The individual in policy change : policy learning in the liberalization of network industries in Belgium
(2014)
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- Policy learning is an important factor of policy change and designates the relatively enduring alterations of policymakers’ beliefs, attitudes and behavioral intentions with respect to policies. While there is a considerable amount of knowledge about the influence of institutions, organizations, and networks on policy learning, little research has been conducted about the individual conditions of this mechanism. Based on an analytical framework combining the Advocacy Coalition Framework’s concepts (at the collective level) and the Theory of Reasoned Action’s concepts (at the individual level), this research focuses on the individual conditions of policy learning, in particular policymakers’ interests and trust. The test of the research hypotheses is mainly based on the analysis of the data from a web survey conducted among 1256 policymakers from the Belgian rail and electricity sectors. The use of multilevel regression models to analyse the data of the survey allows to control the influence of aggregate-level effects and to focus on the individual-level conditions of policy learning. The research focuses on the evolution of policymakers’ preferences with respect to a policy (here, the European liberalization policy process) as an operational measure of policy learning. The research shows that policymakers’ preferences do not evolve very much over time. They do evolve, however. To explain this, key factors are policymakers’ perceptions about the impacts of the policy on their personal interests and the interests of their organization: policymakers will adapt their policy preferences according to these perceptions. Nevertheless, much room remains for other determinants of policy learning. This includes socio-psychological factors, like the climate of trust that policymakers perceive in the policy subsystem in which they are involved. This climate can prompt them to recognize more easily the negative effects that policy changes have on them and consequently inclines their policy preferences to evolve more negatively. The results also suggest that policymakers use heuristic-based modes of reasoning for adapting their preferences about policies. For example, when they give much importance to their interests, they seem to expect more negative impacts from policy changes and their policy preferences also evolve more negatively. In other words, those policymakers weigh expected losses more and expected gains less than other comparable policymakers. The research contributes to the Advocacy Coalition Framework in two respects. First, it advances a refined conceptual apparatus to account for the individual-level aspects of the policy process (based on the triptych: beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intentions). Second, it considers individual determinants of policy learning. In particular, it focuses on policymakers’ interests of which the role in policy learning has been less seriously considered by existing research.
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Moyson, S. (2014). The individual in policy change : policy learning in the liberalization of network industries in Belgium. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/59364