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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]

We draw on the Institutional Grammar Tool's rule types to empirically analyze the design of four major procedural regulatory instruments in the 27 member states of the European Union and the UK. They are: consultation, regulatory impact assessment, freedom of information, and the Ombudsman. By adopting the Institutional Grammar Tool as conceptual lens we end up with a single measurement template applicable to a variety of action situations. We derive measures that are conceptually robust and suitable for comparative analysis. With original data gathered on the official legal base in the 28 cases, we carry out principal components analysis. We identify design patterns across countries and instruments; the specialization of each instrument in terms of rule type; and the components that best explain cross‐country variation. In the conclusions we argue that to reframe the design features of the four instruments in conceptual, theoretical categories is not simply a taxonomical exercise but it extends to the territory of comparative policy analysis, practice and reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how policy learning can improve comparative policy analysis by focusing on causality in learning processes. After summarizing the comparative credentials of the policy learning literature, the article outlines a framework of four learning modes, relating it to three approaches of causality: deterministic, probabilistic, and set-theoretic. It then builds on this to explore different approaches to causation and learning in relation to: policy change, political contexts, and, finally, the temporal and spatial dimensions of comparative policy analysis. The article concludes by showing how these challenges are addressed and suggesting implications for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consultation is a policy instrument geared toward stakeholder engagement in the formulation of primary and secondary legislation. It ensures certain categories of actors can access draft proposals, examine the evidence produced by government or regulators, provide comments and receive feedback. Using an original dataset of consultation design across the EU-28, we examine how variations in combinations of consultation design matter for perceptions of corruption. Using Ostrom's Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT), we develop expectations about the causal effects of combinations of formal consultation rules together with the condition of social capital, which captures important attributes of the context in which consultation operates. We test our expectations using set-theoretic techniques. Our findings indicate: formal consultation rules are rarely sufficient for mitigating perceptions of corruption, legally prescribed procedures are often replaced by informal rules, and the limited effect of formal consultation rules on perceptions of corruption is due to an incomplete design of the procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It seems paradoxical to suggest that theories of learning might be used to explain policy failure. Yet the Brexit fiasco connects with recent approaches linking varieties of policy learning to policy pathologies. This article sets out to explain the UK government's (mis)management of the Brexit process from June 2016 to May 2019 from a policy learning perspective. Drawing on interviews with UK policy-makers and stakeholders, we ask how did the UK government seek to learn during the Brexit negotiations? We consider four modes of learning: reflexivity, epistemic, hierarchical, and bargaining. By empirically tracing the policy process and scope conditions for each of these, we argue that learning through the first three modes proved highly dysfunctional. This forced the government to rely on bargaining between competing factions, producing a highly political form of learning which stymied the development of a coherent Brexit strategy. We argue that the analysis of Brexit as a policy process – rather than a political event – reveals how policy dynamics play an important role in shaping the political context within which they are located. The article concludes that public policy analysis can, therefore, add significant value to our understanding of Brexit by endogenising accounts of macro political developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reference to policy learning is commonplace in the public policy literature but the question of whether it qualifies as an analytical framework applicable to the policy process has yet to be systematically addressed. We therefore appraise learning as analytical framework in relation to four standards: assumptions and micro‐foundations, conceptual apparatus, observable implications, normative applications. We find that policy learning meets the four standards, although its theoretical leverage varies across them. Since we are not aware of theories of the policy process that meet all of these standards all the time, we conclude that policy learning fares reasonably well and it's worth investing intellectual resources in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights on regulatory reform. The author mentions research trajectory and agenda in the field of political scientists including Alessia Damonte, Claire A. Dunlop, and Claudio M. Radaelli and highlights their impact on social sciences. The author discusses the learning theory and models of the scientists in public policy analysis which connects with regulatory culture and humility.

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]

Donald Schön's assertion that becoming an effective professional requires more than technical rationality underpins the pedagogy of Masters in Public Administration (MPA) programmes. This article explores how public administrators can be taught to think reflectively and reflexively about the limits of control in the context of decision making and regulatory policy appraisal. It reports on an in-class pedagogical experiment on illusions of control used to generate a real-life experience of the cognitive and emotional dimensions of control. By doing so, the article introduces the concept of 'regulatory humility' and contributes to the literature on experiments as pedagogical tools, and to debates on teaching methods in public administration and political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present some major lessons drawn from a recently completed research project. Our research dealt with ex ante evaluation, mainly impact assessment (IA).We shed new light on research questions about the control of bureaucracy, the role of IA in decision-making, economics and policy learning, and the narrative dimension of appraisal.We identify how our findings stand in relation to conventional arguments about these issues, and reflect on their normative implications. We finally reason on the possible extensions of our arguments to the wider field of policy evaluation, connecting IA and ex post evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [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]

What depth of learning can policy appraisal stimulate? How we can account for the survival policies that are known to pose significant countervailing risks? While heralded as a panacea to the inherent ambiguity of the political world, the proposition pursued is that policy appraisal processes intended to help decision-makers learn may actually be counterproductive. Rather than simulating policy-oriented learning, appraisals may reduce policy actors' capacity to think clearly about the policy at hand. By encouraging a variety of epistemic inputs from a plurality of sources and shoehorning knowledge development into a specified timeframe, policy appraisal may leave decision-makers overloaded with conflicting information and evidence which dates rapidly. In such circumstances, they to fall back on institutionalised ways of thinking even when confronted with evidence of significant mismatches between policy objectives and the consequences of the planned course of action. Here learning is 'single-loop' rather than 'double-loop'-focussed on adjustments in policy strategy rather than re-thinking the underlying policy goals. Using insights into new institutional economics, the paper explores how the results of policy appraisals in technically complex issues are mediated by institutionalised 'rules of the game' which feed back positively around initial policy frames and early interpretations of what constitutes policy success. Empirical evidence from UK biofuels policy appraisal confirms the usefulness of accounts that attend to the temporal tensions that exist between policy and knowledge development. Adopting an institutional approach that emphasises path dependence does not however preclude the possibility that the depth of decision-makers' learning might change. Rather, the biofuels case suggests that moves towards deeper learning may be affected by reviews of appraisal evidence led by actors beyond immediate organizational context with Chief Scientific Advisers within government emerging as potentially powerful catalysts in this acquisition of learning capabilities. [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]

Challenges an article by David Toke published in 'Politics' on May 1999 that linked epistemic communities to a positivist dogma. Critique of the concept through an examination of its basic nature; Understanding of the epistemic communities approach by Peter M. Haas; Inability to engage with the real world of politics and other groups therein; Lack of theoretical refinement and empirical examination.

Discusses the history of regulatory paradigms of assessment and control of recombinant DNA research in the United States (U.S.) and European Union (EU). Regulation in the marketing of genetically modified organisms (GMO); Evolution of a product-oriented style of genetic manipulation in the U.S.; Environmental risk assessments conducted in Europe and EU countries before and after the release of GMO in the market.