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Better Regulation in Europe: Between Public Management and Regulatory Reform
Abstract
Can the European regulatory state be managed? The European Union (EU) and its Member States have looked at Better Regulation as a possible answer to this difficult question. This emerging public policy presents conceptual challenges to scholars of public management and administrative reforms, but also opportunities. In this conceptual article, we start from the problems created by the value-laden discourse used by policy- makers in this area, and provide a definition and a framework that are suitable for empirical/explanatory research. We then show how public administration scholars could usefully bring Better Regulation into their research agendas. To be more specific, we situate Better Regulation in the context of the academic debates on the New Public Management, the political control of bureaucracies, evidence-based policy, and the regulatory state in Europe.
... Nos últimos anos, processos de reforma que envolvem criação ou ajustes em instituições e procedimentos regulatórios têm sido adotados desde em países com economias mais avançadas até naqueles em desenvolvimento e transição (Zhang & Thomas, 2009;Francesco & Guaschino, 2020). Como caminho comum, as reformas mais recentes têm procurado aprimorar a avaliação das regulamentações antes da sua edição, envolver as partes interessadas no processo regulatório, reduzir os custos administrativos decorrentes das regulamentações e garantir a legitimidade do papel regulador do Estado, especialmente mediante a ampliação dos mecanismos de transparência e participação social (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009;Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2021). Essas reformas podem ser mais extensas e abranger questões ligadas ao modelo de intervenção do Estado, atribuindo maior ou menor amplitude à atividade reguladora, ou concentrar-se na gestão e no processo regulatório, assumindo uma característica de reforma institucional, com olhar voltado para dentro das organizações reguladoras e para as suas relações com as partes interessadas na sua atuação (Wiener, 2006;Park, Lee, & Son, 2021). ...
... Sejam reformas mais amplas e estruturantes, sejam reformas que objetivam aperfeiçoar modelos e práticas, por vezes caracterizados como diferentes "ondas de reformas" (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009), o resultado esperado relaciona-se a dotar o país de um sistema regulatório com maior qualidade para as regulações novas e já existentes e a promover a coordenação e o envolvimento de instituições e atores. Tais estratégias estão inseridas na chamada agenda de governança regulatória. ...
... Nesse sentido, a pesquisa aponta que tais práticas já faziam parte da cultura das agências nacionais, mas que a edição da nova legislação refletiu em uma sedimentação dessas ações essenciais à adoção de regulamentos com qualidade em linha com as ferramentas utilizadas para a better regulation implantadas pelos entes regulatórios europeus (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). ...
O Brasil promoveu recentemente uma ampla reforma organizacional e institucional das agências reguladoras federais. Essa reforma regulatória, representada pela chamada Lei Geral das Agências (Lei nº 13.848/2019), buscou aprimorar a governança regulatória por meio da definição de novas estruturas e procedimentos obrigatórios para as agências independentes, objetivando a promoção da qualidade regulatória. Este artigo teve como objetivo avaliar os reflexos da nova legislação no funcionamento das agências reguladoras federais, particularmente às ferramentas de transparência e participação, e da harmonização e do aprimoramento do processo decisório, utilizados nas boas práticas regulatórias. Mediante a análise documental e de entrevistas estruturadas com atores-chave nas 11 agências federais, foi feita uma comparação entre o período anterior à lei e o cenário regulatório após um ano de sua vigência. Os dados coletados indicam a consolidação da consulta pública, da análise de impacto regulatório e da transparência na tomada de decisões, aspectos tratados pela nova legislação. Tais práticas já faziam parte da cultura das agências independentes, mas a edição da nova legislação refletiu em uma sedimentação dessas ações essencial à adoção de regulamentos com qualidade, em linha com as ferramentas utilizadas para a better regulation, adotadas pelos entes regulatórios europeus. Esse novo cenário desvelado pela pesquisa aponta um potencial avanço no modelo de governança regulatória brasileiro no nível federal, o que pode gerar efeitos positivos na credibilidade e confiança das agências reguladoras independentes. Palavras-chave: reforma regulatória, lei geral das agências, boas práticas regulatórias, agências reguladoras independentes, Brasil.
... Addressing this question contributes to theoretical debates on the interactions between EU legislation, domestic policies and practice. The literature on better regulation treats non-literal interpretations of EU rules as a potential threat as it can create unnecessary red tape, hamper the competitiveness of businesses in the single market, or be a symptom of blame avoidance or blame-shifting (Baldwin et al., 2010;Jans et al., 2009;Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009;Voermans, 2009). Conversely, theories of multilevel governance view customisation as a problem-solving strategy that facilitates adaptations of centrally decided policies to the local context and enhances their acceptance among target groups (Hooghe & Marks, 2003;Matland, 1995). ...
... Accordingly, added customised density is expected to negatively affect practical compliance, by blurring the original intentions of EU rules and contributing to the growth of regulation (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009), thus complicating the implementation process. ...
... EU member states that change the content of rules during transposition effectively solve shared policy problems (Thomann & Sager2017;Thomann, 2019). These empirical insights are important because the (intuitively appealing) idea that policy implementation in the EU should generally stay as close as possible to the EU template currently informs the EU better regulation agenda (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). Yet, as our results show, this idea is empirically unfounded. ...
By tackling shared problems through concerted policies, the European Union (EU) is thought to have a superior output legitimacy. However, EU policies change as they are being ‘customised’ during the implementation process. How do such patterns of ‘differentiated implementation’ affect EU governance in practice? While some studies highlight the danger of ‘watering down’ the objectives of EU law, others emphasise the role of decentralised problem-solving. We analyse how customisation affects states’ practical compliance with EU anti-discrimination, environmental, and justice and home affairs directives in 27 member states (excluding Croatia) between 2007 and 2013. The findings show that customised density (higher number of rules than prescribed by the EU directives) reduces practical compliance. Conversely, customised restrictiveness (stricter requirements than the EU directives) improves practical compliance. In contrast to earlier implementation research, we conclude that literal implementation is not the best form to ensure practical implementation.
... Moreover, the traditional ‗suspicion' that DGs have towards proposal coming from other services seems to play in favour of impact assessment: strong administrative cultures and the close ties with a specific policy field and set of interests (e.g. environment, health, business) provide a useful set of incentives to scrutinize proposals from other DGs, question assumptions and data, and ultimately discipline and improve the process of policy-formulation (Radaelli and Meuwese, 2009). This virtuous mechanism may reduce the risk of compartmentalizing policy initiatives. ...
... RIAs overtime (Renda et al. 2009 (Radaelli and Meuwese 2009). This could be countered by giving more weight to the EP in the selection of the proposals to be subjected to RIA (Renda et al. 2009). ...
... Countries like the UK, the USA and Canada have linked regulatory reform to their strategies for evidence-based policy. This notion also crosses over to paradigms of administrative action that have been made popular in the discussion of the so-called new public management (Radaelli and Meuwese 2009). The key concept is therefore how to stimulate public organisations ‗to focus consistently on achieving desirable social outcomes' (Bovens et al. 2008: 232). ...
Technical report for the Dutch Government
... A recente reforma regulatória brasileira concentrou-se nos aspectos organizacionais e institucionais das agências reguladoras independentes. Esta pesquisa mostrou que a edição da nova legislação pode ter refletido a consolidação de consultas e audiências públicas, AIR e a disponibilização de decisões ao público interessado, em consonância com as melhores práticas de regulação dos entes reguladores europeus (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009 ...
... A recente reforma regulatória brasileira concentrou-se nos aspectos organizacionais e institucionais das agências reguladoras independentes. Esta pesquisa mostrou que a edição da nova legislação pode ter refletido a consolidação de consultas e audiências públicas, AIR e a disponibilização de decisões ao público interessado, em consonância com as melhores práticas de regulação dos entes reguladores europeus (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). Essas iniciativas buscaram reforçar a transparência e podem impactar na credibilidade das agências reguladoras e na confiança que os stakeholders têm em sua atuação (Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2021), contribuindo para o alcance de alguns dos objetivos iniciais da criação desses órgãos no Brasil (Mueller & Pereira, 2002). ...
Este trabalho investiga os efeitos da nova Lei Geral das Agências Independentes no Brasil. Essa reforma da reforma regulatória buscou aumentar a transparência e a responsabilidade, fortalecer a avaliação ex ante e melhorar a tomada de decisões. O objetivo da pesquisa foi avaliar possíveis consequências organizacionais e institucionais dessas mudanças. A partir da coleta de dados com atores-chave nas 11 agências, foi feita uma comparação entre o período anterior à Lei e o cenário regulatório após um ano de sua vigência. Os resultados permitem uma visão panorâmica inédita dos instrumentos das agências, sob a inspiração da better regulation. Esse novo cenário pode impactar positivamente na credibilidade e confiança dessas estruturas. O estudo indica um avanço no modelo de governança regulatória brasileiro e abre espaço para futuras pesquisas.
... This type of reform might be labelled 'meta-regulation' as it address the process of policymaking itself. The most wellknown reforms of this type are regulatory impact assessments, cost-benefit analyses, and other instruments to increase the transparency of policymaking (Baldwin, 2010;Dudley & Wegrich, 2016;Lodge & Wegrich, 2012;Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). The underlying rationale of those policies is to improve policy development, amongst others by making bureaucratic policymakers consider multiple alternatives, including the alternative of not regulating an issue at all (Dunlop & Radaelli, 2015). ...
... The main thrust of better regulation policies is to bring novel ideas into the policymaking process that sectoral policymakers are unlikely to consider otherwise. This toolbox includes the consultation with multiple stakeholders during the policy development process, the increased use of evidence in policy design (e.g. by drawing on insights from experimental research), and the consideration of the regulative burden (compliance costs) for regulatees (Baldwin, 2010;Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). In particular, these approaches to policymaking insert a novel type of bureaucratic actor into executive policymaking, the better regulation generalists (Jann & Wegrich, 2019). ...
