How does policy learning occur? The case of Belgian mental health care reforms

Abstract This article asks how policy learning is achieved and whether and how it impacts on policy change. By drawing on the empirical case of Belgian mental health reforms, it shows that policy learning occurs through the very practice of policy-making. In-depth analyses of the process of preparing and devising, a current reform of mental health care delivery, called Reform 107, evidence that the transformation of policy learning – through verbal expression, inscription in documents or enactment in social situations such as meetings – is crucial to its impact on policy change. A phenomenolog... Mehr ...