Framework or metaphor? Analysing the status of policy learning in the policy sciences

ABSTRACT

Recently, it has been argued that the many works on policy learning constitute a stand-alone basis for understanding policy processes. In this study, we evaluate this claim through a bibliometric analysis of 588 publications on the topic in the Web of Science database, complemented by a literature review. We find that while the study of learning is supported by an active and growing research community, it has neither definitional clarity nor a shared vocabulary. And, further, its model of agency is both incomplete and inconsistent. As such, the subject remains more a metaphor than a framework of analysis, per se, and has little potential to advance epistemologically. Given this analysis, we argue that intellectual resources are better spent organising research on learning within existing frameworks rather than attempting to create a new stand-alone one that would contribute to the further splintering of an already fragmented field of study.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy learning
• policy process
• policy theory
• policy sciences
• bibliometrics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nihit Goyal

Nihit Goyal is a PhD Candidate at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. His research interests lie in interdisciplinary approaches to energy, climate change and sustainability, particularly focusing on governance and public policy analysis, design and evaluation. His articles have been published in journals such as Energy for Sustainable Development, Energies, Policy Sciences and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. He serves as the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Journal of Public Affairs, the flagship student journal of the Lee Kuan Yew School. Previously, he was a researcher at the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, a non-profit policy research institute in India.

Michael Howlett

Michael Howlett is Burnaby Mountain Chair in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University and Professor in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He specializes in public policy analysis, political economy and resource and environmental policy. His articles have been published in numerous professional journals in Canada, the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Australia and New Zealand. He is editor of the Annual Review of Policy Design and Policy Sciences and is the current chair of Research Committee 30 (Comparative Public Policy) of the International Political Science Association. He also sits on the Executive Committee of the International Public Policy Association.