The idea of a clear separation between policymaking and implementation is difficult to sustain for policy bureaucracies in which public officials have “policy work” as their main activity. A diverse body of scholarship indicates that bureaucrats may enjoy substantial levels of discretion in defining the nature of policy problems and elaborating on policy alternatives. This observation raises questions about the conditions under which bureaucratic policy ideas make their way into authoritative policy decisions, the nature of those policy ideas, and how bureaucratic policymaking has evolved. A main point is that bureaucratic policy ideas are developed in a political context, meaning that bureaucrats have to anticipate that political decision makers will eventually have to endorse a policy proposal. The power relations between politicians and bureaucrats may, however, vary, and bureaucrats may gain the upper hand, which is likely if a bureaucracy is professionally homogenous and able to develop a coherent policy idea. Another perspective concerns the origins of policy ideas. There is limited evidence for individual-level explanations of policy ideas, according to which bureaucrats pursue exogenously defined preferences to maximize their own utility. A competing organizational perspective, which considers policy preferences as the result of organizational specialization, the development of local rationalities, and the defense of organizational turf, stands out as a more plausible explanation for the origins of bureaucratic policy ideas. The policymaking role, and thereby the importance of bureaucratic policy ideas, is being challenged by the rise of ministerial advisors, agencification, and better regulation reforms. Those developments have the potential to change the substance of bureaucratic policy ideas, but they may also generate strategic behavior, which should be of interest to scholars of the politics of bureaucracy.
... But we cannot draw neat expectations about the design of the four procedures. To begin with, the relationship between the NPM, on the one hand, and consultation and RIA, on the other, is not straightforward (Radaelli and Meuwese 2009). We cannot transfer our knowledge of how traditions have shaped public management reforms (as outlined in Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011) to consultation and RIA. ...
Abstract
Over the years the Member States of the EU and the UK have redesigned rulemaking with freedom of information acts, impact assessment of policy proposals, ombudsman and stakeholder consultation. The broad aim of this instrumentation is both to improve substantive regulatory quality and to impact on final governance outcomes. This book explains where and how the design of rulemaking procedures has effects on the quality of the business environment, perception of corruption, and environmental performance. The findings shatter predominant views on policy change in Europe, and offer a granular account of the efficacy of design.
... It is also attuned to the long-standing managerial regulatory governance mode, couched in neoclassical economics and parts of neo-institutionalism (Christensen & Laegreid, 2011). It progresses along a historical trajectory that encompasses the early command-and-control stages until the latest developments with "smart" (Gunningham & Grabosky, 1998) or "better" (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009) regulation. The orthodox mainstream, in turn, shifts according to the newest trends in the realm of regulatory best-practices, which currently place emphasis on innovation as a driving force of regulatory change (OECD, 2021). ...
A considerable amount of work has focused on “regulatory innovation” in the social sciences. This scholarship has conceptually defined certain types of regulatory changes as innovations and explored how regulation, as a policy instrument, alters the pace of technological innovation. More recently, a renewed interest for policy mixes and more dynamism in industrial innovation policies around the world has increased the demand for advanced knowledge in this area. In this article, we systematically review the literature on the innovation‐regulation interplay, documenting its evolution, the prevailing thematic areas, and overlooked topics. While the orthodox regulatory stance, modeled on economic efficiency principles, is by far the main thrust, heterodox accounts, premised on systemic and evolutionary thinking, appear as important variations. The latter have recently burgeoned with new theoretical developments promoting the idea of regulation that not only allows for, but intentionally directs innovation.
... In this context, the central tool for achieving improved oversight and coordination was the increased use of impact assessment (IA) practices. IA requires the lead DGs to look for the initiatives' potential economic, social, and environmental consequences and the trade-offs between different policy objectives (Radaelli, 2009;Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). It thus forces the administration to shift from a 'negative' to a more 'positive' mode of coordination. ...
... Austria aims to improve its capacity for evidence-based policymaking, in line with the Better Regulation framework promoted by the European Union [58]. Better regulation in this context means devising more effective and more efficient policy measures and other regulatory aspects through state-of-the-art (electronic) decision aids and incorporating behavioral insights. ...
Despite their importance, federal grant systems often need more clarity regarding cost-effectiveness, lack of transparency, and slow feedback cycles. Sports funding systems aimed at improving child health and contributing to sustainable development goals are incredibly challenging due to their heterogeneity in stakeholders and regional aspects. Here, we analyze how we tackled these challenges in a transdisciplinary EU project in Austria, targeting the use of agent-based modeling for evidence-based policymaking in a co-creation process with policy stakeholders in the domain of federal sports grants to improve the health and well-being of children and youth. The initial and executed set of procedures is described, along with lessons learned during the project’s lifetime. These lessons derive a framework that provides an adapted set of processes, supporting methods, and critical decision points for an improved use of transdisciplinarity. In addition, the steps of the developed framework are combined with essential aspects of knowledge integration, following the main phases of the policy cycle and providing suggestions for required skills and competencies for capacity building concerning implementing the developed framework in the public sector. Our results show that the combination of transdisciplinarity, human-centered policymaking, and sports, supported by cutting-edge technologies such as agent-based modeling, can achieve significantly better results than a pure disciplinary approach and generate positive spill-over effects.
... The underlying assumption made by proponents of such measures is that these tools can successfully co-exist and reinforce each other in practice, creating an optimal policy mix (Howlett 2005). Existing research indicates however potential tensions and challenges characterising the application of both types of measures (Radaelli and Meuwese 2009;Lodge and Wegrich 2012;Dunlop and Radaelli 2022). We explored this puzzle by focusing on how stakeholders evaluated their mix in the 2016 EU Better Regulation reform in the context of an open public consultation organised by the European Commission and inviting stakeholders to answer a set of questions about both participatory and evidence-based measures as part of a formal stocktaking exercise. ...
Modern systems of governance are increasingly adopting measures aimed at fostering public participation in policymaking, while embedding decisions in scientific evidence under the label of Better Regulation policy. Existing research identifies tensions between participatory and evidence-based approaches. This prompts questions about one of the most ambitious reforms to combine and enhance participatory and evidence-based tools of policymaking, initiated by the European Commission in 2016. We assess the extent to which this reform successfully combined and expanded the participatory layer of supranational policymaking while also strengthening its evidence-based credentials by analys- ing stakeholders’ evaluations. We find that stakeholders assess both sets of measures as part of a single, integrated dimension. Participatory measures received slightly better appraisals and were better known, but both sets of measures were evaluated positively and there are no significant differences in evaluations across stakeholder categories. This points to the complementarity of measures from a stakeholder perspective.
... The concept and practice of "smart regulation" were advocated as a means of promoting pluralism in both the selection of regulatory instruments and across stakeholders implementing requirements throughout the entire regulatory cycle (Gunningham et al., 1998). The "better regulation" reforms, promoted heavily across the EU and by international organizations, introduced a commitment to transparency, accountability, and proportionality across the regulatory process, supported by measures designed to simplify requirements and compliance costs through the use of techniques such as Regulatory Impact Assessments (Chase & Schlosser, 2015;Radaelli & Meuwese, 2008;Scott, 2018). "Really responsive risk-based regulations" promoted the use of regulatory mixes in ways that are flexible and sensitive to emerging risks and their impact on enforcement and compliance (Black & Baldwin, 2010). ...
The need to better balance the promotion of scientific and technological innovation with risk management for consumer protection has inspired several recent reforms attempting to make regulations more flexible and adaptive. The pharmaceutical sector has a long, established regulatory tradition, as well as a long history of controversies around how to balance incentives for needed therapeutic innovations and protecting patient safety. The emergence of disruptive biotechnologies has provided the occasion for regulatory innovation in this sector. This article investigates the regulation of advanced biotherapeutics in the European Union and shows that it presents several defining features of an adaptive regulation regime, notably institutionalized processes of planned adaptation that allow regulators to gather, generate, and mobilize new scientific and risk evidence about innovative products. However, our in‐depth case analysis highlights that more attention needs to be paid to the consequences of the introduction of adaptive regulations, especially for critical stakeholders involved in this new regulatory ecosystem, the capacity and resource requirements placed on them to adapt, and the new tradeoffs they face. In addition, our analysis highlights a deficit in how we currently evaluate the performance and public value proposition of adaptive regulations vis‐à‐vis their stated goals and objectives.
... Recent Brazilian regulatory reform has focused on the organizational and institutional aspects of independent regulatory Agencies. This research showed that the enactment of the new legislation may have reflected the consolidation of consultations and public hearings, RIA and the availability of decisions to the interested public, in line with the better regulation practices of European regulatory bodies (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). These initiatives sought to reinforce transparency and can impact the credibility of regulatory Agencies and the trust that stakeholders have in their performance (Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2021), contributing to the achievement of some of the initial objectives of the creation of these bodies in Brazil (Mueller & Pereira, 2002). ...
This paper addresses the effects of the new general law on independent agencies in Brazil. This regulatory reform sought to increase transparency and accountability, strengthen ex-ante evaluation, and improve decision-making. The research objective was to evaluate the possible organizational and institutional consequences of these changes. The study compared data collected from key actors in the 11 agencies referring to the period before the law with the regulatory scenario one year after the law was enacted. The results allow an unprecedented panoramic view of the agencies’ instruments under the inspiration of better regulation, and the new scenario can positively impact these structures’ credibility and trust. The study indicates an advance in the Brazilian regulatory governance model and opens space for future research.
... Finally, we focused on normative changes to create checks, processes, and mechanisms aiming to improve agencies' decision making through an increase in the use of evidence and stakeholder engagement in regulatory decisions (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). These reforms were mainly embodied in what the OECD calls better regulation reform (OECD, 2012), focused on engaging regulatory agencies to comply with a set of principles to ensure better regulation. ...
Over the past three decades the Latin American region has experienced various regulatory reforms, and distinctive normative changes have been introduced in the framework, instruments, or procedures adopted by independent regulatory agencies (IRAs). While there is evidence that the establishment of an IRA positively affects regulated sector performance, little is known about the effects of these additional legal dispositions when incorporated in primary or secondary legislation. However, normative changes may shape IRAs' actual regulatory activities and the signals they send to their stakeholders, potentially influencing sectoral performance. This research traces the evolution of several instruments and procedures legally adopted by IRAs located in Latin America and comprehensively assesses the influence of these normative changes on the performance dimensions of the electricity sector. We built indexes that describe the adoption of specific legal dispositions in the region. These indexes reveal that the evolution of the normative dispositions varies in terms of extent, context, and timing of adoption. In addition, the changes are not equally or even positively associated with specific performance dimensions. While economic regulatory instruments shape many performance dimensions, “soft” procedural dispositions also play an important role in perceptions of quality in the electricity sector.
... Bolja regulativa je popularan naziv za agendu regulatornih reformi (Radaelli, Meuwese 2009: 639), ali šta stoji iza ovog naziva? U svom članku o regulatornim politikama u Evropi, Lodge zapaža porast akademskog interesa za ovu temu (Lodge 2008: 289). ...
