Final Report Summary - ALREG (Analysing Learning in Regulatory Governance)
Much contemporary government activity involves regulation of the economy and society. Regulation can save lives and resources, but can also generate costs and administrative obligations that are not justified, especially at a time of economic crisis.
International organisations have promoted regulatory impact assessment as main tool to appraise the likely costs and benefits of new regulations for the economy, the environment and society. These tools are now used by the large majority of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries to inform their regulatory reforms. Ground-breaking research carried out by the ALREG project team has exposed the limitations of current theories of learning – which often confuse ontological issues with epistemological problems – and the narrow approach to regulatory impact assessment and regulatory reform. The research has shown that effective impact assessment and regulatory measures need to be informed by political and administrative context and that this context should be taken into account in cross-national learning about regulation. The project’s inter-disciplinary findings have transformed our understanding of learning in public policy, with major theoretical innovations. The findings have challenged and consequently changed the approach to the design of impact assessment tools and led to novel measures of regulatory performance. Our research has changed policymakers’ thinking about assessing regulatory impact and created new capacity for learning about regulation across countries. These impacts have had broad reach with the main beneficiaries being the research community, the European Commission’s Secretariat General, the OECD Regulatory Policy Committee, the World Bank, with the Dutch national government a further beneficiary in improving its learning from the experience of other countries in regulatory reform.
International organisations have promoted regulatory impact assessment as main tool to appraise the likely costs and benefits of new regulations for the economy, the environment and society. These tools are now used by the large majority of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries to inform their regulatory reforms. Ground-breaking research carried out by the ALREG project team has exposed the limitations of current theories of learning – which often confuse ontological issues with epistemological problems – and the narrow approach to regulatory impact assessment and regulatory reform. The research has shown that effective impact assessment and regulatory measures need to be informed by political and administrative context and that this context should be taken into account in cross-national learning about regulation. The project’s inter-disciplinary findings have transformed our understanding of learning in public policy, with major theoretical innovations. The findings have challenged and consequently changed the approach to the design of impact assessment tools and led to novel measures of regulatory performance. Our research has changed policymakers’ thinking about assessing regulatory impact and created new capacity for learning about regulation across countries. These impacts have had broad reach with the main beneficiaries being the research community, the European Commission’s Secretariat General, the OECD Regulatory Policy Committee, the World Bank, with the Dutch national government a further beneficiary in improving its learning from the experience of other countries in regulatory reform.