Rulemaking by the Administration, Government, and Parliament. Research Program Assumptions and Polish Example.

The subject of this paper is the analysis of the legal rulemaking process in Poland during the Seventh Term of the Polish Sejm (2011–2015). A core feature of the proposed method for analysing rulemaking is the examination of individual draft rules, rather than considering the entire bill as the unit of analysis. This approach provides a more refined and detailed picture of the legislative process. Such a study of rulemaking in Poland was possible because government bills are made publicly available from an early stage of the rulemaking process. Rules, especially the formal rules contained in law, constitute the normative foundation for contemporary societies organized into states. The rulemaking process has been the subject of interest for several researchers (e.g., Sieberer, Dutkowski, Meißner, Müller 2020; Goetz and Zubek 2007). Rulemaking is inextricably linked with competition among the participants in these processes, which will constitute the empirical dimension of this paper. In the Polish constitutional system, the official lawmaker is the Parliament. However, this image can be considered simplified, with the administration frequently viewed as the actual creator of law, particularly administrative law. The question this paper seeks to answer is: What kinds of rules are so important to politicians that they undertake the effort of creating these rules themselves, rather than relying on the administration for this task? Conducting such an analysis required the development of a novel research tool that allows for the analysis of individual rules and the identification of their creators. This tool is interdisciplinary in nature, utilizing elements of: legal science (rules, draft rules, and their evolution); political science (competition between political actors); and sociology (methodological individualism and the panel study scheme). The most important components of the proposed tool—the model of a rule and the typology of rules—were taken from the grammar of institutions (Crawford, Ostrom 1995, 2005). This research tool was used to encode draft rules and subsequently analyze how they are transformed, deleted, or added during the rulemaking process. The paper will present an analysis of the transformation of draft rules, which were initially formulated by the administration, then modified (or not) by the Council of Ministers (the Government), and finally by the lower house of parliament (the Sejm). Applying a typology of rules based on the grammar of institutions allows for the precise identification of the scope of activity (and thus the authority exercised) by the administrative apparatus of ministries, the Government, and the Parliament. The empirical dimension of this paper is the result of an analysis conducted on a sample of rules from ministry-sponsored bills of the 7th term of the Sejm (2011–2015). The main goal of the analysis was to identify the types of rules created by the administration, the Council of Ministers, and the Sejm, and thereby to identify the rules formulated by the Government and Parliament when taking over administrative tasks in the rulemaking process.