Goals of governments are usually formulated in the form of public policies, and legislation is an instrument by which political visions and goals are achieved. The creation of new legislation inevitably produces costs and benefits for those to whom the legislation applies as well as for society as a whole. In an effort to make new legislation more cost-effective, governments use a variety of tools to improve the quality of regulations and other acts. Governments that apply various tools to improve the quality of legislation implement the principles of "smart" legislation (better regulation, smart regulation). In such a state of affairs, how can we constructively, using digital tools and procedures when establishing companies via the Internet, ensure simpler, faster and more time and cost-effective starting of economic activity? Is better regulation the result of good legislative instruments and procedures that enable high quality legislation and the rule of law? How will the use of digital tools and procedures in company law bring economic and social benefits to society as a whole? The aim of this paper is to show that by adopting the Directive on the use of digital tools and procedures in company law (2019/1151), the European Union is taking further steps to digitize and modernize company law as a whole, and thus achieve what is at the heart of the European Commission. it is better regulation.
... Alors la simplification des formalités se met en action et s'illustre selon le principe : une règle abolie, pour chaque création de nouvelle règles (Achtnicht et al, 2009 ;Radaelli et Meuwese, 2009). Cette simplification excessive conduit à la disparition de ce qui fait sens. ...
Depuis plus de trente ans, les normes de management public ont amené peu à peu les établissements d’hébergement pour personnes âgées dépendantes (EHPAD) à appliquer la même logique gestionnaire qui conduit à exclure tout ce qui fait sens dans le soin. Ce mode de fonctionnement confronte les salariés à des aberrations. Comment ne pas se questionner sur la finalité de sa tâche de professionnel du soin quand les autorités de tarification fixent à la minute près le temps que doit passer chaque soignant auprès des patients selon les niveaux de GIR104 ? De ce fait, les personnels souffrent de l’incapacité de pouvoir traiter dignement les usagers par manque de temps et d’être paradoxalement soumis à l’évaluation permanente de la qualité. Cette gouvernance montre aujourd’hui ses limites en EHPAD et la récente crise de la COVID 19 n’a fait que révéler ces dysfonctionnements. C’est pourquoi nous proposons dans cette recherche-action d’étudier des voies d’amélioration avec la mise en place d’un management du prendre soin. Ces nouvelles pistes de travail prennent appui sur les principes de l’éthique du care appliqués au management d’un EHPAD dans un cadre méthodologique de recherche action en sciences de gestion. Ainsi la réciprocité du prendre soin qui caractérise l’application des principes du care sera modélisée grâce à l’approche inter-liée du changement de Kurt Lewin. Cette approche lewinienne du changement va d’ailleurs démontrer son étonnante modernité et son adaptation aux problématiques spécifiques des EHPAD. Grâce à ce management innovant, il va être possible de rendre visible ce travail de care caractéristique du travail en gériatrie afin de le rendre appréciable et reconnu dans les indicateurs de type gestionnaire.
... This ideal is also guiding regulatory and other policy decisions. Reorganising regulation, as seen in the European Union and its activity towards better regulation by, for instance, simplifying the regulation and improving the transparency of decision-making (Radaelli and Meuwese 2009), has become a typical target. Likewise, the adoption of the sustainable development goals in built environment control has been a common European development target (directives 2010/31/EU; 2012/27/ EU; Renda 2017). ...
The efficiency of the public sector is a major discussion topic internationally. The discussion often refers to a need to review, renew or reform public regulation in an attempt to balance the public economy, citizens' needs, digitalisation, and the sustainable use of resources. For example, Finland aims to reform-built environment regulation and promote digitalisation both on local and national levels, while balancing efficiency needs. This paper explores the potential to improve public land use processes by enhancing efficiency in the building permit process. The paper studies possible solutions based on the case development processes of two Finnish cities, and reflects on them in a nationwide context by interviewing key persons in municipal land use management. Based on the findings, the challenges in achieving efficiency lie in the complexity of processes, public sector management, organisational culture, and the needs of cooperation on multiple levels. Particularly problematic is the unpredictability of the process, possibly outweighing the tangible benefits of the development. Digitalisation, including the use of data models and 3D BIM in automation, interaction and knowledge management, is expected to aid the efficiency of the land use and building permit processes in the long run. Findings suggests that emphasising development in land use and building permit processes, fostering a new way of thinking and redesigning the public sector's operating model are essential. The redesign should focus on more strategic management and on a new mindset for designing and conducting public processes. A successful new operating model and a renewed mindset would enable the adaptation of regulatory renewal, digitalisation and the sustainable use of resources.
... Akin to the APA, the BRA is a set of requirements and expectations that should be followed by regulatory agencies at the EU level. This is to ensure that regulation is developed and implemented openly and transparently, builds on the best available evidence, is backed by stakeholders, and respects the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). In New Zealand, a philosophy of Regulatory Stewardship has been driving regulatory reforms since the early 2010s. ...
How much politics goes into the development, implementation, evaluation, and reform of regulation? This question has been at the forefront of regulatory scholarship for over four decades. The current chapter maps how scholars of public administration in general and regulatory scholars in particular have theorized the politics of regulation. It first reflects on three of the major theories about the need for regulation: economic perspectives, public interest perspectives, and institutional perspectives. In the slipstream of these theories, regulatory models have for long build on the understanding that either deterrence, intrinsic motivations, or information provision are the best way to achieve compliance with regulation. The second part of the chapter engages with more recent regulatory reforms. These have begun to mix incentives (resulting in models such as Responsive Regulation and Smart Regulation) and have started to embrace insights from behavioural economics (resulting in models such as Nudging). This all to develop regulatory interventions that are more tailored to the characteristics of the individuals and organizations they target. Recent regulatory reforms have also begun to embrace non-governmental individuals and organizations as essential parts of regulatory regimes (resulting in theorizing on co-regulation and regulatory intermediaries), as well as question the need for a (politics of) regulation of regulation (resulting in theorizing on agencification, meta-regulation, and regulatory stewardship).
... For detailed discussion of the content of public management reforms in the 1980s, seeRadaelli and Meuwese (2009), Schick (1996),Piotrowski (2008),Ongaro (2009) andRouban (1999). © HSE, 2021 ...
This article focuses on public management reforms in Turkey and how the reform trajectory has changed over the past two decades. Reforms in Turkey represent a mixture of ideas and reform elements that are constantly evolving under the influence of foreign actors, especially the European Union, efforts to respond to global reform trends, and domestic political developments. The article is divided into three parts. The first part gives a brief picture of the political-administrative structure of the country. The second part provides a landscape of the reform initiatives in the last two decades. The third part examines the main challenges Turkey might face in the coming years in terms of implementing reforms and provides a discussion on how they can be addressed.
... 2 | THEORY 2.1 | Impact assessments and legislative drift Political delegation and the rise of evidence-based policy making were designed as a solution to the time inconsistency of politicians, signal credible commitment, increase public sector efficiency and improve decision-making quality (Boruvka & Perry, 2020;Cingolani & Fazekas, 2020;Majone, 1996Majone, , 1997. Ex-ante IAs, ex-post evaluations, and the consultation of experts and stakeholders are expected to work in conjunction to determine the risks, benefits and costs of policy options (Baldwin, 2010;OECD, 2019;Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). Ideally, IAs should achieve legislative goals in an efficient way at the lowest cost with an inclusive stakeholder consultation process and a quantifiable assessment of the expected costs and benefits of proposed primary (or secondary) legislation (Listorti et al., 2020;Wegrich, 2011). ...
Laws should endure and change only if assumed benefits don't materialize over time. Yet frequent modifications of laws shortly after their enactment distort this compromise between stability and change. While, Impact Assessments (IAs) are designed to improve the quality of legislation, we know little about IAs' impact on legal stability post‐enactment. We fill this gap by analysing whether the ex‐ante application of IAs influences the incidence and frequency of legal modifications. The analysis is based on a complete dataset of more than 2500 laws in France, Hungary, Italy, and the UK between 2006 and 2012. We apply a comparative event history analysis to account for both first and subsequent modifications. We find across‐the‐board that IAs are associated with legal stability. IAs are predicted to have the largest effect when political power changes both in terms of seat shares and party ideology, suggesting that IAs can, to some degree, tame legislative drift.
... It is in a sense reminiscent of the new public management register-the language of tools that make organizations smarter and capable of learning, as well as open to the world of affected interests. Previous work has indeed connected the late wave of new public management to the better regulation agenda (Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). Finally, in one case, the narrator is unnecessarily humble-in contradiction with the other registers. ...
We compare the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) and the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT). Given the focus of this special issue on the NPF, we first theorize how the IGT can contribute to the development of NPF categories, but also how the former gains conceptual leverage from the latter. We argue that it is useful to consider jointly NPF and IGT as this expands the benefit of NPF usage for policy researchers-uncovering not only the stories policy actors tell but also what these stories mean in terms of institutional statements. We provide a demonstration of how the conversation between these two policy lenses may develop by analyzing original data on the design of consultation procedures in the European Union, Finland, Ireland, and Malta.
... Radaelli et al. 2013). The concept of Better Regulation is not limited to specific policy areas as it aims 'to improve policy-making and regulation by adopting standards and procedures that govern regulatory decisionmaking across different public policy areas' (Bunea and Ibenskas 2017: 591). 2 Hence, Better Regulation can be classified as institutional policy Kuhlmann and Wayenberg 2016) or meta-regulation (Radaelli and Meuwese 2009). ...
This open access book presents a topical, comprehensive and differentiated analysis of Germany’s public administration and reforms. It provides an overview on key elements of German public administration at the federal, Länder and local levels of government as well as on current reform activities of the public sector. It examines the key institutional features of German public administration; the changing relationships between public administration, society and the private sector; the administrative reforms at different levels of the federal system and numerous sectors; and new challenges and modernization approaches like digitalization, Open Government and Better Regulation. Each chapter offers a combination of descriptive information and problem-oriented analysis, presenting key topical issues in Germany which are relevant to an international readership.
... Radaelli et al. 2013). The concept of Better Regulation is not limited to specific policy areas as it aims 'to improve policy-making and regulation by adopting standards and procedures that govern regulatory decisionmaking across different public policy areas' (Bunea and Ibenskas 2017: 591). 2 Hence, Better Regulation can be classified as institutional policy (Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2019;Kuhlmann and Wayenberg 2016) or meta-regulation (Radaelli and Meuwese 2009). ...
