From Delegation to Regulation: Policy Implementation through Regulation in the United Kingdom, 1991-2022.

What is the extent to which legislative delegations are implemented by regulation? Are there any gaps between delegations and their implementation? Why does the bureaucracy use some powers and not others? Do some sectors have more delegations than others? Which sectors use delegations more than others, and why? Despite the importance of these questions, they have not been examined, so far, in the literature on delegation, regulation, and policy implementation. Nonetheless, these questions are crucial for understanding the impact of delegation practices on policy implementation. In order to fill this knowledge gap, this study examines policy implementation through regulation by focusing on the connection between delegations to make regulations and regulatory production in British legislation from 1991 to 2022 (n=16,562). More specifically, these delegations are linked to regulations, if produced, and logistic regression analysis, as well as negative binomial regression, are used to examine why some delegations are more likely to be implemented, and why some delegations produce more regulations than others. The findings of the study provides novel insights into our understanding of the interaction between delegation, regulatory growth, and policy implementation.