International Regulatory Reform Report 2008 ebook

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The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

© 2011 E-Book-Ausgabe (EPUB) © 2008 Verlag Bertelsmann Stiftung, Gütersloh

Responsible: Dr. Tobias Ernst

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Cover design: Nadine Humann

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ISBN : 978-3-86793-402-2

www.bertelsmann-stiftung.org/publications

Foreword

Regulatory reform is gaining more and more political and academic attention. But what is ‘regulatory reform’? First of all, it is a brand, primarily shaped and promoted by the OECD and the World Bank. The more or less official definition focuses on the question of how to strengthen regulatory management to improve regulatory environments for delivering, in the end, better outcomes.

But below this very abstract level, looking at different world regions where national strategies change over time, things become quite diverse. For example, the British brand is ‘better regulation,’ which has to be seen in contrast to ‘deregulation’ and focused for a long time on elaborated impact assessments. Meanwhile, if you talk about ‘regulatory reform’ in the US, people will answer with ‘risk analysis’ and ‘proportionality.’ Looking at Germany or France, you will find a lot about better enforcement and less about better regulation. Just to complete this short list of examples, there is no ‘better regulation’ in Canada; they have ‘smart regulation.’

Where are the differences between these approaches? What can we learn from each other? What is better, when and why? These questions are very difficult to answer, but we think it is worth the effort to try. This is why we asked Ragnar Löfstedt, Frédéric Bouder and Jacopo Torriti to conduct the study published in this book. We imposed a big challenge on them: to identify, describe and compare better regulation strategies. And, even more gruelling, we wanted to know how these strategies—and their development over time—must be seen as essentially part of the national regulatory and political culture. The reason for this, from our point of view, is that we cannot compare the concrete use of instruments (e.g., impact assessment, measuring administrative burden, consultation) without understanding its environment and the interests of its stakeholders.

The reports on the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and Italy, written in the second half of 2007, provide a lot of answers—but maybe even more new questions. Perhaps we shall get some additional answers during the next and second International Regulatory Reform Conference, which will take place from November 17th till November 18th, again in Berlin.

Looking forward to meeting you there!

Frank Frick & Tobias Ernst

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Foreword

Introduction

France

1. Background and initiatives

2. Administrative burdens

3. Regulatory impact analysis and other better-regulation initiatives

4. Findings

References

Italy

1. Background: the structural problem of red tape and recent government initiatives

2. The plan to reduce administrative burdens

3. The regulatory-impact assessment system in Italy

4. Findings

References

The Netherlands

1. Background: The focus on red tape in Dutch regulatory reform

2. The standard cost model to reduce administrative burdens: The Dutch ...

3. The Dutch impact-assessment system

4. Findings

References

United Kingdom

1. Background: The institutionalization of ‘better regulation’

2. The plan to reduce administrative burdens

3. The 2007 impact-assessment guidelines

4. Findings

References

The United States of America

1. Background and initiatives: the building of a central oversight system

2. Administrative burdens

3. Regulatory-impact analysis and other better-regulation initiatives

4. Findings

References

Key Lessons and Recommendations

1. Recommendations from individual countries

2. What will future regulatory reform look like?

References

The Authors

Introduction

Ragnar Löfstedt

One of the key messages that this study conveys is that regulatory reform is by no means an easily definable and universal concept but that it encompasses a number of practices and methods which, depending on national contexts, may catch the attention of policy makers. In a number of international arenas, however, regulatory reform has been conceptualized as a whole, particularly within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD (1999) has defined regulatory reform as “the changes that improve regulatory quality, that is, enhance the performance, cost-effectiveness or legal quality of regulations and related government formalities.” This study shows that, in practice, countries tend to pick and choose depending on political priorities and that they seldom consider the entire scope of regulatory reform simultaneously. The OECD (1999) has also established a distinction between three categories of regulations, which this study uses as an implicit typology: