Electromobility has become central to decarbonization and industrial restructuring strategies worldwide, yet much of the literature examines public policy and technological change separately. This article analyzes how public policies and core electromobility technologies coevolve over time in China, the United States, and Japan between 2010 and 2025. Focusing on batteries, charging infrastructure, and electric powertrains, the study develops a qualitative comparative analysis of policy instruments and technological trajectories across three distinct governance contexts. The analysis identifies three distinct configurations of policy-technology coevolution: a strategic and state directed pattern in China, a decentralized and politically mediated pattern in the United States, and an incremental and path dependent pattern in Japan. These trajectories reveal how differences in sequencing, coordination, and policy recalibration generate divergent technological pathways and market outcomes. The article argues that policy design for emerging technologies is less a matter of instrument selection than of temporal alignment and adaptive sequencing. By conceptualizing electromobility transitions as coevolutionary processes, the study advances a process oriented perspective on policy design under conditions of rapid technological change and institutional diversity.

The OECD’s BEPS 2.0 Pillar Two framework introduces the global minimum tax (GMT) as a cornerstone of contemporary international tax reform. This systematic literature review examines how digital reporting systems—such as XBRL, Country-by-Country Reporting (CbCR), and the IFRS Taxonomy—operate as compliance infrastructures enabling the implementation and enforcement of GMT. Drawing on 54 peer-reviewed studies (2016–2025) and guided by the PRISMA methodology, the review integrates legitimacy theory and global regulatory governance to develop a dual-lens analytical framework that explains both why jurisdictions adopt digital reporting norms and how governance capacity shapes their operationalization. Four thematic domains emerge: the role of digital tools in enhancing transparency and compliance; the consolidation of global tax standards; regulatory, technological, and institutional barriers to deployment; and the distributional implications of digital capacity disparities. The analysis reveals that digital reporting’s effectiveness depends on the alignment between transparency mechanisms, legitimacy incentives, and governance capabilities—an alignment unevenly distributed, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The study concludes that bridging global digital divides is essential not only for technical implementation but also for advancing fiscal equity and legitimacy within the evolving architecture of international tax governance.

While experimental governance approaches are growing in popularity across the globe, there has been only limited scholarly discussion about the use of experiments in tax policy. Our article addresses this gap with an empirical study of Finland and Estonia. We compared the experiences of these two countries with tax policy experimentation to shed light on the factors that foster and hinder it. Our study shows that although tax policy experiments could potentially serve as a useful instrument for policymakers to address the challenge of adjusting tax policies in a complex and rapidly evolving context, in practice, tax policy experiments face various challenges arising from political motivations, including concerns with horizontal equity and electoral timeframes. Furthermore, limited capacities and resources and the existing features of the tax system can hinder the use of experiments in tax policy design. While experiments in tax policy can be politically challenging, they are not impossible, as evidenced by multiple experiments carried out by the Finnish government over the past decades. Our empirical study highlights that tax policy experimentation is likely to be more feasible if experiments are conducted with tax benefits, concern corporate taxes, are legitimized by sound legal framing, and avoid randomization.

Historically, communities in the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) have relied on indigenous water-conservation practices and infrastructures relying on springs, such as naulaas and guls, also categorized as Heritage Water Architecture (HWA) for water access. Fresh water availability in the IHR has reduced over the past two decades. This brings into focus the need for maintaining and developing HWA alongside the piped water-based modern systems. Evidence from Indian water-related policy analysis shows that modern policy interventions undertaken between 1970 and 2000 often marginalized these systems, prioritizing large-scale infrastructure projects. This paper investigates the interplay between HWA and emerging water-sharing regimes in the IHR, focusing on their inclusion and exclusion within state policy-frameworks. Employing theoretical perspectives on environmental justice, participatory governance and adaptive management, the study analyses empirical data and case studies from Uttarakhand, an IHR state, using policy analysis to evaluate governance gaps and assess the integration of traditional water systems into contemporary frameworks through the devised Policy-Heritage Integration Matrix (PHIM). The paper shifts the analytical lens from water scarcity to water security, emphasizing access, entitlements and institutional coordination. The findings highlight the need for inclusive, adaptive and context-specific frameworks that bridge institutional silos. The study also underscores the gendered dimensions of water burden and shows how HWA reduce labor for some groups, offering actionable entry points for equity-based policy design as well. This study contributes to the discourse on sustainable water governance and demonstrates the potential for reconciling heritage and modernity to address the socio-ecological complexities of the IHR.

