Impact assessment in the EU: the state of the art and the art of the state by Andrea Renda

Book Revie

Epistemic Communities

publication-status: AcceptedPre-submission version made available with the permission of the publishers.Peter M. Haas formulated the epistemic communities framework as a means of exploring the influence of knowledge-based experts in international policy-making. Specifically, the approach was designed to address decision-making instances characterized by technical complexity and uncertainty. Control over the production of knowledge enables epistemic communities to articulate cause-and-effect relationships and so frame issues for collective debate and export their policy projects globally. Despite the framework being two decades old, there are still relatively few studies which explicitly test or develop the concept theoretically, thus making it difficult to assess what we have collectively and cumulatively learned about this topic. This chapter attempts to systematize key developments in the literature. The first section outlines the concept locating it in the politics of ideas literature. The second explores the state of the art in the empirical studies deploying the epistemic communities framework. The third section considers the theoretical challenges that researchers face when attempting to study epistemic communities. Discussion here proposes five possible causal pathways through which we can explain how epistemic communities help decision-makers learn. The chapter closes with a brief sketch of potential future research frontiers for scholars interested in the power of knowledge and epistemic communities in public policy.Claire A. Dunlop gratefully acknowledges the support of the European Research Council, grant on Analysis of Learning in Regulatory Governance, ALREG, http://centres.exeter.ac.uk/ceg/research/ALREG/index.php

Epistemic communities: a reply to Toke

© 2000 Political Studies Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd. The definitive version is available at: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118511092/homeThis 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 diagnoses the approach's failing correctly, the cause he identifies is off the mark. This particularly concerns his assertion of a positivist dogma underscoring the thesis, which is rejected as a misinterpretation of Haas. Rather, it is contended that the framework's inability to engage with the real world of politics, and the other groups therein, is a product of its lack of theoretical refinement and rigorous empirical examination

The Rise of the Unelected: Democracy and the New Separation of Powers - by Frank Vibert

Book Revie

Regulatory Impact Assessment: A Panacea to Over-Regulation?

CommentaryDonald MacRae offers a welcome and succinct intervention from an experienced regulation practitioner. MacRae argues convincingly of the perils of unchecked standard setting in the name of safety – the well known twin ills of additional burdens on industry and constraints on individuals’ liberty. While over-regulation in the name of safety may perhaps fairly be seen as Perrowian ‘normal accident’ of administrators’ encounters with uncertainty, MacRae rightly notes the unresolved and thorny questions about the legitimacy and accountability of those who ‘increase the safety ratchet’ whatever their motivation. Who are qualified to exercise these judgements? How do we ensure they can be held responsible for their actions (or inactions)? Recognition of this risk of setting the wrong standards has triggered two responses from within the standard setting community – specifically the work of UNECE WP.6 and INMETRO in Brazil. This commentary ponders what these nascent responses themselves imply for legitimacy and accountability and whether regulatory impact assessment offers a panacea to over-regulation.European Research Council, grant no 230267 on Analysis of Learning in Regulatory Governance, ALREG

Epistemic Communities and Two Goals of Delegation: Hormone Growth Promoters in the European Union

Version reproduced with the permission of the publisher. Copyright © Beech Tree Publishing 2010The 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 epistemic agents. It explores the implications of two epistemic community’s contrasting de facto independence from European Commission decision-makers for the delegation goals satisfied in formulating policy on hormone growth promoters. Analysis supported the view that to deliver policy efficiency an epistemic community must have low autonomy from the political principal. Policy credibility was achieved when decision-makers selected an epistemic community whose views were socially legitimate.This paper is based on doctoral research funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council studentship R00429834387. A previous version of the paper was presented at the European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on Regulatory Governance conference at the University of Bath, 7–8 September 2006. The author is grateful to Peter Haas, Andy Hindmoor, Oliver James, Claudio Radaelli and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies

The Temporal Dimension of Knowledge and the Limits of Policy Appraisal: Biofuels Policy in the UK

© Springer 2009What 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 counterproductive. Rather than simulating policy-oriented learning, appraisals may reduce policy actors’ capacity to think clearly about the policy at hand. By encouraging a variety of epistemic inputs from a plurality of sources and shoehorning knowledge development into a specified timeframe, policy appraisal may leave decision-makers overloaded with conflicting information and evidence which dates rapidly. In such circumstances, they to fall back on institutionalised ways of thinking even when confronted with evidence of significant mismatches between policy objectives and the consequences of the planned course of action. Here learning is ‘single-loop’ rather than ‘double-loop’—focussed on adjustments in policy strategy rather than re-thinking the underlying policy goals. Using insights into new institutional economics, the paper explores how the results of policy appraisals in technically complex issues are mediated by institutionalised ‘rules of the game’ which feed back positively around initial policy frames and early interpretations of what constitutes policy success. Empirical evidence from UK biofuels policy appraisal confirms the usefulness of accounts that attend to the temporal tensions that exist between policy and knowledge development. Adopting an institutional approach that emphasises path dependence does not however preclude the possibility that the depth of decision-makers’ learning might change. Rather, the biofuels case suggests that moves towards deeper learning may be affected by reviews of appraisal evidence led by actors beyond immediate organizational context with Chief Scientific Advisers within government emerging as potentially powerful catalysts in this acquisition of learning capabilities

Policy Transfer as Learning – Capturing Variation in What Decision-Makers Learn from Epistemic Communities

publication-status: PublishedAlmost 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 knowledge and information enables epistemic communities to articulate cause and effect relationships and so frame issues for collective debate and export their policy projects globally. Remarkably, however, we still know very little about the variety of ways in which decision-makers actually learn from epistemic communities. This article argues that variety is best captured by differentiating the control enjoyed by decision-makers and epistemic communities over the production of substantive knowledge (or means) that informs policy from the policy objectives (or ends) to which that knowledge is directed. The implications of this distinction for the types of epistemic community decision-maker learning exchanges that prevail are elaborated using a typology of adult learning from the education literature which delineates four possible learning situations. This typology is then applied to a comparative study of US and EU decision-makers’ interaction with the epistemic community that formed around the regulation of the biotech milk yield enhancer bovine somatotrophin (rbST) to illustrate how the learning types identified in the model play out in practice

Watching the Detectives: Explaining Regulators’ Roles in the Integration of Sustainable Development in UK Public Services

This article is based on research funded the Sustainable Development Commission (see Coote et al, 2009). A previous version was presented at the UACES annual conference in Bruges 5-8 September 2010. The authors are grateful to the participants of panel B208, Governance of Sustainability 1 for their constructive comments and feedback. The usual disclaimer applies. Dunlop gratefully acknowledges the support of a Sustainable Development Commission research grant.publication-status: AcceptedThis is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article submitted for consideration in Public Management Review [copyright Taylor & Francis]; Public Management Review is available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/ [DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2011.642564]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, the paper explains the responses of the three regulators operating in local government, schools and healthcare. It finds that, central government’s failure both to send out clear signals about how to promote sustainable development and to create incentives to ensure it happens has left the integration of sustainable development mediated by regulators’ organisational norms and professional identities