Research Handbook of Policy Design: the case of regulatory management policy

Starting from the paradox that successive waves of reforms have jeopardized the functional coherence of better regulation as a horizontal policy, this chapter highlights the challenge of meta-design of different appraisal procedures and institutions. Indeed, among countries with a long tradition of regulatory management systems, there is an evident proliferation of diverse better regulation objectives pursued by oversight bodies with different mandates. In order to capture the institutional coordination design in specific countries, we identified different theoretical scenarios, ranging from hierarchical coordination to ad hoc, extemporaneous coordination. By way of example, this typology has been applied to analyze how in the UK and the Netherlands better regulation policy tools, procedures and institutions are coordinated. Our analysis revealed some major differences. We show that the UK government lies closer to the hierarchical coordination extreme than the Dutch government. The latter traditionally tends to rely on positive modes of coordination, although informally the neoliberal goal of business deregulation still has a central position in the practices of the Dutch government. Besides these differences, the two governments display similarities in the use of performance metrics to reduce business compliance costs. Yet, whereas business impact targets are established through legislation in the UK, the pivotal role of the Standard Cost Model in the Netherlands is rather informal. Neither of the countries seem to have developed a strategy of coordination in terms of problem solving, which would entail the deployment of particular appraisal tools and institutions depending on a specific issue at stake.