brokering Behaviour Change: the Work Of Behavioural Insights Experts In Government and Toby Lowe, Jonathan Kimmitt, Rob Wilson, Mike Martin and Jane Gibbon Institutional Work of Creating and Implementing Social Impact Bonds
2019	Christopher M. Weible and Paul Cairney Practical Lessons from Policy Theories	Madeleine Pill and Valeria Guarneros-Meza Local governance under austerity: hybrid organisations and hybrid officers
2018	Selen Ercan, Carolyn Hendriks and John Boswell Studying public deliberation after the systemic turn: the crucial role for interpretive research	Rikki John Dean Beyond radicalism and resignation: the competing logics for public participation in policy decisions
2017	Jo Ingold and Mark Monaghan Evidence translation: an exploration of policy makers' use of evidence	Zachary Morris Constructing the need for retrenchment: disability benefits in the United States and Great Britain
2016	Michael Howlett, Ishani Mukherjee and Jun Jie Woo From tools to toolkits in policy design studies: the new design orientation towards policy formulation research	Owen Corrigan Conditionality of legal status and immigrant occupational attainment in Western Europe
2015	Will Leggett The politics of behavioural change: nudge, neo-liberalism and the state	Caroline Kuzemko Politicising UK energy: what “speaking energy security” can do
2014	Mark Purcell The right to the city: the struggle for democracy in the urban public realm	Katherine Smith Institutional filters: the translation and re-circulation of ideas about health inequalities within policy

The 2021 Winners

The Bleddyn Davies Early Career Prize has been awarded to:

Margot Hermus, Arwin van Buuren & Victor Bekkers for their article Applying design in public administration: a literature review to explore the state of the art

In this outstanding paper, the winner of the prize for the best paper published in 2020 by an early career researcher Margot Hermus, along with colleagues, Arwin Van Buuren and Viktor Bekkers, present a state-of-the-art analysis of public sector design processes from their systematic literature review. Although they find a wide variety of methods and approaches, they conclude that there is an overrepresentation of more expert-driven and informational design approaches. Moreover, collaboration is often restricted to public officials and to consultation instead of co-creation. Although a more design-led way of thinking is increasingly used in practice as a way to develop policies and services, it has until now not generally been used by scholars in the field as a method for investigation or doing research. They conclude by posing a provocative question for the future research agenda of policy design: how can we connect design and design thinking to our way of doing research in order to intertwine the scientific and societal validation of our knowledge and to increase our impact as a field.

With its scientific analysis and clear, concise conclusions about the scholarly contribution the article makes to the field, this is a worthy winner of our Bleddyn Davies prize. Congratulations Margot, Arwin and Viktor!

The Ken Young Best Paper prize has been awarded to:

Jenny M Lewis, Michael McGann and Emma Blomkamp for their article on When design meets power: Design thinking, public sector innovation and the politics of policymaking

In their award winning article, the winners of the prize for the best paper published in 2020, Jenny Lewis, Michael McGann and Emma Blomkamp, take us on a fascinating journey of discovery to explore what happens when design thinking comes into contact with power and politics. Along the way, they argue that policymakers need to learn how to incorporate the insights and practices from design thinking into policy. At the same time, though, they also argue that designers too need to learn how to deal with the politics of the policy process. They conclude that, if both sets of actors are willing to learn from each other, there should be significant benefits for policy design and all those affected by it. Indeed, they argue that it is crucial for the future of the field to appreciate the complementarities and tensions between design thinking and policy design, in order to improve policy design in the future.

This paper stands out as being the worthy winner of our annual best paper prize. Congratulations Jenny, Michael and Emma!

Criteria

The Ken Young best paper prize is awarded to the paper published in the previous year’s volume judged to represent excellence in the field. The winner’s paper will receive publicity and a period of free electronic access to their article to encourage use and citation.

the selected paper must have been published in the previous year’s volume
all papers, including research provocations, are eligible
individual authors and teams of authors are eligible
the nominations will be shortlisted and selected by the co-editors
metrics on downloads and citations are used as part of the selection
a short written summary statement is published on the rationale for the selection

The Bleddyn Davies early career prize is awarded to the best paper published in the previous year’s volume by an early career author. The winner’s paper will receive publicity and a period of free electronic access to their article to encourage use and citation.

the selected paper must have been published in the previous year’s volume
early career authors are those who completed their PhD no more than 4 years ago
individual authors and teams of authors are eligible
the nominations will be shortlisted and selected by the co-editors
metrics on downloads and citations are used as part of the selection
a short written summary statement is published on the rationale for the selection

About the Prizes

Thanks to the initiative of Bleddyn Davies and Ken Young in the early 1970s, we celebrated 40 years of the journal in 2012 and we are delighted to name two annual prizes after them in recognition of their innovative ideas and determination to put interdisciplinary analysis of and for policy firmly on the academic map in the UK and beyond.

The first issue of Policy & Politics, published by Macmillan, appeared in September 1972, with Bleddyn Davies (LSE) as founding editor and Ken Young (also at the LSE) as Associate Editor. Both had been heavily involved in the deliberations about the launch of a new journal which initially focused on local government "whilst drawing on a variety of disciplines and approaches". By September 1974 (Vol.3, No.1), publication had moved to Sage, its scope and coverage had been broadened in the sphere of public policymaking and Bleddyn and Ken became joint editors, both having moved to the University of Kent at Canterbury. The next change occurred with the January 1979 issue (Vol.7, No.1) as a result of the move by Ken to the University of Bristol, bringing the journal with him to be published by the then School for Advanced Urban Studies (SAUS). Bleddyn became a member of the Editorial Board and Ken was the Managing Editor of the journal until he handed on to Michael Hill in January 1980 (Vol.8, No,1). The journal continued to be published by SAUS until the School merged with the School of Applied Social Studies (SASS) in 1995 to form the School for Policy Studies, after which the newly created Bristol University based publisher, The Policy Press, took over the production of Policy & Politics.

Publishing with a purpose

Prizes

The 2021 Winners

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