Claire Dunlop

University of Exeter | UoE · Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Abstract Over the years the Member States of the EU and the UK have redesigned rulemaking with freedom of information acts, impact assessment of policy proposals, ombudsman and stakeholder consultation. The broad aim of this instrumentation is both to improve substantive regulatory quality and to impact on final governance outcomes. This book expl...

The links between policy learning and policy innovation seem self-evident. Yet these areas of scholarship have developed independently of each other. The articles in this special issue all push on aspects of the learning/innovation relationship. This introduction sets the scene by getting the policy learning literature into conversation with key di...

Over the years, policy learning has emerged as a theoretical lens to provide an alternative understanding to 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 reducti...

Policy learning is one of the most important promises of policy evaluation (Patton, 1998). Indeed, since its origin, policy evaluation has been geared towards the objective of learning through the development of theories of practice (Shadish, Cook and Leviton, 1991). Bundi and Trein (forthcoming, 2022) also note conceptual similarities and elective...

We review the theoretical rationale underpinning the adoption of Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA). Using a range of empirical cases, our account demonstrates the ways in which pressure politics mediates RIA usages and how transparency in the early stages of the policy process can result in confrontations between bureaucracies and interest groups....

This article introduces the special issue ‘Transformational change through Public Policy’. After introducing the idea of transformational societal change, it asks how public policy scholarship can contribute to fostering it; the research questions we need to do so; what actors we need to study; who our audiences are; and how we need to expand our t...

This Special Issue makes a statement about the study of policy and politics, where it has been, how it is done, what it is, and where it is going. When addressing the question ‘who gets to speak for our discipline?’ we respond emphatically – many people, from many places, working in many ways. It comprises scholarship that has rarely been combined...

We compare the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) and the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT). Given the focus of this special issue on the NPF, we first theorize how the IGT can contribute to the development of NPF categories, but also how the former gains conceptual leverage from the latter. We argue that it is useful to consider jointly NPF and IGT a...

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 (RIA), freedom of information (FOI), and the Ombudsman. By adopting the IGT as conceptual lens to dire...

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 l...

Introduction The literature on policy learning has generated a huge amount of heat (and some light) producing policy learning taxonomies, concepts and methods, yet the efforts to demonstrate why we should think about policy processes in terms of learning have been rare and mostly in the past (Dunlop, Radaelli and Trein, 2018). Additionally, policy...

This chapter reviews the literature on policy learning, which has generated a huge amount of heat producing policy learning taxonomies, concepts, and methods. It discusses what are the lessons of thinking about policy processes in terms of learning, what are their triggers and hindrances, what can go wrong with learning, and what are the pathologie...

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 acros...

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is one of the defining policy challenges of an era. In this article, we sketch some possible ways in which the public policy and administration community can make an enduring contribution about how to cope with this terrible crisis. We do so by offering some elements that delineate a tentative research agenda for public polic...

To appear in Routledge Handbook of Policy Styles Editors Mike Howlett and Jale Tosun, 2021 Pending editorial queries and corrections by the editors, and proofs correction. This version was accepted by the editors of the volume and peer-reviewed by the editors

In this chapter we examine the classic four dimensions of style through a new perspective: policy learning1. We draw on policy learning theory to shed light on the dynamic dimensions of anticipation, reaction, consensus and imposition that characterise the policy styles view of problem solving and relationships among policy actors. We find that for...

Policy research has generated profound insights on the policy process. However, the granularity of the policy sciences makes it difficult to integrate policy analysis into the 'big questions' facing the vision of the open society, such as democratic backsliding, corruption, the polarization of electorates, the de-legitimization of expertise, and th...

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 se...

This chapter aims to examine the perspective of comparative politics the lens of comparative public policy or policy analysis. It presents differences and opportunities to develop connections between comparative politics and comparative public policy. The chapter introduces the public policy “take” on technocracy by distinguishing between two modes...

We introduce and discuss learning in public policy by following an analytical and historiographical path, from the classics to current research. Policy learning provides a lens on governance and public policy, especially policy change and the diffusion of reforms. It raises research questions on concept formation, measurement and causality. It has...

This chapter provides an overview of policy learning and policy failure, both of which are classic topics of policy studies. The links between the two literatures appear obvious, yet there are very few studies that address how one can learn from failure, learn to limit failure, and fail to learn. This book offers a rare attempt to bring these two l...

