About JCPA and the Scholarly Society for International Comparative Policy Analysis

Rationale and Pioneering a New Domain of Study

Comparative policy analysis has emerged as a distinct field in the past two decades. Triggers are:

  • Access in the global village through: transportation, technology, communication;
  • Economic path dependence and interdependence;
  • Similar national policy problems — challenges and dilemmas, for example, Immigration and migration;
  • Cross national problems such as security, climate change;
  • The need for Lesson Drawing, Transfer, Diffusion, Innovation — for efficiency , effectiveness, market completion and avoidance of foreclosed solutions (Geva-May, 2016).

With these needs in mind, the JCPA was founded in 1998, and is considered to have pioneered the domain of comparative policy studies (Thompson Reuters, 1998) (Beryl Radin 2013) The JCPA is affiliated with the Scholarly Society for International Comparative Policy Analysis.

The JCPA and the Scholarly Society for International Comparative Policy Analysis Connection

The JCPA: To date, the JCPA is still the only journal exclusively devoted to comparative policy studies. Its mission is to advance the field through theory development, methodology development, and cross-units comparisons from which lessons can be drawn and fallacies avoided. The mission of the JCPA has been advanced by the founding editor Iris Geva-May, with the support of dedicated editorial board members including Laurence E. Lynn Jr., first co-editor, Peter deLeon, Duncan McRae, David Weimer, Beryl Radin, Frans Van Nispen, Yukio Adachi, Claudia Scott, Allan Maslove, and others on 5  continents. The JCPA has grown from 3 to 6 issues per annual volume, an acceptance rate of 18%, and an impact factor of 1.414 (Thompson Reuters SSI Citation Index) indicating an increasing interest in comparative policy studies and a growing recognition of the JCPA’s scholarship and contribution.  

 

The Scholarly Society for International Comparative Policy Analysis: To address this increasing interest and along the lines of its Aims and Scope the JCPA initiated activities such as annual workshops and research symposia, panels at conferences, best article awards, and partnerships with institutions and associations. With the increase in these engagement activities, since 2010, these activities are under the umbrella of the Scholarly Society for International Comparative Policy Analysis. Through volunteerism, this scholarly society  advances  the mission of the JCPA through dialogues, research collaborations,  opinion pieces, and peer-reviewed book publications (such as the Classics of Comparative Policy Analysis and the International Library of Policy Analysis). To date, in 2020, it lists 1,600 international paying and non-paying members, scholars, students, and practitioners; and partners  with over  30 international institutions and 10 scholarly associations.