Book Presentation: Designing Rulemaking: How Regulatory Policy Instruments Matter for Governance

• Florence School of Transnational Governance

Join the authors of this new research monograph based on Claudio Radaelli’s ERC project Procedural Tools for Effective Governance. The book will be discussed by Professor Jonathan Wiener of Duke University and Dr. Christiane Arndt-Bascle of the OECD.

Freedom of information acts, impact assessment of proposed legislation, Ombudsman offices and stakeholders engagement are now common policy instruments that open up the rulemaking process to a variety of interests. But do these instruments have an 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 draw on set-theoretic method to measure the effects of these combinations 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.

Read more about the book here.