Stéphane Moyson

Policy learning and policy change: theorizing their relations from different perspectives

Abstract All politics and policy issues involve the accumulation of data about problems and solutions in context of social interactions. Drawing on these data, policy actors acquire, translate, and disseminate new information and knowledge toward achieving political endeavors and for revising or strengthening their policy-related beliefs over time. ‘Policy learning’ is a concept that refers to this cognitive and social dynamic. Articles in this special issue examine the relationship between policy learning and policy change from different theoretical perspectives. In this introduction to the special issue, we describe the current approaches that structure the field and gaps in knowledge separating policy learning and policy change. We introduce a refined conceptual framework to outline and compare the articles in the issue. These articles point to several facets of the learning phenomenon. First, the articles focus on the nature and consequences of learning by specific groups of society, such as advocacy coalitions, epistemic communities, citizens, street-level bureaucrats, and policy brokers. Second, they present learning processes in which information and experience are used to acquire new knowledge on policy objectives to substantiate and legitimize them or to change or form beliefs. Third, they identify several cognitive and social processes to strengthen the connection between policy learning and policy change. Finally, the articles point to several psychological, social, and institutional factors fostering or impeding these cognitive and social processes. This introduction concludes with avenues for future research.

Organizational Socialization in Public Administration Research: A Systematic Review and Directions for Future Research:

Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach, we conducted a systematic review of 58 public administration studies of organizational socialization. Organizational socialization is the process of mutual adaptation between an organization and its new members. Our findings demonstrate a growing but geographically disparate interest in this issue. Public administration studies contribute to this research area with novel insights into the determinants of organizational socialization and its effects on employees’ public service motivation, Eurocrats’ support of supranational institutions, person–organization fit, and differences in the socialization of male and female public employees. The review also shows that the effects of organizational socialization on the homogenization of employees’ attitudes should not be exaggerated, especially relative to other homogenizing factors such as attraction or selection effects. The reviewed articles are methodologically eclectic, with a recent but growing interest in longitudinal designs. There are also weaknesses in the operationalization of organizational socialization. We conclude with an agenda for future studies on organizational socialization in public administration research.

Cognition and policy change: the consistency of policy learning in the advocacy coalition framework

Abstract Policy actors involved in decision-making processes interact and gradually accumulate evidence about policy problems and solutions. As a result, they update their policy beliefs and preferences over time. This process of policy learning is consistent if policy preferences are aligned with any adaptations in beliefs about policy outcomes – a crucial condition of learning-induced policy changes. This article examines whether and when policy learning is consistent based on regression analyses conducted on data from a 2012 survey of 293 Belgian actors involved in the European liberalization policy process for the rail and electricity sectors. In line with the advocacy coalition framework, existing research has suggested that motivated modes of reasoning, such as selective exposure and biased assimilation, influence policy actors’ attitudes and behaviours. This study isolates the effect of biased assimilation on policy learning by demonstrating that when policy actors adapt their beliefs about policy outcomes, they do not necessarily align their policy preferences with those adaptations. Furthermore, biased assimilation is higher among politically curious actors, but their degree of commitment to the policy process does not appear to play a role. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The French Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing and the Attempts to Reverse It: Social Mobilization, Professional Forums, and Coalition Strategies

In March 2010, the French Minister of Environment issued the first three licenses involving the exploration of shale gas with hydraulic fracturing. The large-scale diffusion of Gasland—a documentary demonstrating the negative consequences of hydraulic fracturing—as well as an efficient strategy of social and political mobilization allowed a coalition of anti-fracturing policy actors to get a ban on this extraction technique in July 2011. The ban, however, discredited the entire unconventional hydrocarbon industry, which galvanized a coalition of pro-exploration policy actors. Since 2011, various politico-administrative committees (or “professional forums”) were created to discuss shale hydrocarbons. The design of those committees and the strategic participation of pro-exploration actors have not reversed the ban but have led to incremental changes, which should preserve hydrocarbon exploration.

Trust in Regulatory Regimes, by F. Six and K. Verhoest, Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar, 2017

ABSTRACT Starting from the assumption that citizens’ trust toward providers of goods and services depends on their trust in the regulators of those providers, ‘Trust in regulatory regimes’ offers an analytical framework to look at ‘polycentric regimes’ of regulators, regulated organisations, and citizens. The empirical chapters address several issues identified in a literature review about the role of trust in regulatory regimes, especially the lack of empirical studies about the relation between public-sector regulators and public-sector regulated organisations as well as the scarcity of research considering dynamics of trust (i.e. trust among certain actors influencing trust among other actors, or trust at time-1 depending on actors’ attitudes and behaviours since time-0). This book review concludes that buying ‘Trust in regulatory regimes’ is a crucial step for all scholars and students interested in trust and regulation, after having suggested further avenues for future research on this topic.

What Do Public Officials Think About Citizens? The Role of Public Officials’ Trust and Their Perceptions of Citizens’ Trustworthiness in Interactive Governance

This chapter looks at the views public officials have of citizens, in particular their level of trust toward citizens’ ability, integrity and benevolence, when engaging in administrative interactions. Public officials’ trust is essential, in interactive governance, because it may stimulate the compliance and trust of citizens toward public administration. In turn, this may increase the effectiveness of public service delivery. Public officials’ trust builds over time when they have interactions with trustworthy citizens. Hence, trust between public officials and citizens is at the same time an essential requirement for interactive governance and an outcome of such interactions. Extensive research thus far has not yet revealed many individual factors of officials’ trust toward citizens nor their perceptions of citizens’ trustworthiness. In addition, few studies have been conducted on the institutional and organizational factors of trust and trustworthiness. We discuss this research before suggesting avenues for future studies.