CIAO DATE: 04/06

Policy Learning, Policy Diffusion and the Making of a New Order

Abstract

This chapter surveys the role of learning as mechanism of policy diffusion in the context of the creation of a new political order. I discuss policy learning against the background of recent research on the diffusion of deregulatory and regulatory policies, and attempt to distinguish learning from other mechanisms of diffusion. I then survey the challenges entailed in testing this mechanism and set out my particular approach: a rational version of learning. I also report the results of preliminary efforts to test learning as applied to the diffusion of regulatory policies. I conclude that learning cannot be rejected as a plausible mechanism of the diffusion of policies, although it shares its explanatory role with less rational mechanisms of diffusion, in particular policy emulation. Further research and analysis is needed to test learning in either its rational or its bounded version, and in doing so to delve into the politics of learning.

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