Policy Learning and European Integration

Abstract

way of doing integration'a point that was not lost in classic theories of European integration (Ferrara and Kriesi, 2022). A crisis provides a formidable threat to integration. But it also creates a decision-making window of opportunity wider than normal-times windows. How the EU approaches this opportunity is crucial: it can be a disaster or a positive discontinuity, a leap into further integration. After all, 'Europe will be forged in crisis' famously wrote Jean Monnet in his Mémoires (1976). Can we then look at integration, to carry on with Monnet, as the cumulative effects of the responses to crises? If there is a connection between crisis and integration, it is reasonable to think that learning is a possible result of the 'way of managing and responding to crises'.Back to 2021, the year in review seems to corroborate the learning-from-crisis argument. Crisis featured prominently: the turbulent start of the year in transatlantic relations with the attack on Capitol Hill, the total shake-up of orthodox economic paradigms about spending in deficit, the lethal incidents affecting migrants (43 people drowned in January only), the constant attempts to undermine the rule of law, compounded by the discussed leadership of Slovenia when this country assumed the EU Presidency in the second half, the troubled wake of Brexit, and of course the obstinate presence of the Covid-19 virus. At the same time, 2021 was the year of the pan-EU Covid-19 certificate and of the EU institutions coming together in the finalization of ambitious policies for ecological and digital recovery. Resilience is a key word in the

Blame‐avoidance and fragmented crisis management during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Switzerland

“…It occurs when policy actors “uptake new information about how to address a problem” that has been recognized as significant (Crow et al, 2023, p. 13). Importantly, “learning is a possible result of the ‘way of managing and responding to crises’” (Radaelli, 2022). In this article, as we observe short‐term learning occurrences happening during a crisis, the focus is on the process of learning (i.e., through which mechanisms and in which platforms did policy‐makers learn during pandemic management), and less on the results of learning.…”

The EU at Crossroads: 2022 as a Turning Point Year?

“…These opportunities have the capacity of becoming turning points (much like the Brexit referendum) changing power dynamics, agendas and the applicability of existing solutions, shifting the boundaries of the EU's own comfort zone. Radaelli (2022) in the Annual Review annual lecture suggested that lessons learned from one crisis should feed into learning mechanisms preparing a political system for the next one. To that end, the multiplicity of crises not only can change the rules of the game at the EU level, as well as the degrees of interaction between different actors involved, but also affect the way the EU learns to live within a perma-crisisresembling a 'boiling frog' syndrome to the point that the EU does not realise it exists within a crisis environment and becomes consumed by the crisis itself.…”

From Crisis to Crisis: The EU in between the Covid, Energy and Inflation Crises (and War)

“…Building on neo‐functionalism, historical institutionalism and experimentalism, Radaelli focuses on the role of ‘learning mechanism’ as a crucial passage between ‘crisis’ and ‘integration’: ‘… integration depends on how the EU learns in a crisis, and how learning brings the EU to the next crisis’. (Radaelli, 2022). Analytically, the model distinguishes between different types of crises, particularly ‘slow‐burning’ and ‘fast‐burning’ crises, pointing out that they tend to trigger different mechanisms of learning: ‘inferential’ and ‘contingent’ respectively.…”