Towards better research on better regulation

Conference paper given at the 'Advanced Colloquium on Better Regulation', Centre for Regulatory Governance, University of Exeter, 25-26 January 2007Academic 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.This paper arises out of research carried out for an ESRC project on regulatory impact analysis in comparative perspective, grant No. RES-000-23-1284. I wish to gratefully acknowledge the support of DG Enterprise and Industry of the European Commission for having funded the organisation of the colloquium on better regulation and research for the background report delivered to this event