Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain

1993/04/01 by Peter A. Hall · 7,207 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Social Sciences · #Economic system #Economics #Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism #Law #Policy learning #Political and Economic history of UK and US #Political economy #Political science #Public administration #Social Policy and Reform Studies #Social learning #Social policy #Sociology #State (computer science)

paper · doi:10.2307/422246

published in Comparative Politics 25(3), 275 (City University of New York)

openalex publication_date 1993/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

This article examines the model of social learning often believed to confirm the autonomy of the state from social pressures, tests it against recent cases of change in British economic policies, and offers a fuller analysis of the role of ideas in policymaking, based on the concept of policy paradigms. A conventional model of social learning is found to fit some types of changes in policy well but not the movement from Keynesian to monetarist modes of policymaking. In cases of paradigm shift, policy respond to a wider social debate bound up with electoral competition that demands a reformulation of traditional conceptions of state-society relations.

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