Over the last decades, Better Regulation has become a major reform topic at the federal and—in some cases—also at the Länder level. Although the debate about improving regulatory quality and reducing unnecessary burdens created by bureaucracy and red tape date back to the 1960s and 1970s, the introduction by law in 2006 of a new independent institutionalised body for regulatory control at the federal level of government has brought a new quality to the discourse and practice of Better Regulation in Germany. This chapter introduces the basic features of the legislative process at the federal level in Germany, addresses the issue of Better Regulation and outlines the role of the National Regulatory Control Council ( Nationaler Normenkontrollrat —NKR) as a ‘watchdog’ for compliance costs, red tape and regulatory impacts.
... The seminal work by Djankov, McLiesh, and Ramalho (2006) confirms this association. This premise is based on the introduction of better regulatory policies, common in Europe since the beginning of this century (see Radaelli (2007), " […] the reformulation of the Lisbon agenda in terms of 'growth and jobs' has spawned the debate among EU policy-makers around the question as to whether better regulation is fit for Lisbon", Radaelli and Meuwese (2009), "[…] European policy-makers are eminently interested in how much BR policies can deliver in terms of growth and competitiveness", and Tombs (2016)). ...
... It is useful to be explicit on what we do not claim. We do not argue that governments introduce consultation because they want to combat corruption there may be many other motives, such as modernizing the public sector, emulation and the prospect of EU membership (De Francesco, 2013;Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). Neither do we advance the argument that consultation has direct mitigating effects on the overall numbers of corrupted exchanges. ...
Consultation is a policy instrument geared toward stakeholder engagement in the formulation of primary and secondary legislation. It ensures certain categories of actors can access draft proposals, examine the evidence produced by government or regulators, provide comments and receive feedback. Using an original dataset of consultation design across the EU-28, we examine how variations in combinations of consultation design matter for perceptions of corruption. Using Ostrom's Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT), we develop expectations about the causal effects of combinations of formal consultation rules together with the condition of social capital, which captures important attributes of the context in which consultation operates. We test our expectations using set-theoretic techniques. Our findings indicate: formal consultation rules are rarely sufficient for mitigating perceptions of corruption, legally prescribed procedures are often replaced by informal rules, and the limited effect of formal consultation rules on perceptions of corruption is due to an incomplete design of the procedures.
... Previously, New Labour's proposed 'Third Way' involved a more substantial role for states in shaping markets and promoting public goods provision than is countenanced by the new right. The international 'Better Regulation' agenda, concerned with improving the quality of regulatory instruments and processes, was influential in the late 1990s (Radaelli and Meuwese, 2009). However, the emphasis was that much regulation represented a burden in need of reduction (Tombs, 2016) and the move towards a 'risk-based' regulatory model after the Hampton Review (2006 1 represented a significant shift in emphasis towards a de-regulation approach (Dodds, 2006). ...
The knowledge and enforcement problems faced by governments in defining traditional ‘command and control’ regulation are well known. Significant legal scholarship offers alternative models of ‘smart,’ ‘responsive’ environmental regulation, emphasising the need for policy instrument mixes, including the vital role of voluntary, industry-led sustainability standards. Yet, as is being increasingly recognised, these contributions leave open the need for detailed, qualitative evaluation of instrument mixes as a complement to primarily quantitative cost-benefit analyses that predominate in regulatory impact assessments by governments. Addressing this need, this paper evaluates policy and standards for low and zero carbon homes in England during the Coalition government (2010–2015) when the ecological modernisation discourse of the previous New Labour government became subsumed by a deregulation agenda. Our study, incorporating 70 stakeholder interviews, suggests that, in supplier-driven markets such as housing in England, a ‘smart’ mix of mandatory and voluntary standards requires a strong, central role for government in setting national, mandatory standards and supporting their delivery. There is an important potential supplementary role for voluntary tools and local authority discretion, though our study highlights problems that can arise when such different instruments promote diverging roadmaps towards a policy goal.
... The range of suggestions is also broad. It is not surprising to discover conflicting views since regulatory reforms do not guarantee by themselves to be a win-win policy (Radaelli and Meuwese, 2009). To avoid the risk of a 'steering overload' (Smismans 2015, p. 23) on which aspects to focus, a balanced approach needs to be adopted. ...
Our aim is to provide an overview of the debate on the Better Regulation (BR) Agenda presented in 2015 by the European Commission. In addition to academic literature, we also consider studies and reports from Think Tanks, international organizations, and EU internal scrutinizing bodies. After presenting the main aspects of the debate on some overarching elements of the BR Agenda, we focus in particular on two highlights: evidence-based policymaking and the integrated policy cycle. We structure the discussion around main achievements, remaining critical aspects and suggestions about what could be further improved. Findings show that although the Commission remains a front-runner when it comes to Better Regulation, more efforts are needed to go the last mile when it comes to evidence-based policymaking and closing the policy cycle. We find that the great majority of arrticles welcome the ambition of the BR Agenda reform. At the same time, they also make clear that to effectively improve regulation, further methodological guidance and concrete efforts in implementation are needed. Another interesting finding is that the debate on the BR Agenda is extremely varied, covering normative as well as very technical aspects. It appears , though, to be confined within certain academic fields (namely political science, public administration , and law), while other fields that can be, in practice, also deeply linked to BR related activities are less represented.
... Knowledge is also meant to be at the core of the decision-making procedure (Giebels, Buuren, & Edelenbos, 2016;Mele, Compagni, & Cavazza, 2013;Radaelli & Meuwese, 2009). Knowledge has four unique characteristics: (a) it will not be lost upon usage, (b) it will not be lost upon transfer, (c) it is abundant yet the capability of using it is limited, and (d) lots of valuable knowledge of organizations go out of the door at the end of the day (Dalkir, 2011). ...
Recent management studies have shown that knowledge management plays an imperative role in the efficacy of organizations. In the present article, the effect of knowledge management on urban governance in Tabriz city was examined employing a structural equation model. The required data was collected by survey via two base questionnaires (for knowledge management and urban governance). The participants were 130 experts including faculty members in different relevant fields as well as employees of municipality. Findings showed that knowledge management imposes a positive and significant effect on urban governance. Additionally, the strongest relationship among the studied variables was found between knowledge management and participation (β = .594, p = .000). Finally, the results suggested that extension of knowledge management through municipalities could tremendously promote their efficacy by influencing urban governance indices.
... Procedural reasons must also be taken into account in order to explain this transformation in the use of EBs. These are linked to the need to fill in and feed more substantially than before the explanatory memorandum of the directives' proposals under the EC's Better Regulation programme (Radaelli and Meuwese 2009), which aims to "improve regulation [and] develop and evaluate EU policies and legislation in a transparent and evidence-based manner, taking into account the views of citizens and interested parties" (European Commission 2019). EBs are therefore both used as one of the instruments for demonstrating that a prior consultation process has been carried out, and as instruments for evaluating and analysing the impact of previous measures. ...
This article analyses Eurobarometer surveys as fully fledged instruments of the European gender equality policy since its emergence in the 1970s up until 2018. These surveys bring new data that allow for reanalysing the history of the gender equality policy, focusing on how public opinion is of interest to policymakers and how they use the results of these polls. The article shows that Eurobarometer surveys and the appeal to the ‘voice of the citizens’ have always had a legitimising function for gender equality, but that the purposes of this legitimisation have changed over time. Recently, in a context of low citizen support for the European Union political system, surveys have been integrated into the day-to-day routine of gender equality policymaking; however, they are also used by the European Parliament to reassert the shared values of the European Union.
Key messages
Eurobarometers are important instruments to consider when analysing European gender equality policy.
Eurobarometers and gender equality policy have a history of mutual support in the 1970s.
Eurobarometer surveys have had a different legitimising function for gender equality.
Recently, surveys are also used by the European Parliament to reassert the shared values of the European Union.
Eurobarometers have successively been used as strategic, communication and procedural instruments to support EU gender equality policy. </ul
... The seminal work by Djankov, McLiesh, and Ramalho (2006) confirms this association. This premise is based on the introduction of better regulatory policies, common in Europe since the beginning of this century (see Radaelli (2007), " […] the reformulation of the Lisbon agenda in terms of 'growth and jobs' has spawned the debate among EU policy-makers around the question as to whether better regulation is fit for Lisbon", Radaelli and Meuwese (2009), "[…] European policy-makers are eminently interested in how much BR policies can deliver in terms of growth and competitiveness", and Tombs (2016)). ...
The topics of economic development and the importance of the business environment are repeatedly being studied by academia. Funding issues focus the debate, in particular on SME financing and the importance of the financial sector (especially the banking sector).
Some institutions have developed specific indicators that seek to synthesize the greater or lesser ease of doing business and/or the resulting competitiveness. This research specifically focuses on one of them, namely, the ease of Doing Business index.
The survey compares the bulk of African countries over two years, 2008 and 2017.
This research uses fsQCA methodology to conclude that the factors affecting the capacity for doing business change over time. In 2008, only one set of Doing Business indicators was related to high wealth, but by 2017 there were four. We also conclude that credit is not only the determining factor for the ease of doing business and paperwork, as difficulties in dealing with the authorities are also highly significant.
... Un instrument de gestion de ressources humaines pourra par exemple englober des instruments de comptabilité et être lui-même une composante d'un instrument plus large de coordination d'entreprises. Les instruments peuvent ainsi s'imbriquer les uns dans les autres, mais aussi se combiner et s'intriquer, tel un « objet fractal » (Aggeri et Labatut 2010), comme le signalent les nombreux travaux portant sur les méta-instruments de gouvernance et de coordination (Hood, 1983(Hood, /1990Bemelmans Videc et al., 1998 ;Radaelli, 2005 ;Radaelli et Meuwese, 2009), les méta-tactiques (Klock, 1995, les méta-policy (MacRae, 1980), les packings instrumentaux (Vedung, 1998), les combinaisons instrumentales (Linder et Peters, 1990, Perret, 2010, les formes « d'hybridation d'instruments » (Treib et al., 2007 ;Kassim et Le Galès, 2010 ;Halpern et Le Galès, 2011) ou encore les lignées d'instruments (Nakhla 2017 Hood 1983Hood /1990Salamon 1989Salamon /2002De Bruijn & Heuvelhof 1997). La confusion peut être aussi conceptuelle, lorsqu'à l'inverse, le même terme d'instrument est mobilisé en étant défini de diverses façons. ...
