Recent studies of reaction rates in polymer systems are reviewed. These involve ionic reactions in polyelectrolyte solutions, kinetic effects due to the nature of the “effective solvent medium” in the polymer domain, neighboring group effects in polysaccharide oxidation, intramolecular polymer reactions involving non‐neighboring groups, the quenching of the fluorescence of groups attached to a polymer by species carried by another polymer chain and the photoisomerization of azobenzene residues in the backbone of polymer chains.