LIST OF WORKSHOPS

This workshop explores how these core institutional differences shape the translation of policy into practice. In authoritarian systems, the absence of free and fair multiparty elections weakens mechanisms of accountability and alters incentives for bureaucrats and policymakers. Control over information—through censorship, propaganda, and surveillance—affects how policies are framed, communicated, and received by citizens. Likewise, restrictions on collective action and civil society narrow the channels through which feedback, contestation, and policy learning can occur. In contrast, democratic systems rely more heavily on openness, deliberation, and participation, yet also face challenges of polarization, information overload, and fragmented accountability.

We welcome both qualitative and quantitative studies, as well as conceptual and comparative contributions on any policy area. The expected outcome is to broaden the scope of policy process research beyond democratic contexts, identify underexplored mechanisms—information control, constrained participation, and bureaucratic incentives—and foster a lasting network of scholars studying policy implementation across political systems. This workshop contributes to a more global and inclusive understanding of how governance works in practice.

The workshop seeks to deepen understanding of how policy implementation operates under different political systems by focusing on three interrelated objectives:

·       Information and Communication:
To examine how varying levels of transparency, media control, and information flow shape the framing, communication, and monitoring of public policies across political systems.

·       Participation and Collective Action:
To analyze how the presence or restriction of civic engagement, association, and protest influences policy compliance, feedback mechanisms, and the perceived legitimacy of governing institutions.

·       Appointments, Elections, and Incentives
To investigate how systems for selecting and rewarding political and administrative elites—through appointments, elections, or party structures—affect bureaucratic discretion, loyalty, and accountability in policy implementation.

Research questions

Research questions to be discussed in the workshop include, but are not limited to:

·        How do differences in access to information, media freedom, and censorship shape the framing, communication, and enforcement of public policies?

·        In what ways do constraints on political competition and civic organization influence bureaucratic discretion, compliance, and policy adaptation?

·        How do policymakers and bureaucrats learn and adjust in contexts with limited transparency or restricted feedback from citizens and non-state actors?

·        What role do informal networks, intermediaries, or digital platforms play in compensating for (or reinforcing) limitations on pluralism and participation?

·        How do implementation practices in more centralized political systems differ from those in open, pluralistic ones—and what can these differences teach us about state capacity and responsiveness?

·        What methodological and ethical challenges do researchers face when studying implementation processes in environments with censorship, surveillance, or restricted access to data?

We welcome both qualitative and quantitative papers, as well as mixed-method and conceptual approaches. Contributions may focus on specific policy areas—such as environmental regulation, health, digital governance—or offer comparative analyses across countries and regions.

Hypotheses

Hypotheses to be developed and tested in the workshop include, but are not limited to:

·       Where information is less available, ambiguity is reduced in policy processes as there are fewer competing ways to think about phenomenon in the public discourse.

·       There is a positive correlation between political competition and bureaucratic discretion, where reduced competition means elected officials have less reliance on bureaucrats to navigate ambiguity at the street-level.

·       As transparency becomes obstructed, policy learning across systems is reduced, and bureaucrats or policymakers must rely more heavily on their own experiences as they navigate how to satisfy various stakeholders.

·       Implementation practices in open, pluralistic systems are more flexible and innovative, while those in centralized systems are less responsive to political shifts.

Scientific Relevance and Expected Impact

This workshop will broaden the scope of policy process research beyond democracies, integrating insights from authoritarian contexts. Moreover, it will also identify new mechanisms—information control, constrained participation, and elite incentives—that shape implementation but remain underexplored in mainstream theories. And finally, the workshop will contribute to methodological guidance for scholars working under restricted access to data (Ahram and Goode, 2016; Allam, 2025), offering strategies for safe and ethical research practices.

The workshop will create a lasting international research network linking scholars from different regions and political systems. It will support early-career researchers, especially those based in or studying restrictive environments, through mentorship and knowledge exchange.

Building on the insights developed during the workshop, the chairs plan to develop a special issue for submission to a leading public policy journal. This publication will synthesize comparative findings, advance conceptual debates on implementation across political systems (Sætren and Radlick, 2025), and extend the visibility of this emerging research agenda.

