Policy learning, policy diffusion, and the making of a new order
By: MESEGUER, Covadonga
.
Material type: 
ArticlePublisher: Thousand Oaks : SAGE, March 2005The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science 598, p. 67-82Abstract: This article surveys the role of learning as mechanism of policy diffusion in the context of the creation of a new political order. The author discusses policy learning against the background of recent research on the diffusion of deregulatory and regulatory policies and attempts to distinguish learning from other mechanisms of difusion. She then surveys the challenges entailed in testing this mechanism and sets out her particular approach: a rational version of learning. She also reports the results of preliminary efforts to test learning as applied to the diffusion of regulatory policies. The author concludesthat learning cannot be rejected as a plausible mechanism of the diffusion of policies, although it shares it explanatory role with less rational mechanisms of diffusion, in particular policy emulation. Further research and analisys is needed to test learning in either its rational or its bounded version and, in doing so, to delve into the politics of learning.
This article surveys the role of learning as mechanism of policy diffusion in the context of the creation of a new political order. The author discusses policy learning against the background of recent research on the diffusion of deregulatory and regulatory policies and attempts to distinguish learning from other mechanisms of difusion. She then surveys the challenges entailed in testing this mechanism and sets out her particular approach: a rational version of learning. She also reports the results of preliminary efforts to test learning as applied to the diffusion of regulatory policies. The author concludesthat learning cannot be rejected as a plausible mechanism of the diffusion of policies, although it shares it explanatory role with less rational mechanisms of diffusion, in particular policy emulation. Further research and analisys is needed to test learning in either its rational or its bounded version and, in doing so, to delve into the politics of learning.
Click on an image to view it in the image viewer
There are no comments for this item.