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The LSE Public Policy Review

A journal on current debates in public policy

The LSE Public Policy Review is an open-access, refereed journal which publishes thematic issues focused on key topics at the heart of current debates in public policy.

 
The initiative supports collaborative cross-disciplinary research through symposia that bring together experts from across the School.

Tim Besley

Public policy challenges bring to the fore cross-cutting questions which require a global perspective and a focus on their interconnectedness. This can only be achieved through fostering dialogue across disciplines. This is why each issue of  the LSE Public Policy review brings together LSE and external scholars from a range of backgrounds whose  leading expertise can contribute to research and public debate around pressing policy challenges.

Issues

Populism

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The symposium defines populism broadly to encompass not just traditional “economic populism” —strongly redistributive economic policies that endanger fiscal and monetary stability— but also the newer strand of “political populism” –an approach to politics that emphasizes identity cleavages and denies the respect for pluralism and the protection of minority rights that is at the root of liberal democracy. Economic and political factors are related and interact.

An ultimate aim of the project would be to outline a unified conceptual approach to the causes and dynamics of populism, which would be essential before one can begin to suggest institutional and policy reforms to address the dangers of populism.

Publications

Past Events

Wellbeing

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Recent years have seen a growing interest in wellbeing as a goal of public policy. This has led to significant advances in our understanding of the measurement of subjective wellbeing and its determinants. At the same time, wellbeing remains a contested concept, one that can be interpreted and used differently, with distinctive methodological and normative challenges. This has consequences for how wellbeing is (or can be) incorporated into policy decisions.

The symposium invites scholars from across the School to explore a range of different disciplinary approaches to wellbeing, illuminate potential tensions as well as commonalities, and to reflect on their implications for policy.

Publications

Past Events

The Supportive State

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Transfer programmes are the first area addressed within a broader research agenda looking at approaches to redistribution. Programmes differ in a variety of ways – in terms of type and coverage of provision, level of generosity and conditionality arrangements – which in turn reflect different priorities and policy goals. Following from the Beveridge 2.0 Festival in 2018, one of the approaches considered is the idea of a Universal Basic Income – which has seen increasing interest amongst policy makers and elicited substantial academic debate.

The symposium explores a variety of questions regarding normative justifications, historical developments, feasibility concerns and solutions, with an attention to the specific contexts and the issues emerging in different countries around the world.

 

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Labour Markets and Social Protection

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The combined effects of globalisation, deregulation and automation have changed the employment relationships and patterns on which our social protection systems are builtIn developed countries, flexible forms of employment or self-employment often combine with low wages and other employment conditions to generate cumulative disadvantages for workers in the labour market. Similar processes have affected low- and middle-income countries, where formal employment has become highly flexibilised, generating a new pattern of labour market segmentation between good and poor-quality employment, regardless of whether this employment would traditionally be considered to be formal or informal. 

These changes in the labour market affect our social protection systems and welfare state structures and pose a number of challenges: on the one hand, precarious jobs and contracts may interrupt and/or reduce both worker and employer contributions to social security and taxation systems, while they also simultaneously generate an increased need for income support during periods of unemployment or at retirement age, as well as increased need for support with other potential benefits, including those extended to children or other dependents. Do these developments undermine established social contracts? Are governments indirectly subsidising poor-quality employment through income support systems and other welfare state payments? Do these mechanisms contribute to entrenching inequalities? 

This symposium brings together scholars from across the LSE to explore policy responses and solutions to these problems, their potential trade-offs in different development contexts, and what can be learnt from common or divergent factors.

Past Events


Reciprocity across the life cycle

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The welfare state plays a central role in managing risks and tackling vulnerability across the life-cycle. This entails particular relationships between individuals and between generations: for instance, under pay-as-you-go pension schemes, younger workers support the older generation through their contributions, with the prospect of benefitting from the scheme at a later stage in life; in funded schemes the mechanism is different but it remains the case that goods and services consumed by pensioners are produced by younger workers. The design and financing of welfare state institutions need to adjust to emerging social and economic changes, raising questions about the relationships that underpin those institutions.

These issues raise both empirical questions relating to efficiency and equity, and normative questions about the justifications of different policy approaches. At least two themes emerge. First, such questions involve exploring the nature of reciprocity as a normative principle of social cooperation, with a particular focus on life-cycle dynamics. Secondly, the theme allows to tackle practical issues in specific policy areas - towards older people in the case of pensions and social care and towards younger people in the case of education, the provision of childcare, and child support - in relation to both their design and their financing, questioning the role individuals and the state can/should play.