At the same time, the workshop will generate comparative insights that inform practitioners and international organizations working across regime types about realistic expectations for policy transfer and cooperation.

References

Ahram, A. I., & Goode, J. P. (2016). Researching authoritarianism in the discipline of democracy. Social Science Quarterly, 97(4), 834-849.

Allam, N. (2025). “Like Us, but Not Quite Us”: Researching Gender Politics in Autocratic Contexts. Perspectives on Politics, 23(2), 705-716.

Capano, G. (2025). Policy implementation and policy instruments: The underdeveloped dimensions of the four “political” American policy process theories. A Western European perspective. European Policy Analysis, 11(2), 230-253.

Coppedge, M., Gerring, J., Altman, D., Bernhard, M., Fish, S., Hicken, A., Kroenig, M., Lindberg, S. I., McMann, K., Paxton, P., Semetko, H. A., Skaaning, S., Staton, J., Teorell, J., & A. Semetko, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton and Jan Teorell. (2011). Conceptualizing and measuring democracy: A new approach. Perspectives on Politics, 9(2), 247–267.

Dahl, R. A. (1971). Polyarchy: Participation and opposition. Yale University Press.

Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and its critics. John Wiley and Sons.

Dahl, R. A. (1998). On democracy. Yale University Press.

Fowler, L. (2023). Democratic Policy Implementation in an Ambiguous World.

Glasius, M. (2018). What authoritarianism is… and is not: A practice perspective. International Affairs, 94(3), 515–533.

Glasius, M., De Lange, M., Bartman, J., Dalmasso, E., Lv, A., Del Sordi, A., ... & Ruijgrok, K. (2018). Research, ethics and risk in the authoritarian field. Springer Nature.

Lührmann, A., Tannenberg, M., & Lindberg, S. I. (2018). Regimes of the World (RoW): Opening New Avenues for the Comparative Study of Political Regimes. Working Paper Center for Systemic Peace, 6(1), 2183–2463. https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v6i1.1214

Nord, M., Angiolillo, F., Good God, A., & Lindberg, S. I. (2025). State of the world 2024: 25 years of autocratization–democracy trumped?. Democratization, 32(4), 839-864.

Sager, F., Mavrot, C., & Keiser, L. R. (Eds.). (2024). Handbook of public policy implementation. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Van den Dool, A., & Schlaufer, C. (2024). Policy process theories in autocracies: Key observations, explanatory power, and research priorities. Review of Policy Research, 41(6), 865-891.

Despite the centrality of policy implementation in the policy process (Fowler, 2024), most English-language scholarship focuses on democratic settings—contexts where transparency, pluralism, and accountability are assumed to shape governance. Much less is known about how implementation unfolds in authoritarian or hybrid regimes, where political competition is limited, access to information is restricted, and collective action is tightly controlled (Van den Dool & Schlaufer, 2024). Yet implementation is precisely where state capacity, legitimacy, and responsiveness are ultimately tested, regardless of regime type.

Amid global democratic backsliding and the persistence of authoritarian governance, this gap in knowledge has become increasingly significant. Furthermore, urgent policy challenges—such as climate change, digital governance, and public health—require a deeper understanding of how political systems condition the translation of policy into practice. This workshop seeks to advance a more global and comparative understanding of policy implementation by exploring how institutional differences shape administrative behavior, communication, and accountability.

We invite papers that investigate how implementation operates under varying political conditions, focusing on three interrelated dimensions:

1.     Information and Communication – How do transparency, censorship, and media regulation influence the framing, monitoring, and evaluation of policy?

2.     Participation and Collective Action – How do constraints or opportunities for civic engagement and feedback shape legitimacy, compliance, and policy learning?

3.     Appointments, Elections, and Incentives – How do elite selection and reward systems affect bureaucratic discretion, loyalty, and accountability?

