Policy-learning in EU democracy support: strategic adaptation and (un)learning in the EU's response to authoritarian consolidation in Belarus

This article investigates the European Union's (EU) policy-learning processes in democracy support, focusing on its responses to authoritarian consolidation in Belarus from 2004 to 2024. Despite its commitment to democracy and human rights, the EU has struggled to achieve consistent outcomes in engaging with Belarus, a "hard case" of sustained autocracy. The study develops a novel conceptual framework to analyse policy learning, unlearning, and strategic adaptation in EU democracy support, examining how the EU learns from experience and adapts its approaches. The study finds that segmented learning, involving ad-hoc adjustments to immediate events, often shaped EU responses, while cumulative learning - drawing on past experiences to inform long-term strategies - played a more limited role. Strategic adaptation is evident in the EU's oscillation between pragmatic engagement and sanctions, reflecting a complex interplay between normative commitments and geopolitical considerations. Institutional constraints and bureaucratic rigidity not only hampered policy learning but also led to the unlearning of valuable knowledge such as on civil society engagement. While there has been some adaptation in the face of authoritarian resilience and geopolitical competition, the Belarus case demonstrates that the EU lacks the institutional memory and learning mechanisms to systematically integrate democracy support with other foreign policy objectives.