Interpreters, teachers, rule-followers or negotiations-as-usual? Learning modes in European Union fiscal monitoring and surveillance

In response to the attacks on the sovereign debt of some Eurozone countries, the European Union leaders have created a set of preventive and corrective procedures and policy instruments to coordinate macro-economic policies and reforms across the 28 member states. The most important empirical manifestation of these ambitious goals is the European Semester, a cycle of exchange of information, monitoring and surveillance. Countries that deviate from the targets are subjected to increasing monitoring and more severe ‘corrective’ interventions, in a pyramid of responsive exchanges between governments and EU institutions. The EU is supposed to generate coordination and convergence towards balanced economies via mechanisms of learning. But how do the EU and its member states learn? Who is directing this process of learning? Is the EU learning in the ‘wrong’ mode? In this paper we take the EU annual cycle of policy coordination as independent variable and look at four theory-grounded modes of learning as dependent variable. We answer the question ‘what is the prevalent mode of learning’ – and then discuss whether this mode is functional or dysfunctional, and the implications in terms of who is driving the process and ultimately exercising power. The paper contributes to the literature on policy learning by showing how modes of learning can be operationalized and used in empirical analysis.

Paper by Claire A. Dunlop and Claudio Radaelli

http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/politics/staff/radaelli/