The workshop welcomes qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method contributions, as well as conceptual and comparative papers focused on any policy area. Contributions may explore specific cases or develop broader theoretical insights into how political systems shape governance practices. We also invite reflection on methodological and ethical challenges of studying implementation in environments marked by censorship, surveillance, or restricted access to data.

The expected outcomes include establishing a research network on policy implementation across regime types, producing a special issue in a leading public policy journal, and developing methodological guidance for research in restrictive environments (Ahram & Goode, 2016; Allam, 2025). By integrating perspectives from both democratic and authoritarian contexts, this workshop seeks to broaden the analytical scope of policy process research and foster a more inclusive understanding of how governance works in practice.

References

Ahram, A. I., & Goode, J. P. (2016). Researching authoritarianism in the discipline of democracy. Social Science Quarterly, 97(4), 834-849.

Allam, N. (2025). “Like Us, but Not Quite Us”: Researching Gender Politics in Autocratic Contexts. Perspectives on Politics, 23(2), 705-716.

Fowler, L. (2023). Democratic Policy Implementation in an Ambiguous World.

Van den Dool, A., & Schlaufer, C. (2024). Policy process theories in autocracies: Key observations, explanatory power, and research priorities. Review of Policy Research, 41(6), 865-891.

Despite the importance of policy implementation in the policy process (Fowler, 2024), the existing English-language literature mostly focuses on democratic settings, where assumptions about transparency, pluralism, and accountability structure both theory and practice. By contrast, much less is known about how implementation unfolds in authoritarian systems—contexts characterized by limited political competition, restricted access to information, and state control over collective action (Van den Dool and Schlaufer, 2024).

Yet, implementation is precisely where the state’s capacity, legitimacy, and responsiveness are ultimately tested, regardless of regime type. This gap in knowledge about how political systems shape policy implementation has become increasingly significant amid democratic backsliding and the growing number of authoritarian and hybrid regimes worldwide (Nord et al., 2025). Moreover, given the urgency of climate change and other complex societal issues, it is crucial to better understand implementation processes, especially its political dimension (Sager et al., 2024).

This workshop explores how institutional differences shape the translation of policy into practice, focusing on three interrelated dimensions: (1) information and communication, (2) participation and collective action; and (3) incentives, appointments, and elections. These dimensions capture the fundamental contrasts between democratic and authoritarian systems, shaping both the process and the outcomes of policy implementation (Dahl, 1971, 1989, 1998; Glasius, 2018; Coppedge et al., 2011; Lührmann et al. 2018; Van den Dool and Schlaufer, 2024).

Key questions to be discussed during the workshop include how censorship and media regulation affect policy communication and implementation monitoring; how opportunities for participation and collective action shape government legitimacy and feedback; and how systems of appointment and election shape public official performance and the quality of policy delivery. The workshop also invites reflection on the methodological and ethical challenges of studying implementation in contexts marked by censorship, surveillance, or limited data availability (Glasius et al., 2018).

Dr. Luke Fowler is a Professor of Public Policy and Administration in the School of Public Service at Boise State University. His research interests include policy implementation, collaboration and collective action, energy and environmental policy, and state and local government. His work sits at the intersection of policy processes, public management, and democratic governance and he seeks to build more robust theories to examine how policies become practices. Dr. Fowler is the author of more than four dozen journal articles appearing in many of the field’s top journals, and two books, Democratic Policy Implementation in an Ambiguous World (SUNY Press) and Environmental Federalism: Old Legacies and New Challenges (Routledge). Dr. Fowler currently serves the Director of the Idaho Policy Institute; he previously served as SPS’s Faculty Director and MPA program lead. He completed his Ph.D. at Mississippi State University in 2013.

Dr. Annemieke van den Dool is an assistant professor in the Social Sciences Division at Duke Kunshan University in China, where she teaches policy analysis, policy processes, and crisis management. Her research focuses on policymaking, policy process theories, and crisis management in China, especially in the areas of health and the environment. She aims to build bridges between existing literature on theories of the policy process and crisis management (both are predominantly based on studies conducted in democracies) and research on authoritarian settings. Van den Dool co-edited a special issue (Review of Policy Research) on policy processes in authoritarian settings.