Towards a theoretical framework of inter-organizational policy learning: A case of the European Green Deal

Complex transboundary policy issues such as climate change among other environmental challenges have emphasized the central role of public international organizations in the policymaking process. There, organizational learning has been long recognized as a key mechanism for informing policy positions (e.g., Gerlak et al., 2018; Gerlak, Heikkila, & Newig, 2020). However, relatively little is known about how such organizations engage in policy learning. Even less is known at the inter-organizational supranational levels. Literature on organizational learning has hitherto mostly focused on how organizations develop their internal structures and capacities to solve problems, improve performance or adapt to external perturbations in their environments (e.g., Koch & Lindenthal, 2011; Zito, 2009). Network learning literature on the other hand has focused more on larger learning interactions among heterogenous units of analysis, spanning individual, collective, public, and private actors (e.g., Ingrams, 2017), and still calls for more granular understandings of inter-organizational learning (e.g., Moynihan, 2008). In this article, using a grounded theory approach, we leverage the case of the development of the European Green Deal (as a policy framework addressing the complex issue of climate change) to explore how inter-organizational policy learning takes place around complex transboundary policy issues. Here, we focus on the intervening inter-organizational policy learning processes between supranational organizations, chiefly: the European Commission and the European Environmental Agency. While these organizations have different mandates – the European Commission is in charge of proposing legislation in the European Union, among other responsibilities; and the European Environment Agency is mandated to monitor, assess and provide knowledge on the state of the environment and environmental policy in Europe – they interact very closely in the climate and environmental domains. In this article, we aim to untangle the learning relationship between these two in this specific case, on the basis of an extensive literature review, document analysis and in-depth semi-structured interviews. We construct an analytical framework that accounts for key policy learning interactions between internal and external organizational structures, policy actors (individual and collective), policymaking contexts, and policy issue formulation at the micro-meso and macro levels (Zaki, Wayenberg, and George, forthcoming). We leverage this analysis to propose a grounded theoretical framework for inter-organizational policy learning and explore the causal relationship between policy learning and changes in policy positions. In doing so, we account for the different structural and contextual configurations that potentially catalyze or inhibit inter-organizational learning within the domain of environmental governance.We also leverage our findings to offer insights to practitioners on how to enhance the design of inter-organizational policy learning frameworks.