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Epistemic communities are at their most powerful in novel and technically complex policy issues when decision-makers' and stakeholders' understandings are rudimentary. A successful epistemic community reduces uncertainty through policy learning. These lessons enable policy actors to recognize their preferences thus making such issues more tractable. However, policy learning is dynamic and has various modes. Where an epistemic community's advice points in unfavourable policy directions, rival lessons may be crafted by policy actors thus threatening an epistemic community's place as principal teacher on an issue. What happens to the influence of epistemic communities that do not attend to these alternative interpretations? Can epistemic communities teach in the 'wrong' mode? Using the empirical case of the long-running hormone growth promoters saga in the European Union (EU) we show how, even in complex technical issues, learning in the epistemic mode may not dominate for long. Specifically, we identify a key barrier to epistemic communities' influence neglected in the literature: the 'irony of epistemic learning'. In setting the foundational knowledge on novel issues, epistemic communities provide non-specialist governance actors with the resources to oppose the very knowledge these experts have created thereby curtailing their influence. We conclude with a discussion about whether epistemic communities can and should overcome this irony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2003, the European Commission has produced analytical documents (called Impact Assessments, IAs) to appraise its policy proposals. This appraisal process is the cornerstone of the regulatory reform policy of the European Union. Previous research has been concerned with the quality of the IAs in terms of evidence-based policy, usages of economic analysis and other standards of smart regulation. Instead, we move to a different perspective. We draw on the narrative policy framework to explore IAs as a text and discursive instrument. Conceptually, insights from discursive institutionalism are used to explore narratives as tools of coordination within complex organizations such as the European Commission, and as communicative tools through which policy-makers seek to enhance the plausibility, acceptability and, ultimately, legitimacy for their policy proposals. Empirically, we consider a sample of IAs that differ by originating DGs, legal instrument, and level of saliency. The findings show that both in coordinating and communicating policy, the European bureaucracy projects a certain definition of its identity via the narratives it deploys. The Commission may use IAs to produce evidence-based policy, but it also an active narrator. It engages with IAs to provide a presentation of self, to establish EU norms and values, and to create consensus around policy proposals by using causal plots, doomsday scenarios, and narrative dramatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on regulation has crossed paths with the literature on policy instruments, showing that regulatory policy instruments contain cognitive and normative beliefs about policy. Thus, their usage stacks the deck in favor of one type of actor or one type of regulatory solution. In this article, we challenge the assumption that there is a predetermined relationship between ideas, regulatory policy instruments, and outcomes. We argue that different combinations of conditions lead to different outcomes, depending on how actors use the instrument. Empirically, we analyze 31 EU and UK case studies of regulatory impact assessment (RIA) - a regulatory policy instrument that has been pivotal in the so-called better regulation movement. We distinguish four main usages of RIA, that is, political, instrumental, communicative, and perfunctory. We find that in our sample instrumental usage is not so rare and that the contrast between communicative and political usages is less stark than is commonly thought. In terms of policy recommendations, our analysis suggests that there may be different paths to desirable outcomes. Policymakers should therefore explore different combinations of conditions leading to the usages they deem desirable rather than arguing for a fixed menu of variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The delegation literature tells us that decision-makers delegate power to agents to achieve efficiency or credibility (or both). Critically, however, the successful delivery of each of these implies very different levels of control over their agent by the principal. This paper deploys principal-agent modelling to explore how this logic works with epistemic agents. It explores the implications of two epistemic communities' contrasting de facto independence from European Commission decision-makers for the delegation goals satisfied in formulating policy on hormone growth promoters. Analysis supported the view that to deliver policy efficiency an epistemic community must have low autonomy from the political principal. Policy credibility was achieved when decision-makers selected an epistemic community whose views were socially legitimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]