Policy transfer as learning: capturing variation in what decision-makers learn from epistemic communities

Abstract

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 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.

Keywords:

• epistemic communities
• policy transfer
• knowledge production
• policy learning
• bovine somatotrophin (rbST)
• biotechnology

Acknowledgements

This article is based on doctoral research funded by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) studentship R00429834387. Previous versions were presented at the ECPR joint sessions in Rennes on 11–16 April 2008 and British International Studies Association (BISA) annual conference at the University of Exeter on 15–17 December 2008. The author is grateful to the participants of workshop 23 (on ‘The Politics of Evidence-based Policy-making’) and panel 3.5 (Epistemic Communities, International Experiences and Policy Transfer) respectively for their constructive comments and feedback. Particular thanks are extended to Peter Haas, Hanne Foss Hansen, Atsushi Ishii, Oliver James, Sara Kutchesfahani, Simone Ledermann, Mark Monaghan, Claudio Radaelli, Fritz Sager and John Turnpenny for their helpful suggestions.

Notes

1. In the five citation indexes in the Web of Science, Peter M. Haas's introductory article in the 1992 International Organization special edition edited by him has been cited 537 times (accessed 6/2/2009).

2. Notably, James and Lodge criticize the policy transfer model presented by Dolowitz and Marsh (2000) for collapsing these two analytical dimensions onto a single continuum (2003, pp. 184–185).

3. The author conducted 38 semi-structured interviews with active and retired scientists, civil servants, industry representatives, politicians and interest group actors.

4. Two particularly high profile studies have associated IGF-1 with a higher risk of diabetes (Baur et al. 2006) and identified milk produced by rbST administered cows as one of three major contributors to increased human twinning (Steinman 2006).