It’s Policy Learning, Stupid!

In this paper, we use policy learning as a theoretical lens to explore the dimensions of the EU crisis. The literature on the crisis of the EU and the EU responses to it, mostly anchored to theories of integration, uses the crisis as a test or crucial episode for the different integration theories. The problem is that these probes and tests do not really increase our understanding of the crisis itself. This is the motivation for our novel framing of the research agenda on the EU crisis. Specifically, we identify four dimensions of the EU crisis and dissect their underpinning mechanisms using our extension of policy learning theory: the crisis of leadership, the crisis of episteme, the crisis of bargaining, and the crisis of participation. We show how the key mechanisms of learning are stymied, deficient or dysfunctional in each of the four dimensions, thus adding explanatory leverage to the literature on the EU crisis. In the remainder of the paper, we consider design issues. If (lack of) learning and learning dysfunctions are the cause, can the EU reform and re-design its architecture for learning? We argue that the problem is not simply to unclog the arteries of learning in the four dimensions, but to re-kindle learning by meeting democratic standards and by addressing some complex governance trade-offs that have already appeared in past critical episodes of EU politics. A system that learns is not a system without conflicts and trade-offs: it is a different game, with different qualities.