Rethinking policy learning in urban policy mobility

Since the ‘mobility turn’, urban researchers have advanced our understanding of the contentious and relational nature of cross-border policy learning. Extant research has revealed how policy ideas move through transnational networks, social interactions, and informal dialog, forming assemblages of policy learning. Despite this rich literature that centers policy learning on policy circulation, we know relatively little about how learning unfolds throughout the full trajectory of their localization as a policy process. We fill this gap by taking the policy cycle model as an analytical framework. We investigate the whole range of policy activities that shape and transform policy learning into concrete policy components through a series of interconnected, iterative stages of the policy cycle within urban policy mobility. Using the introduction of participatory budgeting in Vienna as an empirical case, we show how multiple types of learned lessons, drawn from diverse actors and sources of knowledge, become enmeshed, streamlined, and articulated into the formulation and implementation of an international best practice as a local policy. We conclude by highlighting some analytical advantages of this policy-oriented approach for researching urban policy mobility and suggest directions for future research.