... The Better Regulation agenda and regulatory reform arises from citizens railing against red tape in the face of increased regulation, and that which is deemed to be unfair (Radaelli and Meuwese, 2009). In the reinvigorating of an Act that is over a century old, it could be expected that significant changes are required, particularly in public disclosures. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse nonprofit regulation through comparing and contrasting mutual-benefit and public-benefit entities. It ascertains how these entities differ in size, publicness, tax benefits and whether these differences might suggest regulatory costs should be differentiated.
Design/methodology/approach
This mixed-methods study utilises financial data, submissions and interviews.
Findings
There are stark differences in these two types of regulated nonprofit entities. Members should be the primary monitoring agency/ies for mutual-benefit entities, but financial reports should be understandable to these members. Nevertheless, the availability of tax concessions, combined with the benefits of limited liability, suggest mutual-benefit entities should be regulated and monitored by government in a way sympathetic to their size.
Research limitations/implications
As with most research, a limitation is this study’s focus on a single jurisdiction.
Practical implications
The differences in these entities’ characteristics are important for designing regulation.
Social implications
Better regulation is likely to require a standard set of financial reporting standards. Government has the right to demand disclosures due to benefits mutual-benefit entities enjoy.
Originality/value
In comparison to studies utilising only public-benefit data, this study uses unique data sets to compare public-benefit and mutual-benefit entities and presents nonprofit sector participant’s perceptions of these differences in context. This enables analysis of how better regulation could be achieved.
Since the 1990s, a number of governments in Germany and Europe have put better regulation and bureaucracy reduction on the political agenda and implemented corresponding reforms. In the face of increasing international competition, a growing body of regulation and the need to maintain and strengthen the legitimacy of legislative action, reforms are aimed at reducing regulatory compliance costs and the bureaucratic burden that regulations place on businesses, citizens and public administration.
Germany’s National Regulatory Control Council (NKR) was set up in 2006 on the basis of the Act Establishing a National Regulatory Control Council. In its structure, procedures and methodology, the NKR represents a new approach to institutionalising better regulation.
This article looks at the core task of the NKR, namely “bureaucracy checks”, and at a number of recent proposals issued to the German government by the NKR in its advisory role. An examination of changes in bureaucracy and compliance costs is followed by an outline of areas in which the NKR advocates action. Proposals relate to planning and approval processes and to the feasibility and digital-readiness of legislation.
Policy agendas are often cast in semantic constructions that portray them as universally desirable outcomes. These semantic constructions protect and reinforce the power of dominant coalitions and make it hard to pursue alternatives. The semantic space is entirely occupied by the dominant concepts. At the same time, within the dominant coalition, ideational conflict is muted by decontesting concepts. Drawing on political theory, I show the presence of this double act of reducing the semantic space and decontesting concepts with the case of ‘better regulation’. Then I briefly extend the argument to other terms such as policy coherence, agile governance, smart cities and social value judgements. The critical discussion of the implications of dominant language brings in transparency, allows other coalitions to articulate their vision in a discursive level-playing-field, and offers citizens the possibility to discuss what is really ‘better’ and ‘for whom’.
Experts are increasingly relied on in decision-making processes at international and European levels. Their involvement in those processes, however, is contested. This timely book on the role of 'experts' provides a broad-gauged analysis of the issues raised by their involvement in decision-making processes. The chapters explore three main recurring themes: the rationales for involving experts and ensuing legitimacy problems; the individual and collective dimensions of expert involvement in decision making; and experts and politics and the politics of expertise. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners, they theorize the experts' involvement in general and address their role in the policy areas of environment, trade, human rights, migration, financial regulation, and agencification in the European Union.
Experts are increasingly relied on in decision-making processes at international and European levels. Their involvement in those processes, however, is contested. This timely book on the role of 'experts' provides a broad-gauged analysis of the issues raised by their involvement in decision-making processes. The chapters explore three main recurring themes: the rationales for involving experts and ensuing legitimacy problems; the individual and collective dimensions of expert involvement in decision making; and experts and politics and the politics of expertise. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners, they theorize the experts' involvement in general and address their role in the policy areas of environment, trade, human rights, migration, financial regulation, and agencification in the European Union.
Comment s’organise l’action collective ? Comment les acteurs coopèrent-ils ? Centré sur les aspects concrets et les supports matériels de l’action collective, ce chapitre introductif dresse un bilan des débats et controverses sur l’instrumentation et la manière dont cette notion est mobilisée par différentes disciplines (sciences de gestion, sociologie des sciences et des techniques, économie) et divers courants de la science politique pour analyser les formes d’action collective des marchés, du capitalisme, des entreprises et de l’autorité publique.
This study sought to examine the impact of regulations on the business environment in Zimbabwe. The concept of RIA in regulation and its impact on economic growth and national prosperity have received increasing attention in recent years. The study's main aim is to make a contribution to the RIA in regulatory policy making and implementation in Zimbabwe and examines its role in the cost of doing business. Thus by studying the issue within the context of government ministries and regulatory bodies, the central research questions to be addressed is; "Taking into account the cost of doing business, sustainability concerns, why RIA is necessary including models used to achieve the regulatory goal and to evaluate them?" The research question was formulated to gain a better understanding of the regulatory policy framework of Zimbabwe. Thus, methodologies and how the regulatory bodies and government ministries use risk evaluation and assessment tools to manage regulatory risks and exposure will be explored. The study seeks to examine the need to improve the efficiency of the regulatory policies in Zimbabwe using the RIA concept and link with the cost of doing business. This includes the need for stakeholder participation in the policy framework. The results indicate the need to use RIA s which can be used to increase the efficiency of the regulatory system. This includes seven key dimensions, namely the lack of a regulatory policy framework, policy reformation, roles of Parliament and Senate, policy coordination and consultation, regulatory independence, cost and benefit analysis and lastly the issue of stakeholder participation. Finally, the study suggested recommends on the government to establish a national regulatory policy, incorporate viable business model in policy reformation, reducing multiple regulatory systems, adding RIA evaluation in the Parliamentary and Senate policy framework and improve on technical services for standards included in regulations. Finally, the research, concludes that these seven critical dimensions can increase efficiency in the policy formulation and implementation in Zimbabwe.
Canonical theories of bureaucracy demonstrate the need for enhanced monitoring in government hierarchies. I argue that intensive top-down monitoring may reduce the productivity of bureaucrats by frightening them away from the informal practices that they would otherwise rely on when completing daily tasks. Utilizing a unique dataset of sub-provincial inspections in China’s recent anti-corruption campaign, I identify this “chilling effect” by exploiting variation in the timing of inspections from 2012 to 2017. I show that these anti-corruption activities lower the area of land development projects proposed by bureaucrats. Causal mediation analyses with investigation data and original measures of corruption potential reveal that these effects are unlikely driven by reduction of actual corruption. Extension analyses suggest similar consequences on revenue collection and environmental regulation. Although scholars of state-building equate low corruption with effective bureaucracy, these findings present a paradox where intensive state-led efforts to lower corruption may further undermine bureaucrats’ productivity.
In this article we bring forward a reflection on how data technology and artificial intelligence can improve the implementation of an evidence-based, data-driven, regulation. We start by arguing in favor of an evidence-base approach to regulation, meaning that policy making should be supported by information on the expected and observed impacts. We reach this position by acknowledging that, on one side, markets fail and public intervention will promote social welfare and economic competitiveness but, on the other, regulation also fails creating implementation and compliance costs. It follows that public intervention has to be supported by a demonstration that benefits will outweigh the costs. In this paper we discuss the challenges presented by this evidence-base regulation and how the new tools from data technologies and artificial intelligence may provide new resources to face those difficulties. We conclude that there is an obvious match between the solutions that these new technologies present and the requirements to “better regulate” and to “regulate better”. In the end, it seems only natural that evidence-base regulation should also be data-driven. Keywords: Regulation; Artificial Intelligence; Better Regulation; evidence-based regulation, data-driven regulation
The development of evaluation as a profession is marked by different diffusion waves and assumptions of what good governance and associated evaluation evidence entail. With every new wave, an increasing number of countries adopted common evaluation practices. The question is whether this also implies commonalities in the way that evaluations are practised nowadays, or whether differences rather prevail. In this contribution, we analyse the volume and type of sediments which different waves have deposited. We focus on three evaluation practices that represent the major waves and that are exemplary for regulatory governance in Europe: administrative burden measurement or standard cost model; regulatory impact assessment; and randomized controlled trials and nudges. We contribute to both the policy evaluation literature and the literature on policy styles by proposing a typology that links waves of evaluation diffusion with prescriptive evaluation theories. While we do not find evidence for a homogenisation of evaluation styles, we highlight that the practices based on economic methods for consolidating evidence have a substantial impact on public administration culture.
In order to calculate the unintended consequences of their policies, governments conduct comprehensive assessments of the impact of legislation. In doing so, they have independent expert committees monitor them on an increasingly frequent basis. However, in what ways do these committees have an influence in this respect? And what role do they play as policy advisors in terms of dismantling bureaucracy and better legislation? This book provides new insights into the history of the development of the three most experienced supervisory bodies in Europe and the reality of how they conduct themselves. Against the backdrop of various administrative cultures, the book presents the following types of supervisory committees in detail: ‘watchdog’, ‘gatekeeper’ and ‘critical friend’. Its findings intensify the political and academic debate on the performance and efficiency of supervisory bodies.
In order to calculate the unintended consequences of their policies, governments conduct comprehensive assessments of the impact of legislation. In doing so, they have independent expert committees monitor them on an increasingly frequent basis. However, in what ways do these committees have an influence in this respect? And what role do they play as policy advisors in terms of dismantling bureaucracy and better legislation? This book provides new insights into the history of the development of the three most experienced supervisory bodies in Europe and the reality of how they conduct themselves. Against the backdrop of various administrative cultures, the book presents the following types of supervisory committees in detail: ‘watchdog’, ‘gatekeeper’ and ‘critical friend’. Its findings intensify the political and academic debate on the performance and efficiency of supervisory bodies.