This chapter explores how dysfunctional forms of policy learning impact policy failure at the meso-level. Using the long-running policy failure of the management of bovine tuberculosis (BTB) in England, analysis focuses on negative lessons generated by the interactions of an epistemic community of scientific experts and civil servants charged with...

First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this updated volume explores policy failures and the valuable opportunities for learning that they offer. Policy successes and failures offer important lessons for public officials, but often they do not learn from these experiences. The studies in this volume investigate this broken link. Th...

First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this updated volume explores policy failures and the valuable opportunities for learning that they offer. Policy successes and failures offer important lessons for public officials, but often they do not learn from these experiences. The studies in this volume investigate this broken link. Th...

First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this updated volume explores policy failures and the valuable opportunities for learning that they offer. The book begins with an overview of policy learning and policy failure. The links between the two appear obvious, yet there are very few studies that address how one can learn from failur...

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 learn...

This book addresses salient current issues in public administration research. It seeks to suggest where future research may or indeed ought to be focussed. To advocate the future routes for the development of research, this book is divided into themes, with a clear overlap between different approaches. The book has contributions that will assist st...

The Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) is an important and relatively recent innovation in policy theory and analysis. It is conceptualized to empirically operationalize the insights of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. In the last decade, political scientists have offered a number of applications of the IGT, mainly focused...

Policy design efforts are hampered by inadequate understanding of how policy tools and actions promote effective policies. The objective of this book is to address this gap in understanding by proposing a causal theory of the linkages between policy actions and policy effects. Adopting a mechanistic perspective, the book identifies the causal proce...

The Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) is an important and relatively recent innovation in policy theory and analysis. It is conceptualized to empirically operationalize the insights of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. In the last decade, political scientists have offered a number of applications of the IGT, mainly focused...

Debates about impact and relevance have long been a feature of British politics and international studies. Thanks to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, we now have large-scale and comparable empirical evidence to animate and shape these discussions. Here, we present the first systematic analysis of the case studies. Using frequency data, we re...

en 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, conceptua...

Policy learning is an attractive proposition, but who learns and for what purposes? Can we learn the wrong lesson? And why do so many attempts to learn what works often fail? In this article, we provide three lessons. First, there are four different modes in which constellations of actors learn. Hence our propositions about learning are conditional...

This book explains the causal pathways, the mechanisms and the politics that define the quantity and quality of policy learning. A rich collection of case studies structured around a strong conceptual architecture, the volume comprises fresh, original, empirical evidence for a large number of countries, sectors and multi-level governance settings i...

In this introductory chapter, we explain how the study of policy learning has evolved to the point where it is today, and show how the contributions to the volume provide empirical and conceptual insights that, help address four major questions. First, what exactly do we mean by learning in the context of comparative public policy analysis and theo...

In this chapter, we examine how agencies build organizational political capacities (OPC) for reputation management, where capacity building is treated as a challenge underpinned by the learning relationships that exist between key governance actors. This challenge requires the development of four types of OPC: absorptive capacity (ACAP); administra...

Policy evaluations are increasingly considered a taken-for-granted prerequisite for a well-performing public sector. In this chapter, we address the question whether this view reflects the actual situation concerning evaluation capacity and culture in Europe. First, we reflect on the history of policy evaluation in Europe, by distinguishing between...

In this chapter, we link organizational capacity with learning. Specifically, we use a learning typology to organize the different resources and actors involved in learning processes in the public management and administration literatures. We divide capacity into absorptive, administrative, and analytical. By combining modes of learning with these...

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...

Whilst the literature classifies policy learning in terms of types or ontological approaches (reflexive and social constructivist learning versus rational up-dating of priors), we offer a three-dimensional approach to explore the relationships between individual learning, learning in groups and the macro-dimension. Our contribution maps most (altho...

Regulatory Reform: Research Agendas, Policy Instruments and Causation - Volume 8 Issue 1 - Alessia DAMONTE, Claire A. DUNLOP, Claudio M. RADAELLI

We analyse policy failure as a degeneration of policy learning. Analytically, we drill down on one type - epistemic learning. This is the realm of evidenced-based policymaking (EBPM), where experts advise decision-makers on issues of technical complexity. Empirically, we present the management of bovine tuberculosis (BTB) in England since 1997 as a...

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 th...

Policy failures present a valuable opportunity for policy learning, but public officials often fail to learn valuable lessons from these experiences. The studies in this volume investigate this broken link. This introduction defines policy learning and failure, and then organises the main studies in these fields along the key dimensions of: process...

