The traveller's guide to policy learning

Abstract

This article claims that when it comes to policy learning success, the most important variables are those that influence how well a learned-lesson travels. Consequently, it offers a ‘traveller's guide’ to policy learning. The guide begins with the presentation of a new concept that we have labelled ‘dynamic capacity’ which aims to capture the ways in which learned lessons need to move across time and space and consolidate downwards into the institutional fabric of a policy system. Interview data generated from lesson-learning actors in a specific policy community is then presented as a means of outlining the variables that prevent policy lessons from moving, and the strategies that might give them momentum. The hope is that this traveller's guide can help us build better theories of policy learning and encourage more effective learning practices that better recognise the ‘others’ who may not generate policy lessons, but greatly influence their impact.