1 THE IMPLEMENTATION OF REGULATORY IMPACT ASSESSMENT IN EUROPE

Policies to increase the capacity of governments to produce high quality regulation, also known as ‘better regulation’, have spread throughout Europe. Within ‘better regulation’, Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) has become the pivotal instrument. The literature on RIA is burgeoning, yet it has overlooked the comparative analysis of how RIA is implemented. We draw on implementation theory to formulate expectations about the political costs and benefits of different degrees of implementation, from formal adoption (stage 1) to the creation of central units in charge of better regulation (stage 2) and the production and publication of RIA results and methods (stage 3). We then test the hypotheses on data on RIA in European countries. We find that partisanship and political constraints matter in the early stage of implementation (together with economic openness), whilst in stage 2 we also see other variables at work- such as the type of political system, economic resources, and time. Stage 3 sheds light on the role of bureaucratic efficiency and interest groups, whilst the influence of partisanship disappears. In the conclusion we reflect on how our findings can contribute to the current policy discussion around RIA and better regulation, and suggest extensions of our analysis