Claire A. Dunlop

Systematising Policy Learning: From Monolith to Dimensions

The field of policy learning is characterised by concept stretching and a lack of systematic findings. To systematise them, we combine the classic Sartorian approach to classification with the more recent insights on explanatory typologies, distinguishing between the genus and the different species within it. By drawing on the technique of explanatory typologies to introduce a basic model of policy learning, we identify four major genera in the literature. We then generate variation within each cell by using rigorous concepts drawn from adult education research. By looking at learning through the lenses of knowledge utilisation, we show that the basic model can be expanded to reveal sixteen different species. These types are all conceptually possible, but are not all empirically established in the literature. Our reconstruction of the field sheds light on mechanisms and relations associated with alternative operationalisations of learning and the role of actors in the process of knowledge construction and utilisation. By providing a comprehensive typology, we mitigate concept-stretching problems and lay the foundations for the systematic comparison across and within cases of policy learning.

Policy transfer as learning: capturing variation in what decision-makers learn from epistemic communities

Almost two decades ago, Peter M. Haas formulated the epistemic community framework as a method for investigating the influence of knowledge-based experts in international policy transfer. Specifically, the approach was designed to address decision-making instances characterized by technical complexity and uncertainty. Control over the production of knowledge and information enables epistemic communities to articulate cause and effect relationships and so frame issues for collective debate and export their policy projects globally. Remarkably, however, we still know very little about the variety of ways in which decision-makers actually learn from epistemic communities. This article argues that variety is best captured by differentiating the control enjoyed by decision-makers and epistemic communities over the production of substantive knowledge (or means) that informs policy from the policy objectives (or ends) to which that knowledge is directed. The implications of this distinction for the types of epistemic community decision-maker learning exchanges that prevail are elaborated using a typology of adult learning from the education literature which delineates four possible learning situations. This typology is then applied to a comparative study of US and EU decision-makers’ interaction with the epistemic community that formed around the regulation of the biotech milk yield enhancer bovine somatotrophin (rbST) to illustrate how the learning types identified in the model play out in practice.

The possible experts: how epistemic communities negotiate barriers to knowledge use in ecosystems services policy

The increased salience of how to value ecosystems services has driven up the demand for policy-relevant knowledge. It is clear that advice by epistemic communities can show up in policy outcomes, yet little systematic analysis exists prescribing how this can actually be achieved. This paper draws on four decades of knowledge utilisation research to propose four types of ‘possible expert’ who might be influential on ecosystems services. Broad findings of a literature review on knowledge use in public policy are reported, and the four-fold conceptualisation pioneered by Carol Weiss that defines the literature is outlined. The field is then systematised by placing these four modes of knowledge use within an explanatory typology of policy learning. With how, when, and why experts and their knowledge are likely to show up in policy outcomes established, the paper then proposes the boundaries of the possible in how the ecosystems services epistemic community might navigate the challenges associated with each learning mode. Four possible experts emerge: with political antenna and epistemic humility; with the ability to speak locally and early to the hearts and minds of citizens; with a willingness to advocate policy; and, finally, with an enhanced institutional awareness and peripheral policy vision. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the utility of the analysis.

Learning in the European Union: theoretical lenses and meta-theory

The European Union may well be a learning organization, yet there is still confusion about the nature of learning, its causal structure and the normative implications. In this contribution we select four perspectives that address complexity, governance, the agency–structure nexus, and how learning occurs or may be blocked by institutional features. They are transactional theory, purposeful opportunism, experimental governance and the joint decision trap. We use the four cases to investigate how history and disciplinary traditions inform theory; the core causal arguments about learning; the normative implications of the analysis; the types of learning that are theoretically predicted; the meta-theoretical aspects and the lessons for better theories of the policy process and political scientists more generally.

Policy Learning in the Eurozone Crisis: Modes, Power and Functionality

In response to the attacks on the sovereign debt of some Eurozone countries, European Union (EU) leaders have created a set of preventive and corrective policy instruments to coordinate macro-economic policies and reforms. In this article, we deal with the European Semester, a cycle of information exchange, monitoring and surveillance. Countries that deviate from the targets are subjected to increasing monitoring and more severe ‘corrective’ interventions, in a pyramid of responsive exchanges between governments and EU institutions. This is supposed to generate coordination and convergence towards balanced economies via mechanisms of learning. But who is learning what? Can the EU learn in the ‘wrong’ mode? We contribute to the literature on theories of the policy process by showing how modes of learning can be operationalized and used in empirical analysis. We use policy learning as theoretical framework to establish empirically the prevalent mode of learning and its implications for both the power of the Commission and the normative question of whether the EU is learning in the ‘correct’ mode.

