TOWARDS BETTER RESEARCH ON BETTER REGULATION

Academic research on better regulation carried out in Europe tends to be narrow in scope and to neglect the political properties of this emerging policy. This state of affairs chimes with the technical, de-contextualised and politically aseptic style in which the discussion at the level of policy makers is cast. This paper examines better regulation as an experiment in regulatory governance by shedding light on the political aspects of discourse and the changes in the opportunity structure. The governance perspective on better regulation suggests a re-direction towards research grounded in theories of regulation, explicit causal links between dependent and independent variables, and more sophisticated research questions