Policy Debates is an interdisciplinary forum for the analysis of policy and practice issues in regional, local and urban development. It connects academic and practitioner communities by exploring the interface between academic debates and policy design, implementation and results. We publish papers that engage with major strands of contemporary policy thinking and that improve our understanding of how and why policies work, or don’t. The result is papers published in Policy Debates are generally highly cited and receive high numbers of downloads.

Papers in Policy Debates need to be:

• Relevant – providing practical insights into the policy context, how policies work and drawing lessons.
• Novel – offering new approaches, new perspectives or new understanding.
• Analytical – exploring and explaining key policy issues
• Accessible – encouraging and opening debates within an interdisciplinary and international audience
• Stimulating – prompting new thinking on existing or emerging policy debates.

Potential contributors are encouraged to discuss their ideas with the Policy Debates section editor, Philip Tomlinson mnsprt@bath.ac.uk