On parle de réglementation basée sur l’information (IBR, pour « Information-based regulation ») lorsque les régulateurs utilisent l’information pour susciter des changements de comportement en vue d’atteindre des objectifs de politique publique. L’IBR est apparue comme une autre façon de réglementer les entreprises, par rapport aux instruments stratégiques plus traditionnels de commandement et de conduite des opérations directs et de marché dans l’État régulateur contemporain. Malgré un intérêt international croissant, des difficultés subsistent pour comprendre les rôles des régulateurs dans l’IBR, les fonctions des régulateurs dans la formation et l’exploitation des flux d’information, et les capacités administratives nécessaires pour les assumer. Dans le présent article, nous nous basons sur une méthodologie d’examen systématique pour synthétiser les conclusions de 130 articles évalués par un comité de lecture dans les domaines de la politique environnementale, énergétique et alimentaire. Nous développons une typologie des fonctions que peuvent assumer les régulateurs et décrivons les nouvelles capacités administratives requises dans l’État régulateur contemporain, notamment en matière de normalisation, d’assurance et d’intermédiation, ainsi que de gestion intelligente des données.Remarques à l’intention des praticiensLa réglementation par l’information devient pratique courante dans de nombreuses régions du monde, dépassant ses frontières initiales aux États-Unis et dans d’autres pays développés. La conception et la mise en œuvre de ces systèmes créent de nouveaux défis pour les régulateurs. Notre étude intègre les recherches pertinentes dans trois domaines politiques (environnement, alimentation, énergie) et développe une nouvelle typologie des fonctions exercées par les régulateurs. Notre article est le premier à examiner la manière dont les rôles et les fonctions des régulateurs doivent changer dans l’environnement contemporain de l’information et de la réglementation. Il souligne également le fait qu’il est important que les régulateurs participent à l’IBR, une pratique traditionnellement considérée comme une approche en faveur de la déréglementation.
We live an age where legislation and regulation make increasing impact on our life. The expansion of legislative and regulatory activities and outputs in the last century and especially the last four decades has been followed by a growth of scholarly interest in them. However, far too little attention has been paid to conceptual and empirical exploration of the relationships between legislation and regulation, and especially to the democratic consequences of their co-evolution, substitutivity, and intersection. This essay provides an introduction to the special issue on legislation and regulation. After introducing the topic, it presents three analytical distinctions between legislation and regulation and introduces the contributions to the issue.
This study was conducted by its finding that there were inconsistencies and uncorrelated data from the government score-based report about Village Fund, and the public perception of the village fund. This research observes relevance of those numbers using the Impact Assessment concepts. This research can act as a useful insight for the governments, researchers and societies to evaluate the commitment of the government to build Indonesia from village. By using descriptive quantitative research method, this paper critically summarises the government report of the Village Fund by contrasted the priorities target of the fund. From the assessment, it was found that the development of the village facilities, infrastructure, and community empowerment program currently increased, but the village fund still has a problem with its equalisation and utilisation of the fund. In conclusion, the achievement numbers of the village fund do not have any correlation with the poverty reduction, because there are lack of equalisation and perception in some sectors. The perception index does not correlate with the satisfaction index in terms of infrastructure development, and the intervention of the village fund does not have a connection with the understanding of people on the use of the fund.
The integration of robotic systems and artificial intelligence into healthcare settings is accelerating. As these technological developments interact socially with children, the elderly, or the disabled, they may raise concerns besides mere physical safety; concerns that include data protection, inappropriate use of emotions, invasion of privacy, autonomy suppression, decrease in human interaction, and cognitive safety. Given the novelty of these technologies and the uncertainties surrounding the impact of care automation, it is unclear how the law should respond. This book investigates the legal and regulatory implications of the growing use of personal care robots for healthcare purposes. It explores the interplay between various aspects of the law, including safety, data protection, responsibility, transparency, autonomy, and dignity; and it examines different robotic and AI systems, such as social therapy robots, physical assistant robots for rehabilitation, and wheeled passenger carriers. Highlighting specific problems and challenges in regulating complex cyber-physical systems in concrete healthcare applications, it critically assesses the adequacy of current industry standards and emerging regulatory initiatives for robots and AI. After analyzing the potential legal and ethical issues associated with personal care robots, it concludes that the primarily principle-based approach of recent law and robotics studies is too abstract to be as effective as required by the personal care context. Instead, it recommends bridging the gap between general legal principles and their applicability in concrete robotic and AI technologies with a risk-based approach using impact assessments. As the first book to compile both legal and regulatory aspects of personal care robots, this book will be a valuable addition to the literature on robotics, artificial intelligence, human–robot interaction, law, and philosophy of technology.
Alternative approaches to environmental regulation have gained much attention in recent years. Information-based regulation is an increasingly popular type of instrument that refers to the use of ratings, rankings, labels, online inventories and similar public disclosure practices by regulators. Such schemes vary in their design, disclosure formats, mechanisms to influence behaviour and performance. Theoretical and practical questions remain about whether and how regulators can use voluntary and/or beyond compliance disclosures. The article develops a classification of information-based schemes based on whether the scheme is mandatory or voluntary, and whether the disclosures reveal compliance or beyond compliance performance behaviours. The classification is used to show how the different schemes (traditional, assurance, performance and proactive) work in practice with their associated risks, benefits and mechanisms. While regulators are experimenting with this new frontier of regulation, it is not yet clear whether all types of schemes will be sufficiently robust to deliver on the promise they hold for enthusiasts of smart regulation. We conclude with implications and future research questions on the nature of voluntariness and compliance in information-based regulation.
Over the last decade or so, access to broadband services has become increasingly important. While many in the UK already benefit from the provision of broadband, some, especially those located in more rural and remote areas, do not – they may not be able to access the Internet and when they do, their connection and consumer experience may be poor. After trying to resolve this through a stream of different initiatives, the UK government announced a broadband universal service obligation (USO) of 10 Mbps in late 2015. Ofcom, the telecommunications regulator, launched a consultation in April 2016 and sought the views of interested parties. The consultation attracted considerable interest, but after the submissions from orchestrated campaigns are discounted just over 100 responses remain. But who contributed and what did they say? To explore these two questions, this paper adopts a qualitative approach, using NVIVO, to analyse the responses to the consultation. We show that contributions were highly diverse, reflecting both the complexity of the issue as well as its politicised nature. A lack of agreement among the responses is revealed and divergent views on key issues like the appropriateness of 10 Mbps, whether this should change, how it should be funded or what technologies should be used exist. In this paper, we provide a critical discussion of and derive implications for the broadband USO. We tentatively conclude that those in rural and remote areas that the USO intends to help are caught between two countervailing forces – speed and cost deployment – that interact to ensure that whatever resolution to provide broadband access, some will likely be unhappy.
The Public Policy Process is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the process by which public policy is made. Explaining clearly the importance of the relationship between theoretical and practical aspects of policy-making, the book gives a thorough overview of the people and organisations involved in the process. Fully revised and updated for a 7th edition, The Public Policy Process provides: Clear exploration, using many illustrations, of how policy is made and implemented. A new chapter on comparative theory and methods. New material on studying advocacy coalitions, policy changes, governance, and evaluation. More European and international examples. This edition appears at a time when its concern to emphasise the complex implications of modern ‘governance’, and the way in which the ultimate outcome of a new policy initiative will depend on policy formulation and implementation processes, is particularly relevant to the UK government’s efforts to leave the European Union.
The initiatives for regulatory reform known as 'better regulation' have become a priority in the recently reformulated 'growth and jobs' Lisbon agenda of the European Union. But what is better regulation and what can it deliver? In this article, better regulation is identified as a new type of meta-regulation, with its structural and discursive properties. Better regulation discourse has enabled policy-makers to address different objectives in their shifting regulatory reform agendas. The better regulation pendulum has swung between regulatory quantity (or deregulation) and quality across time and space. In terms of structural properties, there is diversity across Europe in terms of actors, contents, and processes, although an embryonic open method of co-ordination is emerging at the EU level. The Barroso Commission and a number of member states have redefined discourse and structure of better regulation to adapt it to the 'growth and jobs' priorities of Lisbon. This redefinition, however, has narrowed the scope, the range of stakeholders, and the ambitions in terms of governance. Diversity, task expansion and better regulation rhetoric make the relationship between this type of meta-regulation, the Lisbon agenda, and, looking at the long-term impact, the dynamics of the regulatory state problematic.
Theory-based evaluations have helped open the ‘black box’ of programmes. An account is offered of the evolution of this persuasion, through the works of Chen and Rossi, Weiss, and Pawson and Tilley. In the same way as the ‘theory of change’ approach to evaluation has tackled the complexity of integrated and comprehensive programmes at the community level, it is suggested that a theory-oriented approach based on the practice of realistic cumulation be developed for dealing with the vertical complexity ofmulti-level governance.
1 This paper was partially drafted at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, funded by the AHRC/ESRC Library of Congress grant. The Law Library was essential for the compilation of the year of adoption database. The author wishes to thanks Mary Lou Reker and Kersi Shroff for their assistance as well as several Kluge fellows for useful comments and inputs.
Most literature on knowledge utilization is premised on rationalist theories of organizations: bureaucracies draw on knowledge instrumentally, either to expand their power or to adjust policy output. This paper develops an alternative account of the functions of knowledge, arguing that organizations are just as likely to value knowledge as a source of legitimation, or as a way of substantiating their policy preferences. The prevalence of these different forms of knowledge utilization will depend on (a) features of the organization (its perceived stability and source of legitimation); and (b) features of the policy area (degree of contention and mode of settlement). The article applies this framework to explore the European Commission's use of knowledge in immigration policy, especially through the European Migration Network.
The presidency is discussed in order to bring it more squarely within the terrain of positive theory by presenting it as a well-developed, nuanced and powerful institution in its own right. Political issues that have a direct bearing on the institutional balance of power are theoretically analyzed.
The faddishness of the business community is often noted and lamented but not well understood by standard models of innovation and diffusion. We combine arguments about organizational cognition and institutional mimicry to develop a model of adaptive emulation, where firms respond to perceived failure by imitating their most successful peers. Computational experiments show that this process generates empirically plausible cascades of adoption, even if innovations are entirely worthless. Faddish cycles are most robust across alternative treatments of managerial decision making where innovations have modest positive effects on outcomes. These results have broad implications for the faddishness of a business community increasingly marked by media-driven accounts of success, and for the properties of organizational practices that are hot one day and cold the next.
Regulatory impact assessment (RIA) has emerged on the political agenda of the member states of the European Union (EU). RIA is the cornerstone of programmes for ‘better regulation’ and ‘good regulatory governance’. This article argues that the diffusion of RIA has not produced convergence. The lack of convergence is explained by the different political contexts – measured in terms of types of bureaucracy, government's capacity to handle distributional conflict, policy processes, and actors' preferences. These findings stand in contrast to the explanation for the adoption of regulatory policy tools based on the need to protect efficient markets. EU governments adopt RIA for a variety of reasons, and consequently the outcomes of the diffusion process differ markedly. Further, the evidence shows that ideas can travel more easily than the content of policy tools – a result at odds with the notion that changes in policy ideas are the most fundamental type of policy change. However, when ideas travel lightly, they may well stimulate the introduction of some instruments that are similarly labelled ‘impact assessment’, but RIA practice may exist only on paper, and in some cases basic assessments of administrative burdens are disguised under the RIA label. The diffusion of a common RIA ‘bottle’ has not produced similar ‘wines’.
