ABSTRACT
The main body of OMC literature has not been motivated by normative theory – be it democratic or demoi-cratic. Exceptions exist, but extant literature is eminently interested in the domestic effects of the OMC processes in specific single policy areas. Typically, empirical cross-national studies look at whether the OMC in a particular domain has been effective in transforming domestic policy paradigms and/or public policy (de la Porte and Pochet 2012). In so doing, these studies have provided insights into the role of national institutional idiosyncrasies in complex policy processes, have shown the conditions for domestic change, and have identified adaptive patterns – or lack thereof. This focus on the domestic effects of the OMC processes, however, should
not lead us to forget the notion of different utilizations of this mode of governance. Since its official name-giving in the March 2000 conclusions of the Lisbon Council meeting, the OMC has being deployed with different purposes, logics of action, procedures, and instruments (Borra´s and Radaelli 2010). Moreover, some of these logics, procedures and instruments have been changing across the past two decades (Borra´s 2007). Below, we identify three interlinked ideal-typical usages and purposes of the
OMC. These are naturally highly interrelated, and tend to co-exist to a large degree in the real life of the OMC praxis. There are in fact many ways in which the OMC is organized, and this naturally is a crucial consideration to take into account when examining the OMC’s demoi-cratic credentials. Although learning is the higher-level category we have in mind, it is useful to
unpack this concept into exploration, instrumental learning and convergence. Accordingly, our first usage is ‘exploration’. Here, the OMC is used to ident-
ify and to probe possible courses of action and innovations – new possibilities in unknown situations. Via exploration, the OMC generates cross-country reflexivity and adaptation. This is essentially a usage oriented to ‘process-based exploration’ in a situation where there is no pre-defined socially certified actor (the equivalent of the ‘teacher’ in the class; see Dunlop and Radaelli [2013] for these metaphors). There are no pre-defined solutions because uncertainty is high. The second usage is ‘instrumental learning’, when there are some good practices known to be able to solve difficult problems, and the OMC is used in order to generate mutual advancement of solutions by the intensive consideration of each other’s practices and approaches, often in recursive iteration (Dunlop and Radaelli 2013; Radaelli 2008). The third co-existing usage is ‘convergence’ of national policies towards a specific set of EU solutions. All three usages have connections with the concept of learning, but in different specifications. Exploration has affinities with reflexivity. Convergence is often learning steered by perceived attribution of threat or incentives, authority and reputational sanctions. Instrumental learning operates via mechanisms of evidencebased policy. It does not require reflexivity. It doesn’t have to be steered. But it draws on information that exposes decision-makers to how certain reforms have achieved some results.