Systems leaders are trusted actors who help many people to collaborate to address wicked policy problems. These policy problems resist simple solutions by a few powerful actors in one center of government. Therefore, we need systems leaders to inspire and empower many other actors to produce more transformative change. Academic research on systems thinking is thriving, and we know a lot about the new forms of leadership that it helps to inspire. This article summarizes the practical advice to emerge from that research and offers insights on how to support and engage in systems leadership. It involves (1) making the argument for new leadership, and the value of requirements such as collaboration and boundary spanning, (2) attributes such as humility and compassion, (3) flexible mindsets and awareness of the big picture, and (4) skills such as brokerage and conflict resolution. These systems leadership traits can be developed in training. They work best in a supportive environment with sufficient political support and a culture of meaningful commitment to collective action.

The deployment of strategies that decoy the true intentions of policies is now widespread but is often painted as a means to undermine public value. This article seeks to provide a more nuanced view by introducing the notion of decoy goals as a response to institutional uncertainties. Designing decoy goals, or goals meant to covertly change preferences for an otherwise unattractive goal, into policies is a deliberate strategy to either undermine democratic contest or to overcome elite-based politics. Through document analysis, two illustrative cases are analyzed to argue that decoy goals are used to make an otherwise controversial ‘target’ goal more acceptable. Decoy goals overcome uncertainties around how a policy is made, who has the power to make authoritative choices and actor’s position about policies. While decoy goals can be distortive, the article hopes to also establish it as an alternative strategy to design public policies under difficult environments.

There is increasing recognition that public sectors in Western countries alone cannot tackle complex societal challenges. However, detailed research on the role of public agents in implementing collaborative approaches remains limited. This article examines how policy entrepreneurship strategies contribute to collaborative public sector innovation (CPSI) by shaping policy design processes in transformative innovation policy. Focusing on the Shared-Agendas initiative in Catalonia, the study explores how public sector actors operate across the policy process to advance place-based approaches to sustainability transitions. By framing CPSI as a policy design challenge, the findings show that policy entrepreneurs influence these processes by reframing problems by taking a systemic perspective, co-constructing shared visions, enabling experimental implementation, and institutionalizing learning practices. The analysis contributes to a deeper understanding of how agency drives collaborative and adaptive policymaking within complex governance settings. Although based on an in-depth examination of an extreme case, the strategies identified may be transferable to other contexts where public administrations seek to foster CPSI through cross-sectoral, place-based innovation efforts.

Taiwan, a leader in the semiconductor industry, faces significant energy demands amplified by its industrial growth. Recognizing the strain on its energy infrastructure, the Taiwanese government has committed to an energy transition by 2050, focusing Taiwan’s geopolitical context and economic reliance on semiconductors shape its energy policies, positioning the country at the forefront of technological innovation but also intensifying the need for sustainable energy solutions. Despite incentives such as feed-in tariffs and subsidies, Taiwan’s renewable energy transition faces barriers, particularly in aligning policy with practice. Bureaucratic inefficiencies and complex regulations slow the approval and implementation of renewable projects, diminishing community involvement, which is critical to the success of the initiative. Additionally, existing policies inadvertently marginalize vulnerable groups, as citizen power plants struggle to compete with commercial entities due to limited financial support. Through an analysis of five case studies, this study highlights these implementation gaps, emphasizing the need for collaborative public sector innovation. By fostering stakeholder engagement throughout the design and execution phases, Taiwan can enhance policy responsiveness and inclusivity. Ultimately, a streamlined governance approach can bridge macro-level policy goals with community-level realities, promoting sustainable development and equitable energy access.

Around the world in recent times, numerous policy design labs have been established, related to a rising focus on the need for public sector innovation. These labs are a response to the challenging nature of many societal problems and often have a purpose of navigating uncertainty. They do this by “labbing” ill-structured problems through moving them into an experimental environment, outside of traditional government structures, and using a design-for-policy approach. Labs can, therefore, be considered as a particular type of procedural policy tool, used in attempts to change how policy is formulated and implemented to address uncertainty. This paper considers the role of policy design labs in learning and explores the broader governance context they are embedded within. It examines whether labs have the capacity to innovate and also retain and circulate learning to other policy actors. It argues that labs have considerable potential to change the spaces of policymaking at the micro level and innovate, but for learning to be kept rather than lost, innovation needs to be institutionalized in governing structures at higher levels.

Addressing sustainability policy challenges requires tools that can navigate complexity for better policy processes and outcomes. Attention on Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and expectations for their use by governments have dramatically increased over the past decade. We conducted a narrative review of academic and grey literature to investigate how AI tools are being used and adapted for policy and public sector decision-making. We found that academics, governments, and consultants expressed positive expectations about AI, arguing that AI could or should be used to address a wide range of policy challenges. However, there is much less evidence of how public decision makers are actually using AI tools or detailed insight into the outcomes of use. From our findings we draw four lessons for translating the promise of AI into practice: 1) Document and evaluate AI’s application to sustainability policy problems in the real-world; 2) Focus on existing and mature AI technologies, not speculative promises or external pressures; 3) Start with the problem to be solved, not the technology to be applied; and 4) Anticipate and adapt to the complexity of sustainability policy problems.