From the inception of the administrative state, scholars have proposed various models of agency decision-making to render such decision-making accountable and effective, only to see those models falter when confronted by actual practice. Until now, the presidential control model has been largely impervious to this pattern. That model, which brings agency decision-making under the direction of the President, has strengthened over time, winning broad scholarly endorsement and bipartisan political support. But it, like prior models, relies on abstractions - for example, that the President represents public preferences and resists parochial pressures - that do not hold up as a factual matter. Although recent empirical analyses purport to validate the model, they fall short because they examine how the White House exercises control without considering how agencies experience control. This Article is the first to study the practice of presidential control from inside the administrative state. We interviewed the top political officials at the Environmental Protection Agency from the George H. W. Bush and Clinton Administrations during 1989-2001. Our data, which do not vary substantially between respondents of different presidential administrations, suggest that White House involvement is more complex and less positive than previous accounts acknowledge. But we do not conclude that the presidential control model lacks merit. Indeed, our respondents recognize that the President has a role to play in controlling agency decision-making. We therefore conclude that the presidential control model requires reworking to remain valid in practice as well as in theory. We identify next steps in that direction.
Coordinated (or ‘joined-up’) approaches to policy making are said to be an immensely important ingredient in the effective governance of sustainable development. There are, however, few detailed empirical studies of how well different policy coordination instruments perform in relation to this task. This paper identifies the United Kingdom as a critical test of how to achieve better policy coordination because it has been regularly identified as an exemplar of best practice in international benchmarking exercises. Specifically, it examines the integration of the environment into mainstream policy making through the application of policy appraisal in the strategically important areas of energy, defence, and public spending. Overall, it finds that the UK’s much vaunted approach to coordinating the governance of sustainable development has struggled to tame the forces of departmentalism. While deploying carefully packaged combinations of coordinating instruments may address some causes of non-joined-up behaviour, perfectly coherent policy making is always likely to remain tantalisingly out of reach.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Nicolas Jabko suggests, the character of European integration altered radically, from slow growth to what he terms a "quiet revolution." In Playing the Market, he traces the political strategy that underlay the move from the Single Market of 1986 through the official creation of the European Union in 1992 to the coming of the euro in 1999. The official, shared language of the political forces behind this revolution was that of market reforms-yet, as Jabko notes, this was a very strange "market" revolution, one that saw the building of massive new public institutions designed to regulate economic activity, such as the Economic and Monetary Union, and deeper liberalization in economic areas unaffected by external pressure than in truly internationalized sectors of the European economy. What held together this remarkably diverse reform movement? Precisely because "the market" wasn't a single standard, the agenda of market reforms gained the support of a vast and heterogenous coalition. The "market" was in fact a broad palette of ideas to which different actors could appeal under different circumstances. It variously stood for a constraint on government regulations, a norm by which economic activities were (or should be) governed, a space for the active pursuit of economic growth, an excuse to discipline government policies, and a beacon for new public powers and rule-making. In chapters on financial reform, the provision of collective services, regional development and social policy, and economic and monetary union, Jabko traces how a coalition of strange bedfellows mobilized a variety of market ideas to integrate Europe.
List of Figures - List of Abbreviations - Preface - The Deregulation Initiative and Compliance Cost Assessment - Theoretical Justifications for Compliance Cost Assessment - CCA in Action - Assessing Regulatory Compliance Costs in the European Community - The Directive on the Landfill of Waste: Two Forms of Appraisal - Reviewing Environmental Protection Legislation - (De) Regulating for Workplace Consultation Rights - Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights: the Relevance of CCA - Valuing the Froth on a Pint of Beer - Cost-Benefit Analysis: an Alternative Approach - Regulatory Impact Analysis in the USA - Conclusions - Index
The European Union is often conceived as a regulatory order with a proliferation of rules covering a wide range of economic, technical and social matters (Majone 1996, 2000). With very limited funds to draw on compared to Member States’ fiscal budgets, the most effective method of governing the European single market is by regulation. The regulatory process, however, is often perceived as technocratic and not democratic: it is an opaque process carried out by experts and bureaucrats and impenetrable to the ordinary citizen (Harcourt and Radaelli 1999) and thus appears to be a manifestation of the EU democratic deficit (Lord 2001). An example of the lack of transparency is the process of comitology which involves the delegation of technical and legal details of policy and regulation to committees composed of Commission and Council representatives but excluding parliament and public interests. A problem of comitology is that the process is not limited to technical and non-political issues but can include a range of political, social and ethical issues (Joerges and Neyer 1997; Vos 1997). Sporadic participation of public interests such as consumer, social and environmental groups in contrast to the closer involvement of business and industry in EU policy making and regulation is another manifestation of the democratic deficit (Young 1998).
The dynamics of multi-level regulatory governance are ever-changing, not just in a North American context, but in a global one as well. Rules, Rules, Rules, Rules, clarifies the nature, causes, and dynamics of levels of regulatory governance in, or affecting, Canada. Edited by G. Bruce Doern and Robert Johnson, this collection makes conceptual and practical contributions to the debate over what kinds of principles and institutional approaches can resolve the problems of multi-level regulatory governance. This is the first text to provide an integrated discussion of key politico-institutional issues such as smart regulation, innovation, social and economic regulatory governance, accountability and transparency in Canada through a study of the multi-level regulatory interactions that the nation must function within. Rules, Rules, Rules, Rules considers various sectors where rule-making spans all or most of the four levels of jurisdiction - international, federal, provincial, and city or local - in areas such as food safety, investment and trade, forestry, drinking water, oil and gas, and emergency management. A central argument of the collection is that the pressure to merge, collapse or rationalize levels of regulation is mainly driven by business interests, liberalized trade ideas, and related technological changes. Economic concerns about Canada’s declining productivity compared to the U.S. are also discussed, as are issues of security, terrorism, and core business and economic concerns in the post-911 era.
'The practice of regulatory impact assessment has long needed a critical evaluation. This volume, which is interdisciplinary and international, and combines academic and practitioner insights, hits the spot to great effect.' - Colin Scott, UCD College of Business and Law and UCD School of Law, Ireland. Markets can sometimes fail and a standard response for governments is regulation. Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) is being adopted by an increasing number of countries as a route to better regulation. The book includes contributions from leading experts on regulatory reform and analysis and a range of case studies from developed, developing and transitional economies. By rigorously examining the principles of better regulation and focusing on the problem of applicability and adaption of RIA practices around the world, this book will greatly aid understanding of regulatory policy design and implementation.
This book examines the transformation of governing arrangements in Britain from stagnation in the first two-thirds of the 20th century to hyper-innovation. These two phases were connected by crisis, namely, a crisis of economic policy and the crisis of the content of rule itself. The collapse of the club system is also discussed to explain the reasons behind the hostility towards the new regulatory state.
This Article examines a recent and dramatic transformation in the relationship between the President (and his staff) and the administrative state. Professor Kagan argues that President Clinton, building on a foundation President Reagan laid, increasingly made the regulatory activity of the executive branch agencies into an extension of his own policy and political agenda. He did so, primarily, by exercising directive authority over these agencies and asserting personal ownership of their regulatory activity - demonstrating in the process, against conventional wisdom, that enhanced presidential control over administration can serve pro-regulatory objectives. Professor Kagan offers a broad though not unlimited defense of the resulting system of "presidential administration" against legal and policy objections. This form of controlling agency action, she argues, comports with law because, contrary to the prevailing view, Congress generally should be understood to have left authority in the President to direct executive branch officials in the exercise of their delegated discretion. In addition, and relatedly, this form of controlling agency action advances core values of accountability and effectiveness, given notable features of the contemporary administrative and political systems. In comparison with other forms of control over administration, which continue to operate, presidential administration renders the bureaucratic sphere more transparent and responsive to the public and more capable of injecting energy as well as competence into the regulatory process. Professor Kagan concludes this Article by considering ways in which courts might promote presidential administration in its most beneficial form and scope, discussing in particular potential modifications to the nondelegation doctrine and two judicial review doctrines.
Among the most important developments in regulatory administration in recent years have been an increased reliance on rule making, and the use of due process requirements and cost-benefit analysis to control rule-making decisions. These devices have been intended to promote comprehensive rationality in the implementation of statutes. As such, they may be inappropriate for dealing with many of the broad policy issues regulatory agencies must confront.
This article examines research into the use of performance information by ministers, parliamentarians and citizens. These ‘end users’ are of crucial importance to the claim that performance information is not merely managerially useful, but also contributes to the quality of democratic debate and to the ability of citizens to make choices. A literature review indicates that research into use by these groups has been very patchy, and that much of what we do know suggests that evaluations and performance reports and audits are seldom highly valued by politicians or citizens. Possible reasons and remedies for this apparent state of affairs are discussed, and areas for further research are suggested.
This is a time when more and more social scientists are becoming concerned about making their research useful for public policy makers and policy makers are displaying spurts of well publicized concern about the usefulness of the social science research that government funds support. There is mutual interest in whether social science research intended to influence policy is actually "used" but before that important issue can profitably be addressed it is essential to understand what "using research" actually means. A review of the literature reveals that a diverse array of meanings is attached to the term. Much of the ambiguity in the discussion of "research utilization"-and conflicting interpretations of its prevalence and the routes by which it occurs-derives from conceptual confusion. If we are to gain a better understanding of the extent to which social science research has affected public policy in the past and learn how to make its contribution more effective in the future we need to clarify the concept. Upon examination the use of social science research in the sphere of public policy is an extraordinarily complex phenomenon. Authors who have addressed the subject have evoked diverse images of the processes and purposes of utilization. Here I will try to extract seven different meanings that have been associated with the concept. (excerpt)
“To have mastered ‘theory’ and ‘method’ is to have become a conscious thinker , a man at work and aware of the assumptions and implications of whatever he is about. To be mastered by ‘method’ or ‘theory’ is simply to be kept from working.” The sentence applies nicely to the present plight of political science. The profession as a whole oscillates between two unsound extremes. At the one end a large majority of political scientists qualify as pure and simple unconscious thinkers. At the other end a sophisticated minority qualify as overconscious thinkers, in the sense that their standards of method and theory are drawn from the physical, “paradigmatic” sciences.