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Past Events

Tax Justice

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Rising concerns about income and wealth inequality have prompted renewed attention to questions about the role of the tax system in delivering a fair society. Within the social sciences, researchers from different disciplines have adopted a variety of normative and explanatory frameworks for thinking about ‘tax justice’; however, these perspectives have rarely been connected with one another.

We will attempt to synthesise key perspectives on tax justice and deploy these varied tools to address a range of pressing issues in tax design, including: drivers of public attitudes and major obstacles to reform; the relation between ‘tax expenditures’ and public spending; the distinction between avoidance and evasion and measures to improve tax compliance; and international dimensions of tax justice including cooperation and competition between states.

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Individual and Organisational Motivations for Public Benefit

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The symposium will focus on individual motivations and organisational incentive structures that create positive social and environmental impacts, or, more generally, that contribute to public benefit. In relation to individuals, the symposium asks questions in relation to the fundamental drivers of altruistic behaviour, their relationship to normative principles such as reciprocity and mutualism as well as practical questions regarding the policies, structures and processes that can lead people to do good, and do so more effectively.

At the organisational level, the symposium explores how societies rely on different private and third sector actors in order to promote public benefit. This includes considering the role of ‘hybrid’ organisations, such as enterprises with multiple aims that operate in the market while pursuing a social or environmental mission. Both at the individual and organisational level the symposium explores whether and how a self-interested incentives structure can sit alongside altruistic motivations, and whether this will lead one to crowd out the other.

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Past Events

AI and Data Science in Public Policy

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In a world increasingly shaped by digital transformation, AI and data science present new opportunities to change policymaking in nearly all areas of policy. Yet the capabilities of these emerging technologies are still unfolding and need to be better understood, both in terms of their benefits and their limitations. The Data Science Institute and the Beveridge 2.0 Programme collaborate in this symposium bringing together experts from a range of disciplines - from philosophy to statistics, government and law - to reflect together on future directions, applications, and consequences of the use of AI and data science. Emerging technologies can transform evidence-based policy development through their analytical capabilities, predictive powers, and real-time monitoring, while also bringing questions around regulation, transparency, accountability and ethics to the fore.

 

Multidisciplinary Approaches and Policy Innovation in Gender Research


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The symposium will explore emerging challenges and the evolving landscape of gender research, including perspectives from law, communications, health and social policy, gender studies and economics. The convergence of these disciplines offers unique insights, enriching the policy discourse and reframing long-standing paradigms of gender roles, and relationships. The symposium will cover a range of topics, from global development or political representation to public health, workplace practices and gender inequalities as well as discussing legal concepts and media representations of women and work.

 

Special Issues

COVID-19

COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an extraordinary health and economic global challenge as well as an opportunity to re-evaluate many aspects of modern economy, society, and government. The crisis has mobilised scientific efforts at an unprecedented scale, with an impressive emerging body of research spanning across disciplines. This special issue invites scholars from across the School to explore a range of key questions the pandemic has raised - from the factors shaping government responses and collective behaviour, to the relationship between policy-making and scientific evidence; from the impact of the pandemic on economic policy and employment, to how it intersected with inequalities related, for instance, to gender or ethnicity. Through their different disciplinary lenses the papers in this issue offer a rich and comprehensive insight into some of the key questions emerging from the current crisis.

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Afghanistan: Long War, Forgotten Peace


Afghanistan

Less than months after the western military withdrawal in August 2021, this special issue explores lessons that can be drawn from the fall of the government in Kabul. Inviting scholars from different disciplinary background, the issue reflects on why the US decided to leave, what this may mean for the Western alliance system, the consequences for women’s rights, the geopolitical fall out, international law, development and the economics of peace.

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Past Events

Russia's War on Ukraine and the Future Global Order 

 

Ukraine

Few predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Even fewer thought it would still be going on 18 months later. There is though almost complete agreement that what began as a regional conflict has changed the world forever.

The full-scale invasion has defied many predictions by experts. Simultaneously, the war offers a myriad of lessons for scholars in international relations, military theory, economics, history, and various other social sciences. The key questions explored in this special issue include: What transpired? What is the current situation? And, most importantly, where are we heading?

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 Staff

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Professor Sir Tim Besley

Programme Director and Editor-in-Chief

Irene-Bucel

Dr Irene Bucelli

Programme Coordinator and Managing Editor

 

Nicholas-Reed-Langen

Nicholas Reed-Langen 

Content Editor

 

andres-velesco

Andrés Velasco

Commissioning Board Member

 

Tania-Burchardt

Tania Burchardt

Commissioning Board Member

Susana Mourato

Susana Mourato

Commissioning Board Member

 

Sarah-Worthington

Sarah Worthington

Commissioning Board Member

 

Nicola-Lacey

Nicola Lacey

Commissioning Board Member