Designing Rulemaking: How Regulatory Policy Instruments Matter for Governance

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Over the last twenty-five years, many governments around the world have adopted access to information legislation, introduced or re-designed impact assessment procedures for proposed legislation, created ombudsman offices, and engaged stakeholders in various types of consultation. With a general aim of making rulemaking more transparent and inclusive and ultimately more efficient, these governments - nudged by the advocacy of International Organizations - have reformed the design of their rulemaking procedures and calibrated them in specific yet distinct ways. The question arises: do these innovations, designed to open up rulemaking process and make regulation better, have an actual effect on policy and governance outcomes?

In Designing Rulemaking, the authors answer this question with a novel, purpose-built dataset on regulatory design based on the legal provisions disciplining four rulemaking procedures - impact assessment, stakeholder consultation, freedom of information, and ombudsman procedures.

Examining twenty-eight countries (the EU twenty-seven plus the UK), the dataset operationalises rules as data and measures the design features of each procedure in each country. The authors then, using set-theoretic methods, consider the effects of these combinations of designs of rulemaking procedures on the quality of the business environment, perception of corruption, and environmental performance. Their findings shatter predominant views on policy change in Europe and offer a varied, detailed, granular account of the efficacy of regulatory design.