Policy learning or politics as usual? Explaining the rise and retrenchment of renewable electricity support policies in Europe

I assess the contribution of policy learning to changes in renewable energy support policies in the European Union (EU), focusing on the evolution of the ‘Feed-in Tariff’ in Germany and the United Kingdom, considering both ‘endogenous’ (responses to the effects of existing policy within the country) and ‘exogenous’ (responses based on external experience of the policy) learning in shaping the design and operation of the mechanism as policy shifted from an expansionary to a retrenchment phase. I evaluate the analytical value of a policy learning approach compared with other explanations for such policy changes, particularly those which draw upon more conventional political drivers such as political parties, interest groups and institutional conditions at the domestic and EU levels. While there are signs in both cases that policy learning has informed changes in the policy in certain respects, the principal drivers of, and constraints upon, change have been political.