Learning, policy instruments and networks in EU policy-making—Trends in European policy analysis

Abstract

Following the first issue of this year, the special issue on the Programmatic Action Framework (PAF) (Bandelow & Hornung, 2021), the EPA editorial team proudly presents the open spring issue. Those who regularly follow the updates of our journal probably noticed already the change in the production schedule. From 2021 on, EPA will publish four issues a year, starting in 2021 with two special issues in winter and autumn, and the regular issues being published in May and November. It is a great step ahead for the journal, which would not have been possible without the ongoing support and collaboration of our authors and reviewers, to whom we send a great thank you! This success is also visible in the current SCOPUS CiteScore, which improved compared to the previous year (3.9 in 2019) and currently equals 4.2 (as of March 2, 2021: https://www2.scopus.com/sourceid/21100886407). Beyond numbers, this score symbols EPA's impact in the research community, which follows the high-quality articles of authors across Europe and the diversity of research fields that these articles engage with. We'd like to take this opportunity to again thank each and every one who contributes to our journal.

Alongside the transition regarding the publication schedule, we happily announce further changes in the EPA editorial team. The position as editorial administrator and manager, which since the early beginnings of the EPA journal has been performed by Johanna Hornung, will be taken by Ilana Schröder in the future. She will devote at least as much effort to this task as her predecessor did, and we cannot imagine a better person to replace this vacancy. Johanna Hornung will not leave the journal but, given her outstanding work as editorial manager in the past, will become one of the journal's general editors. She will proceed with putting her full heart and mind into this journal's journey, and is both excited and looking forward to this new task.

As regards content, this year's second issue includes a number of articles that connect to recent trends in European Policy Analysis: Originally strongly interwoven with the ACF as a framework of the policy change and learning (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1993), policy learning also stands as a perspective on its own today. Following the extensive research on learning within the last years (Babarczy & Imre, 2017; Dunlop et al., 2018; Gerlak et al., 2020; Howlett et al., 2017; Montpetit & Lachapelle, 2017; Moyson et al., 2017), policy learning can meanwhile be considered as a distinct framework that fulfills the necessary analytical requirements (Dunlop & Radaelli, 2018). The article by Riche et al. (2020) investigates under which conditions learning takes place in governance networks and systematically reviews 40 public administration studies to answer this question. The authors reveal that trust is an unconditional factor that fosters learning while apart from trust, a variety of conditions must be met to enable learning, including diversity, actor centrality, and network types.

A second perspective that is prominently applied in policy analysis today is that of policy design and policy instruments (Howlett, 2009; Linder & Peters, 1991). Adding to the question of how to explain policy instrument choice (Capano & Lippi, 2017; Howlett & Ramesh, 1993), Veselý and Petrúšek (2020) challenge the original view that policy instrument choice is a matter of educational background and organizational affiliation influence policy instrument preferences. Instead, gender, age, and position are related to instrument preference, and the general belief whether policy instruments are able to achieve policy goals is relevant, too. Focusing on a concrete example to study policy design, Precious (2020) proposes three ideal types of autism policy that are classified along the lines of information, involvement, and empowerment. In her conclusion, she states that in the majority of countries, the ideal type of informed policy design is present and that to improve democratic credentials, it would be necessary to strengthen empowerment in disability policy.

The COVID-19 pandemic once again reminds us of the fact that some crises have a European if not global scope and that such crises are best mastered through international coordination. Yet, not all crises are successfully managed beyond the national level, and the refugee crisis is an example of partly unsatisfactory crisis management. Kaufmann (2020) analyses the EU parliamentary debates around the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and reveals that MEP's were generally in favor of increased responsibility-sharing and solidarity in the allocation of asylum seekers. Yet, it is puzzling why this has not led to a reform of the CEAS. While there were problem- and solution-oriented debates in parliament, the Council of the European Union consistently blocked a reformed asylum policy, which made the refugee crisis a political crisis and presents a failure of EU policy. As opposed to this example of the failed influence on EU policy, Lits (2020) presents a case in which an astroturf group (a fake grassroots movement) promoted shale gas exploration and thereby potentially broadened the pro-shale coalition, which was later successful at the EU level. In doing so, the author emphasizes astroturfing as a lobbying strategy of interest groups that can create movements that allegedly represent citizen concerns but behind which in fact the interests of an industry hide. Different to industrial companies, academic institutions seek to increase their reputation and ensure funding of research by collaborating within inter-organizational networks. To what extent these activities actually contribute to academic reputation is analyzed in the article by Calignano (2020). He finds that the centrality of academic institutions in research and innovation networks is indeed related to the increased reputation of this institution, and that it is fruitful for less renowned institutions to interact with established and central institutions to build a reputation.