Principal-Agent Modelling and Learning The European Commission, Experts and Agricultural Hormone Growth Promoters

Principal-agent modelling has become a very influential way of thinking about bureaucratic politics in a wide range of settings. Simple agency models have recently been extended and bureaucratic relationships placed in their wider temporal and socio-political contexts. By developing a conceptualization of principal-agent learning this article offers a nuanced account of the extent to which principals can learn to develop institutions that enhance their political control of bureaucratic agents and predispose those agents toward the principals preferences, limiting adverse selection and moral hazard problems. The revised model is applied to the context of the European Commissions selection and management of scientific committees in the case of agricultural hormone growth promoters. The findings not only confirm the usefulness of more dynamic accounts of principal-agent relationships that eschew ahistoricism and acontextualism, they also suggest that extended principal-agent models should include constraints on learning by principals. In this case the principals learning was reactive — relying heavily upon external actors and venues to do their thinking for them.

Conducting Experiments in Public Management Research: A Practical Guide

ABSTRACT This article provides advice on how to meet the practical challenges of experimental methods within public management research. We focus on lab, field, and survey experiments. For each of these types of experiments we outline the major challenges and limitations encountered when implementing experiments in practice and discuss tips, standards, and common mistakes to avoid. The article is multi-authored in order to benefit from the practical lessons drawn by a number of experimental researchers.

Controlling bureaucracies with fire alarms: policy instruments and cross-country patterns

ABSTRACT The political control of the bureaucracy is a major theme in public administration scholarship, particularly in delegation theory. There is a wide range of policy instruments suitable for the purpose of control. In practice, however, there are economic and political limitations to deploying the full arsenal of control tools. We explore the implications of the costs of control by examining cross-country patterns of fire alarms. We identify and categorize a set of control instruments and their rationale using accountability typologies. We then code the presence or absence of different instruments by drawing on an original dataset of 14 instruments in a population of 17 European countries. Using configurational analysis, we analyse cross-country patterns. In the conclusions, we reflect on the patterns identified, their implications for controlling bureaucracy in advanced democracies and the literature on administrative traditions. We finally propose how our empirical findings may be extended to further explanatory analyses.

Learning in the bath-tub: the micro and macro dimensions of the causal relationship between learning and policy change

Abstract Whilst the literature classifies policy learning in terms of types or ontological approaches (reflexive and social constructivist learning versus rational up-dating of priors), we offer a three-dimensional approach to explore the relationships between individual learning, learning in groups and the macro-dimension. Our contribution maps most (although not all) lively debates in the field on a multi-dimensional space and explores the logic of causality from micro to macro. To achieve these two aims, we draw on Coleman’s ‘bath-tub’. We map learning in the bath-tub by considering prominent studies on learning but also, in some cases, by exploring and drawing lessons from political science and behavioural sciences. By integrating findings in an eclectic way, we explain the logic of learning using a single template and suggest methods for empirical analysis. This is not a literature review but an original attempt to capture the causal architecture of the field, contributing to learning theory with findings from mainstream political and behavioural sciences.

Organizational political capacity as learning

Abstract In this article, we examine how agencies build organizational political capacities (OPC) for reputation management, where capacity building is treated as a challenge underpinned by the learning relationships that exist between key governance actors. This challenge requires the development of four types of OPC: absorptive capacity (ACAP); administrative capacity (ADCAP); analytical capacity (ANCAP) and communicative capacity (COMCAP). Analytically, we link each of these capacities to one particular type of policy learning — reflexive learning — which characterises politicised situations where an agencies reputation is under threat and citizens are the main governance partners. Empirically, we demonstrate how agencies learn to develop these OPCs with governance partners using the case of the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) which increasingly aims to engage citizens in a dialogue to combat the negative images attached to health and safety regulation. We conclude asking what a learning approach tells us about how agencies can develop OPC.