Environmental Policy As Learning: A New View of an Old Landscape

• Published date: 01 May 2001
• Author: Daniel J. Fiorino
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/0033-3352.00033
• Date: 01 May 2001

322 Public Administration Review •May/June 2001, Vol. 61, No. 3

Daniel J. Fiorino

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Environmental Policy As Learning:

A New View of an Old Landscape*

Environmental policy in the United States has always been characterized by high levels of political

conflict. At the same time, however, policy makers have shown a capacity to learn from their own

and others’ experience. This article examines U.S. environmental policy since 1970 as a learning

process and, more specifically, as an effort to develop three kinds of capacities for policy learning.

The first decade and a half may be seen in terms of

technical learning

, characterized by a high

degree of technical and legal proficiency, but also narrow problem definitions, institutional frag-

mentation, and adversarial relations among actors. In the 1980s, growing recognition of deficien-

cies in technical learning led to a search for new goals, strategies, and policy instruments, in what

may be termed

conceptual learning

. By the early 1990s, policy makers also recognized a need for

a new set of capacities at

social learning

, reflecting trends in European environmental policy,

international interest in the concept of sustainability, and dissatisfaction with the U.S. experience.

Social learning stresses communication and interaction among actors. Most industrial nations,

including the United States, are working to develop and integrate capacities for all three kinds of

learning. Efforts to integrate capacities for conceptual and social learning in the United States

have had mixed success, however, because the institutional and legal framework for environmen-

tal policy still is founded on technical learning.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not

necessarily those of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Daniel J. Fiorino is the director of the Performance Incentives Division in the

Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation at the U.S. Environmental Pro-

tection Agency. He directs projects on performance-based environmental

management, performance measurement, and regulatory innovation and is

the program manager for the EPA’s National Environmental Performance

Track. He is the author of

Making Environmental Policy

(California, 1995)

and a co-author of

Managing for the Environment

(Jossey-Bass, 1999). Email:

Fiorino.Dan@epamail.epa.gov.

Do governments and institutions learn? Are policy mak-

ers, activists, experts, and others capable of drawing les-

sons from their experiences and applying it to problems

they face? A persuasive literature in public policy argues

that institutions and people within them do learn, and that

a learning model is a useful way to understand and explain

policy change. This learning approach has been proposed

to complement more traditional approaches to policy

change that are based on political conflict, approaches that

depict government and policy as driven largely by societal

conflicts and pressures.

Approaches to policy change based on a learning model

“generally hold that states can learn from their experiences

and that they can modify their present actions on the basis

of their interpretation of how previous actors have fared in

the past” (Bennett and Howlett 1992, 276). A learning

model suggests a more positive view of policy making than

does the traditional, conflict-based model. The notion that

governments and policy makers learn over time suggests a

purpose to policy making. A learning approach stresses

knowledge acquisition and use. Policy makers are seen less

as passive forces driven by political and interest group pres-

sures than as sources and implementers of ideas, informa-

tion, and analysis that influence choices.

This article applies a learning model to U.S. environ-

mental policy, with a focus on pollution control. Environ-

mental policy making is knowledge intensive and com-

plex, involving scientific, technical, legal, policy, and social

issues. How people obtain, evaluate, and use knowledge is

important. Many aspects of politics and policy—defini-

tions of problems, analytical tools and methods, differences

between lay and expert perceptions, perceived conflicts