Regulatory Impact Analysis in EU and OECD member states PAPER PRESENTED AT THE 22nd CONFERENCE OF THE SOCIETA’

Working in progress: Please do not cite without permission. Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) has been adopted widely in Europe: 24 out of 27 EU member states have adopted a systematic ex-ante appraisal of the predictable regulatory effects. Among OECD member states only Luxembourg has not yet adopted RIA. Diffusion studies, however, tend to focus on the process of adoption, assessing the causality of internal and external determinants (Berry and Berry, 2007). Notwithstanding the Downs and Mohr’s recommendations to operationalise diffusion as a dynamic process, the scope of change is somehow overlooked by scholars. In other words, there is an implicit assumption that ‘all states adopt exactly the same policy ’ (Clark, 1985: 63). Following Clark (1985), this paper attempts to measure the extent of variance in the implementation of diffused innovation administrative and regulatory governance. Relying on databases generated by OECD surveys and two 6FP research projects (European Network on Better Regulation and Evaluating Integrated Impact Assessment), it will provide an aggregated indicator of the rat