In this article, we examine how agencies build organizational political capacities (OPC) for reputation management, where capacity building is treated as a challenge underpinned by the learning relationships that exist between key governance actors. This challenge requires the development of four types of OPC: absorptive capacity (ACAP); administra...

Regulators face an array of initiatives designed to boost the effectiveness of policy delivery and cut administrative burdens. A good deal of analytical attention is given to these governance tools, but we know much less about how regulators themselves understand and learn about them. We use a quasi-experiment to assess the effects of training on l...

This article provides advice on how to meet the practical challenges of experimental methods within public management research. We focus on lab, field, and survey experiments. For each of these types of experiments we outline the major challenges and limitations encountered when implementing experiments in practice and discuss tips, standards, and...

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 decisionmaking, economics and policy learning, and the narrative dimension of appraisal...

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 decisionmaking, economics and policy learning, and the narrative dimension of appraisal...

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 implicat...

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 r...

s — The Appraisal of Policy Appraisal — What do governments, international organizations and stakeholders mean when they say that proposals for new regulation should be systematically appraised? And do regulators really use the results of produced by evidence‑based policy instruments? In this article, we consider two dimensions of policy appraisal:...

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...

International reaction to the Arab Spring, explain Freund and Braga (2012, p. 131), “could be summarized by one word: surprise.” This was the case for the vast majority of countries, including the United Kingdom (UK) and United States of America (hereafter US). These countries, so often portrayed as close allies, encapsulated in the “special relati...

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 econom...

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 explanat...

The European Union may well be a learning organization, yet there is still confusion about the nature of learning, its causal structure and the normative implications. In this contribution we select four perspectives that address complexity, governance, the agency–structure nexus, and how learning occurs or may be blocked by institutional features....

This paper examines the role of regulators in the UK in integrating sustainable development into public services. In particular, how can we explain the different ways in which different regulators engage with sustainable development? Drawing on insights from rational choice and sociological institutionalism, this paper explains the responses of the...

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 predeter...

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 c...

The field of policy learning is characterised by a proliferation of concepts and lack of systematic findings. However, the literature has struggled to move beyond the seminal contributions made more than three decades ago however. We argue that different strands in the literature have failed to communicate because of selection bias and ambiguity ab...

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 e...

Almost two decades ago, Peter M. Haas formulated the epistemic community framework as a method for investigating the influence of knowledge-based experts in international policy transfer. Specifically, the approach was designed to address decision-making instances characterized by technical complexity and uncertainty. Control over the production of...

© 2007 by SAGE Publications and PAC Principal-agent modelling has become a very influential way of thinking about bureaucratic politics in a wide range of settings. Simple agency models have recently been extended and bureaucratic relationships placed in their wider temporal and socio-political contexts. By developing a conceptualization of princip...

This article examines the nature and degree of control which powerful actors have over the process of issue definition. In particular, it explores the ways in which knowledge and time can mediate, condition and direct decision-makers’ attention from one definition to another. The characterization of the ‘pecking order’ is introduced to capture the...

© NHS Health Scotland 2004 In Scotland, as in the rest of Europe and the UK, issues of health and well being have come to be of increasing concern in the contemporary workplace, and no less so in the teaching profession where levels of ill-health retirement and workrelated sickness absence have become perennial concerns (Wilson 2002; Brown and Macd...

© 2000 Political Studies Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. The definitive version is available at: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118511092/home This article contests the understanding of Peter M. Haas's 'epistemic communities' approach, forwarded by David Toke in his article in Politics of May 1999. It is argued that while Toke...

While the release into the environment and marketing of genetically modified organisms - GMOs - and their derivative products, represent issues with global relevance and implications, no singular approach has developed to regulate them in the two decades since gene-splicing technology became commercially viable. The aim of this profile is modest: i...

This article examines the nature and degree of control which powerful actors have over the process of issue definition. In particular, it explores the ways in which knowledge and time can mediate, condition and direct decision-makers' attention from one definition to another. The characterisation of the 'pecking order' is introduced to capture the...

To what extent can the organization of expertise shape, or even alter, decision- makers' cognitive commitments? Under what conditions might expert advisors re- define how decision-makers attribute responsibility? This paper explores the impact of decision-maker-expert relationships in the context of discursive institutionalism which tells us that e...

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