Why the EU Does Not Learn: Cases From the Eurocrisis

Previous scholarship has labelled the European Union ‘learning organization’ and ‘massive policy transfer platform’. Similarly, the European Commission is seen as ‘very active policy entrepreneur’ and ‘purposeful opportunist’ because it can learn from its own mistakes and exploit the feedback information produced by its external environment. No matter whether scholars use institutional theory, agenda-setting models or cybernetics, they seem to point towards the learning properties of the EU as political system. Yet even a cursory look at evidence from the Eurozone crisis suggests that the EU has formidable learning problems. Instead of using models and theories that explain why and how the EU learn, this paper draws from models that do not predict learning. We introduce the main features of the garbage-can model, the joint decision trap, muddling through, and cognitive biases. These models allow us to formulate propositions about their observable implications. We then test these observable implications against a sequence of high-level EU meetings (Council and Ecofin) between 2008 and 2013. We conclude that evidence brings different levels of support for the various non-learning models, and we reflect on the advantages and limitations of thinking about systems that do not learn, as opposed to the current focus on the EU as learning political system.