When the pieces do not fall into place: How cross-national variation in regulatory design affects governance outcomes

The question whether the design of rulemaking procedures affects final governance outcomes is central to regulatory scholarship. We address the specific research question of explaining cross-country variation in the EU-27 and the UK. We select four rulemaking procedures, that is, freedom of information, impact assessment, the Ombudsman and stakeholders engagement in the preparation of laws and regulations. Three theoretical lenses provide expectations about cross-country variation. They are Europeanization, legal origin, and varieties of capitalism. Methodologically, we test these expectations using fuzzy-sets qualitative comparative analysis and our original dataset of measures of the four procedures. As for the outcomes, we consider corruption, the ease of doing business, and environmental performance. The findings show that the expectations are only partially matched. Overall, the explanatory power of Europeanization, legal origin and varieties of capitalism is quite limited. In the conclusions we reflect on why this is the case, pointing to the granularity of policy design as opposed to the macro generalizations of the three theories. Authors Radaelli, Claire Dunlop, Jonathan Kamkhaji, Claudius Wagemann, Gaia Taffoni