The scientific journal “Studia z Polityki Publicznej / Public Policy Studies” (http://szpp.sgh.waw.pl) published at the Collegium of Socio-Economics of the SGH Warsaw School of Economics, announces the Call for Papers for the Thematic Issue:

Policy Transfer and Learning in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic

Deadline for submitting proposals/abstracts of papers: July 15, 2021.

Deadline for submitting manuscripts: October 31, 2021.

The scope of this Call for Papers:

Since the beginning of 2020, governments around the world have had to take swift and radical decisions to protect people from the COVID-19 pandemic, an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Various types of public interventions were hastily introduced, such as travel restrictions and admitting foreigners, organizing public events, self-isolation, quarantines, and closing commercial and catering facilities.

Governments – sometimes with various social partners – have also started to develop various public policies, strategies, and public programs. For example, economy support packages, business rescue packages; support programs for people losing their livelihoods and easing the situation on the labor markets; programs for obtaining data on the patterns of the spread of the coronavirus; vaccination programs; programs for adapting public and private entities to remote work (e.g., schools and companies).

From the perspective of public policy research, it is crucial to identify the sources of data and knowledge, which become the basis for the creation of the concept of public actions aimed at reducing the scale of the pandemic and reducing the effects of its spread. An important area of analysis is how governments create action programs against a pandemic, to what extent they rely on the transfer of programs, borrowing from outside, and to what extent there is a diffusion of action models in the international space (e.g., the role of World Health Organization recommendations).

Another key dimension of the analysis is the policy learning of all actors involved in countering the pandemic. For example, how the policy measures and tools have been disseminated across regions, across policy networks, across policy domains, and across the vertical (sectoral) and horizontal dimensions. It is also interesting to recognize the best practices that emerged and circulated in public discourse at various stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The thematic issue welcomes papers focused on theoretical issues, empirical findings, and case studies of policymaking. The list of potential topics includes, but is not limited to:

- Policy transfer across the East and the West.

- Public policy in the context of fake news and disinformation.

- New approaches to policymaking during the COVID-19 pandemic.

- Relations of public policy with risk and trust management, risk communication, disaster risk reduction, disaster preparedness, disaster management, and resilience.

- Creating and implementing sectoral policies in response to the pandemic crisis.

- Globalization and the Europeanization of public policy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

- Convergence, divergence, or persistence of public policy in the new sanitary regime.

- Behavioral dimension of public policy.

- Ethics of public policy during the pandemic.

- Policy innovation, new policy instruments, and digital tools of government (e.g., AI and Big Data).

- Monitoring and evaluation of public policy during the pandemic.

Submission Procedure:

The deadline for interested authors to submit paper proposals/abstracts will expire on July 15, 2021, and for the full manuscripts on October 31, 2021. Proposed topics should be sent to the journal’s Editorial Secretary (dr Andrzej Kli​mczuk, aklimcz@sgh.waw.pl).

Authors should submit manuscripts to the journal “Studia z Polityki Publicznej / Public Policy Studies” only via the Open Journal Systems website: https://econjournals.sgh.waw.pl/KSzPP/about/submissions

Texts should be in Word (.docx) format and consist of up to a max 40 000 characters. All texts undergo a review process (double-blind peer-review). Articles are published in Open Access under the CC BY 4.0 licence (authors retain the copyright). Editing and publication of articles in “Studia z Polityki Publicznej / Public Policy Studies” journal are free of charge. Fees or Article Processing Charges (APCs) are not requested from the authors at any point of the peer review and publication.

The journal is indexed, among others in the databases: BazEkon, CEEOL, CrossRef, Google Scholar, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Polska Bibliografia Naukowa (PBN), Lens, Dimensions, Scite, Scilit, Baidu Scholar, NAVER, KOAR, Informationsdienst Politikwissenschaft (POLLUX), International Political Science Abstracts (IPSA), J-Gate, BASE, Gale Academic OneFile.

