Policy Instruments, Policy Learning and Politics: Impact Assessment in the European Union

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available in print from Edward Elgar.One proposition we put forward in this volume is that there is a relationship between policy instruments and mechanisms. To find out how exactly this relationship works, its activators and the causal role of policy instruments, we zoom-in on the case of impact assessment (IA) in the European Union. IA is an evidence-based instrument adopted by the EU in the context of the evidence-based better regulation strategy. The connection between IA and learning is apparently intuitive: IA should bring evidence to bear on the process of selecting policy options, and therefore assist decision-makers in learning from different type of analysis, dialogue with experts and stakeholders, and open consultation. However, we find out that learning comes in different modes (epistemic, reflexive, bargaining and hierarchical) and that the activators, context and results of learning vary across modes. In the conclusions, we reflect on the connections between learning and politics revealed by our approach to policy instruments and varieties of learning.The conceptual work was informed by two European Research Council (ERC) projects – Analysis of Learning in Regulatory Governance (ALREG) (grant # 230267) and Procedural Tools for Effective Governance (PROTEGO) (grant # 694632)