Policy learning in EU renewable energy: what learning, how effective, and why?

Common intuition as well as recent scholarly claims conceive climate and environmental policy as well-suited domains for learning from reflection on implementation experience. Yet, by focusing on such an apparently promising case for reflexive learning—European Union renewable energy policy over the past 25 years, the article finds more robust evidence of learning as a by-product of bargaining, whose ineffectiveness in turn led to learning under hierarchy. By engaging with the recent and growing policy learning literature, the article not only confirms the value of unpacking learning into multiple modes, which would otherwise remain obscured. It also contributes to clarify the scope conditions for different learning modes to be effective.