Manuscripts should include the following elements:

- Author(s) contact details (name and surname, institutional affiliation, city, country, e-mail address, and ORCID identifier).

- Title of the paper.

- Abstract: max 150 words.

- 5-7 keywords.

- JEL Classification Codes: 3-5 codes; codes are available here.

- Main text and subtitles.

- Summary.

- Endnotes and references in the APA style.

We encourage authors to use the article template (in Polish or in English).

More information for authors is available on the journal’s website (http://szpp.sgh.waw.pl).

Elections in a Democratic Rule of Law State During a Pandemic Sanitary Regime as a Challenge for Public Policy 

Deadline for submitting proposals/abstracts of papers: April 3, 2021.

Deadline for submitting manuscripts: July 15, 2021.

The scope of this Call for Papers:

Elections were, are, and will be one of the key elements for the functioning of a democratic state. This does not mean that elections themselves, their environment, and the legal regulations related to them must remain unchanged. However, it is important for these transformations to be adequate to the evolving technological solutions, social conditions, and for that elections to be prepared in a rational, professional, lawful and timely manner so that they can be adapted to the system.

In recent years, the nature of the election administration has been radically reformed in various countries. The possibilities of conducting an election campaign and its financing have been significantly reorganized. Nowadays, we are faced with complex challenges resulting, for example, from the transfer on-line of a large part of the activity related to creating political reality, the choices made by citizens, or searching for information. The changes and progress that we have been dealing with in recent years in this matter are not merely technological; they are civilizational. Those phenomena pose challenges that go far beyond the commonly available heuristics and the cognitive apparatus at our disposal. We face an extreme asymmetry of competencies and access to information between representatives of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry and other entities involved in the political choices. As a result, not only voters but also public administration is not prepared for the change that is taking place.

As it turned out, no one was prepared for the events that took place at the beginning of the 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic, which affected in one way or another almost everyone, additionally complicated the situation and acted as a catalyst, accelerating some already ongoing political and social processes. It also left a decisive mark on the election processes that took place at that time or that were to take place, and as a result, were postponed to another date. In those countries where it was decided to hold elections, they were of a different nature than before. Lawmakers in many countries have made, often significant, changes to the electoral law. In some cases, even episodic (one-off) legal regulations have been created, sometimes prepared in disregard of customary good practices in planning public activities related to such a fundamental issue as the administration of the election process, and in a manner that may raise reservations from the perspective of the norms of a democratic rule of law state. The pandemic, in matters related to the elections, forced state authorities to take measures aimed primarily at ensuring the safety of voters, the staff of election commissions and election administration employees. It also contributed to a decisive reorganization of the election campaigns, including its more dynamic and wider transfer to the digital world. All this, combined with the militarization of information, has led to the emergence of serious risks, including for the safety of elections and the quality of political systems in democratic states.

Bearing in mind the above issues, we invite you to submit proposals of texts focused on various aspects of the broadly understood electoral process in terms of public policy, in particular:

Submission Procedure:

The deadline for interested authors to submit paper proposals/abstracts will expire on April 3, 2021, and for the finished manuscripts on July 15, 2021. Proposed topics should be sent to the thematic editors of the issue: Tomasz Gąsior (tomasz.gasior@op.pl) and Jan Misiuna (jan.misiuna@sgh.waw.pl).

Authors should submit manuscripts to the journal “Public Policy Studies” via the Open Journal Systems website: https://econjournals.sgh.waw.pl/KSzPP/about/submissions

Texts should be in Word (.docx) format and consist of up to max 40 000 characters. All texts undergo a review process (double-blind peer-review). Articles are published in Open Access under the CC BY 4.0 licence (authors retain the copyright). Editing and publication of articles in “Public Policy Studies” are free of charge. Fees or Article Processing Charges (APCs) are not requested from the authors at any point of the peer review and publication.

Manuscripts should include the following elements:

We encourage authors to use the article template (in Polish or in English).

More information for authors is available on the journal’s website (http://szpp.sgh.waw.pl) from the editors of the Special Issue.