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policy-making

March 5, 2025

🌈 Brazil’s 'Rape Bill' and the fast track to legislative backlash

Daniel Baldin Machado In just one month, a bill equating abortion with homicide reached the voting stage in Brazil’s Lower House. How did this happen? Daniel Baldin Machado examines how a decade of institutional changes has reshaped legislative processes to sideline scrutiny, deepen gendered biases, and weaken democratic accountabilit Read more

February 12, 2025

Does good evidence make good policies?

Giuseppe Cannata Evidence-informed policy-making promises to deliver better policies. Yet, people working at the science-policy interface in Europe face multiple challenges in making the most of it – from political constraints to a lack of administrative capacity and limited opportunity for productive exchange. Giuseppe Cannata discusses these challenges and their normative implications for European science-for-policy ecosystems Read more

November 29, 2023

🔮 When populist governments (un)make European Union policies

Ariadna Ripoll Servent The presence of populist governments in European Union policy-making has been largely ignored. Ariadna Ripoll Servent and Natascha Zaun argue that we should pay attention to populists’ behaviour in the Council of the EU. Populist governments do not play by the normal rules of the game; rather, they use ‘unpolitics’. This destructive approach to policy-making was instrumental in blocking a reform of EU migration politics Read more

March 17, 2021

Under what conditions can public opinion affect policy-making? Education as a case study

Julian Garritzmann Public opinion affects policy-making when the topic is salient and when most people share the same opinion, write Julian Garritzmann, Marius Busemeyer and Erik Niemanns. Yet when the public disagrees on what they want – or when many people don’t care – the influence of public opinion is significantly reduced Read more

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