Policy Learning Process Research Articles

The internationalization of fire protection: in pursuit of municipal networks in Edwardian Birmingham

Through a case study of Birmingham fire brigade, this article examines the plethora of international networking activities undertaken during the late Victorian and early Edwardian period. Birmingham fire brigade, under the control of Alfred Tozer, led British municipal participation in early international fire networks, attending international congresses and exhibitions in Berlin and London, and also visiting continental cities to inspect fire brigades and their appliances. Locating the study firmly within historical debates concerning the embryonic international municipal movement, this article demonstrates that municipal institutions participated in networking activities as part of a policy learning and knowledge-transfer process.

Learning, Frames, and Environmental Policy Integration: The Case of Swedish Energy Policy

Environmental policy integration (EPI) has been advanced as a guiding policy principle in Europe to ensure that environmental concerns are considered across all areas of policymaking. EPI can be treated analytically as a process of policy learning. The author analyses EPI and other types of learning in Swedish energy policy from the late 1980s up to today. A systematic tracing of agendas, arguments, and policy change indicates that learning processes and partial EPI have occurred. Changing actor configurations and increasing resource dependencies have facilitated learning and EPI, driven in turn by the European deregulation processes, global policy agendas, and the development of the Nordic electricity market. However, learning and EPI has been slow, indirect, and partial—constrained by how policymaking is organised in central government. Further measures are needed to advance EPI in national sector policy, including the development of policy-level strategic assessments and stronger sector accountabilities.

The targeted and unforeseen impacts of foresight on innovation policy: the eFORESEE Malta case study

The paper assesses the impacts of a foresight exercise carried out in Malta in 2002–2004. An evaluation framework is applied which seeks to account for the dynamic and possibly turbulent environment of an accession country's emergent innovation system and to capture and assess those effects of foresight potentially extending well beyond those initially targeted. Three foresight pilots are described, with an emphasis upon an ICT and Education Pilot, and used to illustrate that in addition to targeted effects, important changes were stimulated in terms of tackling broader challenges related to the socio-cultural context. These included the engagement of a broader range of stakeholders in the innovation system and the generation of sustainable policy learning processes. It is concluded that an evaluation framework for foresight should be sensitive to these unforeseen process benefits which have broader societal impacts, even if the lines of attribution are blurred and not easy to trace.

Transnational Networks and Global Environmental Governance: The Cities for Climate Protection Program

The past decade has witnessed a growing interest among scholars of international relations, and global environmental governance in particular, in the role of transnational networks within the international arena. While the existence and potential significance of such networks has been documented, many questions concerning the nature of governance conducted by such networks and their impact remain. We contribute to these debates by examining how such networks are created and maintained and the extent to which they can foster policy learning and change. We focus on the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) program, a network of some 550 local governments concerned with promoting local initiatives for the mitigation of climate change. It is frequently asserted that the importance of such networks lies in their ability to exchange knowledge and information, and to forge norms about the nature and terms of particular issues. However, we find that those local governments most effectively engaged with the network are mobilized more by the financial and political resources it offers, and the legitimacy conferred to particular norms about climate protection, than by access to information. Moreover, processes of policy learning within the CCP program take place in discursive struggles as different actors seek legitimacy for their interpretations of what local climate protection policies should mean. In conclusion, we reflect upon the implications of these findings for understanding the role of transnational networks in global environmental governance.

The Europeanization of urban governance in Greece: a dynamic and contradictory process

The introduction of EU funding programmes in Greek cities has led to new forms of governance, mainly including the emergence of new institutions for partnerships and citizens' participation. Based on theories of Europeanization and on theories of re‐scaling, this paper examines the magnitude and the direction of change in Greek urban policy. It suggests that the new institutions emerging from the Europeanization process face a number of constraints and contradictions emanating from the Greek political system. Empirical evidence shows that three endogenous factors of the Greek political system had impacted negatively upon these partnerships, favouring short‐term institutionalization, unequal power relations inside the partnerships and lack of trust and commitment. These factors amount to the financial and political dependence of local authorities to the state, the weak civil society and, finally, the individualistic political culture. However, processes of policy learning and capacity building have also arisen, presenting new challenges for the transformation of urban policy.

