Conference Agenda

This paper is part of an ongoing PhD project and represents the project’s conceptual stage. The central focus of the paper is inter-system policy learning, and more specifically, how Norway, as a non-EU member state, leverages various policy learning forums to enhance its policy learning opportunities, with the aim to enhance public sector innovation. The paper provides a comprehensive exploration of policy learning, examining a multitude of learning types and modes. The research reveals that Norway's policy learning opportunities primarily arise from two sources: supranational EU policies, where Norway can learn from the EU as a policy actor, and through a mix of policy modes, such as regulation, the budgetary mode, and soft coordination, providing opportunities for differentiated policy learning. Two other obvious policy learning forums are the expert groups and other institutional spaces like the EU agencies. The paper also indicates that these learning opportunities are subject to considerable variability across policy fields and are bounded by legal frameworks. The paper uncovers critical gaps and complexities in the policy learning process, underscoring the need for more context-specific strategies for policy learning and a more expansive understanding of policy learning that encompasses diverse learning processes and outcomes.

The European Commission established various formats of expertise exchange between member states’ public administrations—often referred to as administrative networks. Their purpose is to assist less advanced member states with transposition, implementation and enforcement of the European Union (EU) acquis, as well as to bridge the gap between the growing body of EU policies and national capacity. Despite the increasing prominence of such networks, there is a dearth of knowledge on their mobilization. We ask: when and how is administrative expertise shared in European networks? We answer these questions by analysing member states’ interaction in the EU’s Technical Assistance and Information Exchange (TAIEX) instrument, which is the largest administrative expertise exchange instrument of the EU. Building on the policy network and organization theories, as well as descriptive network analysis, we develop a novel perspective about temporal robustness of administrative networks. We suggest that European administrative networks allow for the coexistence of stable roles of member states within agile network structures. In other words, administrative networks are flexible in the way how they address country-specific needs, and, at the same time, individual member states’ roles of in them are stable even despite political discontinuity.

This paper explores the evolving narrative of the European Central Bank (ECB) concerning fiscal policy, focusing on the nexus between learning processes and changes in belief systems and value orientations. In the face of institutional design flaws rooted in the ordoliberal foundations of the European Monetary Union (EMU), the ECB developed functional preferences for positive fiscal integration in the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis; this reflects a shift towards a Keynesian-inspired understanding of fiscal policy, which holds both policy as well as political relevance for the future of the EMU. Based on a mixed methodology which combines Latent Semantic Scaling (LSS) with narrative analysis, the research retraces the evolution of fiscal preferences as expressed in its communication, and inteprets the discursive shift in the narrative as a proxy of learning processes. The research suggests that the ECB strategically reframes ideas and values to either legitimise or criticise the policy debate and disseminate its preferences, due to evident power constraints; moreover, the change of narrative highlights the double-edged nature of learning, as it reacts both to epistemic processes of knowledge acquisition as well as political feedbacks from society. By constructing a competing vision of the social purpose of fiscal policy, the research highlights the role of the ECB as an integration agency within the EMU and elucidates the rhetoric uses of solidarity in its discourses.

The Council of the European Union gathers representatives of the EU member states, who meet and negotiate in many different bodies at several levels, from junior diplomats to ministers. Despite the diversity among the member states, their representatives in the Council prove to be very effective at reaching decisions. Most issues are already decided before reaching the ministers and usually there are either no votes against or very limited opposition.

In this paper, I focus on the way member state officials understand representation. Rather that defining the concept of representation “from above”, I want to approach it “from below” and ground it in the experience and understandings of national officials who work in the Council’s preparatory bodies. This type of interpretive approach to concepts is called “elucidation” (cf. Schaffer 2015). Empirically, the paper is based on in-depth interviews conducted during my ongoing field research in Brussels.

In order to find out what meanings the officials associate with representation, I ask how they perceive their role as representatives, who they think they represent, and if there are any tensions between the aforementioned tendency to reach consensus and their representative duties. In this last aspect, I use practice-oriented framework, looking at both consensus-seeking and representation as social practices, or socially recognisable, patterned, meaningful action which can be performed at varying degrees of competence.