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For decades, policy learning has been often viewed as a force for the common good, a process that aims at creating value for the public through problem‐solving. While learning can indeed contribute to value creation, darkness also lurks therein, where learning can also contribute to value destruction. Yet, the dark side of policy learning remains under‐explored and under‐theorized, particularly going beyond meso‐level policy and organizational failures or “mishaps.” This article draws on policy learning and value theories to conceptualize two types of policy learning failures and plot how they can contribute to the destruction of value in the public sphere: misdirected learning design failures (non‐deliberate and cybernetic) and normative failures (intentional and deontological). This is done while addressing the two key facets of value in the public sphere; public values, being the guiding principles of policymaking and governance, as well as public value, being the worth of public services delivered to the citizenry. In doing so, this contributes to the literature by addressing calls for exploring the dark side of learning, expanding our understanding of learning outcomes beyond organizational and policy level implications, and developing novel fundamental understandings of value destruction mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research often explores the role of scientific expertise in policymaking from an externalised perspective, mostly focusing on how policymakers use and abuse scientific expertise through political learning. However, very little is known about political learning by scientific experts. What strategies do they use to maintain and advance their access to, and influence on policymaking? Using process tracing, we illustrate how scientific experts' access to policymaking is challenged as a policy issue develops. We explore how this nudges scientific experts to engage in political learning and employ political advocacy strategies to enhance science's role in policy making, corresponding to evolving political opportunity structures. We empirically trace this using the case of EU climate policy development between 1990 and 2022. We identify three main sets of advocacy strategies used by scientific experts: Narrative and semantic (policy issue-oriented), Socialisation (Actors-oriented), and Governance (systems and structures-oriented). In doing so, this article illustrates the political actorness and agency of scientific experts and provides a supplementary understanding to the role of science in public policy and policy change, not only as a function of policymaker's instrumentalization of science, but also as a function of how scientific experts actively advocate for science's role in public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the years, policy learning has emerged as a theoretical lens to provide an alternative understanding of powering-based approaches to the policy process and policy outcomes. This has been a success story, with policy learning gaining presence among theoretical frameworks on the policy process. However, the puzzling-powering dichotomy is reductive. In real-world policy processes, we find both puzzling and powering. Also, we cannot reduce the value of learning to what is not explained by power alone. This Introduction shows how puzzling and powering interact and with what consequences on policy processes, moving beyond the dichotomy. We present how the four contributions of this Special Issue explore this territory and suggest how to approach the design of governance architectures for learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an intensive, long-term oriented and deliberative process, strategic planning is generally viewed as an essential practice in the public sector, yet mostly in relatively stable or non-crisis contexts. However, emerging crisis types (such as 'creeping crises') come with a novel mixture of features that disrupt conventional norms of public administration, crisis governance and policy-making. Drawing on the theories of creeping crises, strategic planning and empirical observations, the author explains how such crises create windows of opportunity for intra-crisis strategic planning. In such crisis conditions, practitioners should dedicate sufficient time to undertake intra-crisis strategic planning to drive crisis policy-making and crisis governance, rather than engaging in ad hoc and stopgap crisis responses. This article discusses how emerging types of crises provide opportunities for strategic planning as a form of intra-crisis response. The article supplements existing literature and approaches to strategic planning that conventionally emphasize its value in relatively more stable conditions or mostly as a platform for pre-crisis preparedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]