YACS: a new learning classifier system using anticipation

A new and original trend in the learning classifier system (LCS) framework is focussed on latent learning. These new LCSs call upon classifiers with a (condition), an (action) and an (effect) part. In psychology, latent learning is defined as learning without getting any kind of reward. In the LCS framework, this process is in charge of discovering classifiers which are able to anticipate accurately the consequences of actions under some conditions. Accordingly, the latent learning process builds a model of the dynamics of the environment. This model can be used to improve the policy learning process. This paper describes YACS, a new LCS performing latent learning, and compares it with ACS.

Capacity Building for Ecological Modernization

Environmental policy development in 30 advanced and developing countries is examined using the capacity-building approach. Findings indicate that an appropriate mix of institutions is decisive for policy performance and that formal institutionalization is helpful for longer term policy-learning processes. Globalization is not found to be negative, as often claimed: Rather, the globalization of environmental policies and proponents counteracts ecologically ignorant economic interests and fosters diffusion of environmental innovations. Assistance from international organizations and regimes plays an increasingly critical role. Environmental and politico-administrative reforms appear to be mutually supportive. Democratic structures and institutions are a basic precondition for effective environmental policies. Although many countries have been able to achieve environmental gains from new technologies, policies, and forms of stakeholder cooperation, even the most advanced need to strongly increase environmental policy and management capacities to meet the continuing challenge of sustainable development.

Discourse Coalitions and the Australian Climate Change Policy Network

Ever since the agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, climate change has become the most prominent global environmental issue on domestic political agendas. The author examines how a policy-network approach can contribute to the analysis of domestic climate change responses. Consideration is given to the role of advocacy coalitions and discourse coalitions within policy networks. It is argued that the discourse-coalition approach offers a useful explanation of the processes of coalition formation, interaction, and policy learning. Although it cannot alone explain the outcomes of the policy process, its emphasis on the dynamics of meaning, legitimacy, and knowledge as an essential part of policymaking can usefully be incorporated into an analysis of policy networks.

State Economic Development in the 1990s: Politics and Policy Learning

State economic development is in a state of ferment at mid-decade, but analysts are not certain about the direction of changes going on. This article uses a national survey of state development agencies to explore three possible scenarios: that states are losing interest in economic development, that they are regressing from the entrepreneurial strategies of the 1980s to their old industrial recruitment habits, and that they are embracing "Third Wave" principles. Evidence indicates that all three of these shifts are occurring simultaneously, although not with equal force. Although one argument is that these changes are the product of a policy-learning process informed by implementation and evaluation experiences, a stronger case can be made that the states are focusing and winnowing their programs in response to political cues in the environment. Program survival rather than effectiveness appears to be an overriding goal.

Paradoxes of privatization and deregulation

Abstract The article draws three main lessons from recent regulatory developments on both sides of the Atlantic. First, deregulation and privatization have not meant an end to all regulation. On the contrary, newly deregulated or privatized industries lose their pre‐existing statutory immunity from competition law and other regulatory requirements. Thus, privatization leads to the creation of new regulatory bodies and to a considerable widening of the scope of agencies to promote competition. Second, experience has revealed the fallacy of assuming that public ownership guarantees public control. The crisis of the nationalized industries is more a failure of regulation than a problem of productive efficiency. Public ownership not only reduced government's ability to regulate the economy, but also interrupted a policy learning process which could have produced, half a century ago, the kind of regulatory institutions which Europe is struggling to develop now. Finally, American deregulation has proved to be c...

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The dynamics of protection in the context of socio-technical niches have remained under-researched. In this paper we conceptualise the process of policy learning in the context of transitions. We show that a variety of actors inside and outside a technological niche have to learn about the implications and effects of regulations aimed at protection of niches. We analyse this process of policy learning in two cases: high-need drugs and electric vehicles. We conclude that both regulators and the regulated need to learn about the width and depth of protection measures, their duration, the specific set of tools used, and their legitimisation. A crucial issue of implementing protective regulation is the question on what level of aggregation protection measures need to be applied. Learning is often part of the negotiation process between the protector and the protected, but in many cases learning only takes place after policies have been implemented.