The wide gap between the unconscious and the overconscious thinker is concealed by the growing sophistication of statistical and research techniques. Most of the literature introduced by the title “Methods” (in the social, behavioral or political sciences) actually deals with survey techniques and social statistics, and has little if anything to share with the crucial concern of “methodology,” which is a concern with the logical structure and procedure of scientific enquiry. In a very crucial sense there is no methodology without logos , without thinking about thinking. And if a firm distinction is drawn—as it should be—between methodology and technique, the latter is no substitute for the former. One may be a wonderful researcher and manipulator of data, and yet remain an unconscious thinker.
As ''New Public Management'' enters middle age, scholarly attention has moved to some degree from descriptive mapping and a priori critiques to the analysis of surprises and paradoxes associated with recent and contemporary public service reforms. Some standard analytic lenses for examining such paradoxes, explored here, are the Mertonian tradition of analyzing unintended effects of social interventions, cultural theories of surprise, and the analysis of discontinuities and unexpected couplings in the operation of complex systems, though the New Public Management literature to date has employed the first lens more intensively than the other two. We conclude by exploring features of New Public Man- agement reforms that may have contributed to paradoxical effects and argue that the analysis of such paradoxes can help advance administrative science and the understanding of public sector reform.
The US federalist system has been at the origin of evaluation in many ways: providing a laboratory for experimentation of innovative policies, and requiring evaluation of the growing federal intervention from the War on Poverty onwards. Evaluation approaches have been developed that took into consideration the multiple forms of collaboration activated by the federalist system.This experience offers a benchmark for considering evaluation of EU policies and programmes, as it has been elicited by the complex system of EU governance, encompassing both federalist trends — towards concentration of powers at the centre and towards autonomy at the lower levels. First, the article analyses the effects of the centralistic administrative culture of the EU on the way evaluations are conducted at the different levels. Second, it focuses on how the European value added is assessed in the evaluation of two main mechanisms of EU governance that imply a partnership between different jurisdictions: the Structural Funds programmes and the Open Method of Coordination.To do this, it discusses a growing literature of evaluations that utilize theories of power relations, from multilevel governance and network to principal—agent.
This article provides some reflective thoughts on current research on regulatory impact assessment (RIA) in Europe.The narrative draws on the author's fieldwork diaries. It starts from the methodological problems of identifying and analysing regulatory impact assessment in the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden.This leads to more fundamental theoretical questions about research design, the relationship between supply and demand of research and, ultimately, the aims of academic research in this area.The conclusions draw lessons for the emerging research agenda on better regulation.The main problem is not whether `real' RIAs exist or not, since this would be equivalent to trying to fit the amoeba-like RIA `substance' into our abstract`forms'.The interesting problems are: what are the functions of different approaches to assessment, how are they used and how can they improve governance?
This paper reports on the latest update of the worldwide governance indicators, covering 213 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance: voice and accountability political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption.
This article evaluates the institutional capacity of the EU for policy transfer. It identifies the variables shaping transfer processes and outcomes: the mode of decision employed; the veto-points at which the model may be thwarted or modified; and the institutionally embedded policy preferences against which the model is evaluated. Transfer outcomes are classified on a scale from mere influence , through synthesis , to emulation. The empirical part of the paper is based on research into the liberalization and re-regulation of the European electricity sector following a " first mover' initiative on the part of the UK. Unanimity requirements, it is argued, opened up veto opportunities for member states to modify the UK model in accordance with domestic policy preferences. At the same time, EU feedback effects modified domestic preferences. Thus whilst transfer outcomes fell short of emulation, the result was more than merely a synthesis of national approaches.
misunderstanding the regulatory state ?
In the last quarter of the twentieth century something transformed government across the advanced capitalist world, and a large amount of comparative political enquiry is now concerned with pinning a convincing label on that transformation. Of the many candidates the subject of this review article has proved especially popular. As I will show, a regulatory state is now commonly said to exist in a wide range of geographical and institutional settings: writers speak of a regulatory state in the United States and in Britain; of the European regulatory state; and even of refinements like ‘a regulatory state inside the state’.
Multiple knowledges are available for utilisation in policy choice. The rank ordering of knowledges for use in decisionmaking is thus a fundamental predecision. This article shows how this predecision necessarily constrains the processes associated with a politics of ideas, using cases from American international commodity policy. Even when the supposed preconditions of this sort of politics are present, policy change did not occur when the proposed ideas arose from a knowledge accorded secondary status in policymaking circles. Several implications are discussed for the influence and the study of ideational politics. Ultimately, the politics of ideas, so often portrayed through cases of innovation, may be quite conservative, contained by knowledge hierarchies which reflect prior politicaxl circumstances.
Rules, Rules, Rules, Rules: Multilevel Regulatory Governance, G. Bruce Doern and Robert Johnson, eds., Studies in Comparative Political Economy and Public Policy; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006, xi, 372.
The first stated purpose of this edited collection is to “clarify conceptually the nature, causes, and dynamics of regulatory governance in, or affecting, Canada” in a world where the international, federal, provincial and local spheres are “interacting, reinforcing and colliding.” The second is to “contribute practically to the debate on what kinds of principles and institutional approaches and changes can lessen the problems of multilevel regulatory governance” (3).
This article examines changes in the New Labour core executive's approach to regulation and its relationship with risk, through analysing documentary, legislative and press sources concerning approaches to regulatory decision-making. It claims that an initial commitment to ‘better regulation’ has gradually been replaced by explicit support for deregulation. A reduction in the scope of regulation was also promoted by the Thatcher and Major governments. The New Labour core executive shares previous (Conservative) administrations’ concern to include business in deregulatory decision-making. However, the article claims that there is one significant difference in the New Labour deregulatory approach: a new toleration of risk. Deregulation is, now, described as a corrective to regulators’ over-reactions to perceived risks, which, it is claimed, are holding back economic and technological progress. However, this new approach excludes competing views concerning how risk should be regulated. In particular, it does not engage with widespread popular views that governments should continue to protect against risk.
In much of the international public administration literature, New Public Management (NPM) already appears to be bogged down in a quagmire of critical revisions and assessments. Although some criticisms are well founded, there can be no doubt that NPM represents a trend which has considerably affected public-sector decision-making worldwide. This article takes the examples of the Southern European bureaucracies, where NPM-inspired reforms were introduced later than in the English-speaking world, but have nevertheless played a decisive role in the political agenda of both socialist and conservative governments. The paper presents the results of a comparative study of administrative reforms in five European countries as well as the USA during the 1980s and 1990s. The comparison is based on three specific dimensions (central bureaucracies’ formal structure; civil service organization; administrative processes), enabling us to systematically measure and compare the progress of the various countries subsequent to the cycle of managerial reforms.
Since its publication in 2000, Public Management Reform has established itself as the standard text in the field, presenting a comparative analysis of recent changes in Public Management and Public Administration in a range of countries in Europe, North America, and Australasia. This completely rewritten second edition radically expands, develops, and updates the original. Two countries have been added to the comparison (making twelve countries in all) and a much fuller treatment has been provided of the European Commission (including a commentary on the recent reforms led by Vice-President Kinnock). Empirical data has been brought up to date, so as to cover many key developments of the last few years. The theoretical framework of the book has been further developed, including a challenging new interpretation of the trends in continental Europe, which are seen here as markedly different from the Anglo-American style 'New Public Management'. This second edition provides an unparalleled synthesis of developments in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the UK, the USA, and the European Commission. It is organized in an integrated format, within an overall theoretical framework that identifies the main pressures for, and trajectories of, change. It includes a multi-dimensional analysis of the results of reform, and a chapter reflecting on the dynamic relationship between management reform and politics. Extensive appendices provide an invaluable information resource for students.
This book transcends current debate on government regulation by lucidly outlining how regulations can be a fruitful combination of persuasion and sanctions. The regulation of business by the United States government is often ineffective despite being more adversarial in tone than in other nations. The authors draw on both empirical studies of regulation from around the world and modern game theory to illustrate innovative solutions to this problem. Their ideas include an argument for the empowerment of private and public interest groups in the regulatory process and a provocative discussion of how the government can support and encourage industry self-regulation.
Procedures for the ex ante assessment of public policies are currently in vogue across the OECD. Their design is typically informed by a rational-instrumental model of problem solving, which assumes that knowledge is collected, evaluated, and then translated straightforwardly into ‘better policies’. But this model has been little affected by more than three decades of academic research which has demonstrated that the reality of everyday policy making is far messier. In this paper we analyse whether the uptake of ex ante assessment of policies is nonetheless capable of creating opportunities for policy deliberation and learning informed by new assessment knowledge. Drawing on an analysis of policy assessment procedures in three countries and the European Union, we find that there are several ways in which assessment knowledge is used in the policy process. Moreover, we argue that policy learning occurs despite, rather than because of, the instrumental design of new assessment procedures, which tends to act as a barrier to open deliberation and knowledge utilisation.<?tf=“t001”>
"Better Regulation" is afoot in Europe. After several transatlantic conflicts over regulatory topics such as the precautionary principle, genetically modified foods, and climate change, Europe and America now appear to be converging on the analytic basis for regulation. In a process of hybridization, European institutions are borrowing "Better Regulation" reforms from both the US approach to regulatory review using benefit-cost analysis and from European member states' initiatives on administrative costs and simplification; in turn the European Commission is helping to spread these reforms among the member states. In many respects, the "Better Regulation" initiative promises salutary reforms, such as wider use of regulatory impact assessments and a reduction in unnecessary bureaucracy. In other respects, the European initiative speaks more of Procrustean deregulation than of better regulation. Meanwhile the European Commission still needs to establish the institutional infrastructure needed to succeed. This paper argues that the European program of "Better Regulation" is well-founded but could be even better if it adopted several strategies: enlarging the scope of impact assessment and benefit-cost analysis toward a broader, "warmer" and more evenhanded application of these tools, with greater attention to multiple risks; moving beyond a narrow focus on cutting administrative costs or simplification for their own sake, toward criteria that address benefits as well as costs; centralizing expert oversight so that impact assessments actually influence decisions, both to say "no" to bad ideas and "yes" to good ideas; and undertaking ex post evaluation of policies for adaptive policy revision and for improvement of ex ante assessment methods. These reforms would help Better Regulation achieve its true objective: better, not less or more. In turn, the US could study these European innovations and borrow