Governments have promised deregulation for decades. Yet rules keep accumulating, regulatory systems grow more complex, and dissatisfaction has spread from firms and citizens to state actors themselves. Simplification is the current response across Europe and beyond: the claim that regulatory systems can be made lighter, clearer, and navigable while obligations remain. This workshop asks what simplification does in practice; who drives it, why now, with what power; why some systems resist it; and how it redistributes burden and power among legislatures, executives, bureaucracies, firms, and citizens. Together, these questions approach the simplified state as a political rather than administrative project.
Governments have recently chosen simplification as their answer to rule growth. From the European Commission's omnibus packages to Latin American programmes, they promise regulatory systems made lighter, clearer, and navigable while obligations remain (European Commission 2026; OECD 2026).
That promise runs against what the discipline knows about why rules grow and why cutting them fails: beneficiaries mobilize (Pierson 1994), liberalization creates reregulation (Vogel 1996; Levi-Faur 2005), policies accumulate faster than they are removed (Adam et al. 2019), and dismantling turns symbolic (Bauer and Knill 2012). Simplification claims a way out, but the discipline has not asked whether the claim holds, what simplification does, or what politics it is.
This workshop argues simplification is a political rather than administrative project, as better regulation proved to be (Radaelli 2007), and as recent work on the EU shows (Hurka et al. 2026). Beyond the EU and at its distributive end, that question has three facets: why, where, and for whom. First, the politics of the agenda: why simplification now, who drives it, and with what business and electoral power. Second, the politics of institutions: why some systems embrace simplification and others resist, how veto players shape what can be simplified, and whether it removes or layers rules. Third, the politics of distribution: simplification redistributes burden among firms, organizations, and citizens, and discretion and power among legislatures, executives, and bureaucracies. Who gains, who loses?
The workshop gives the discipline answers: what simplification does, at whose expense, and what a simplified state would be.
Adam, Christian, Steffen Hurka, Christoph Knill, and Yves Steinebach. 2019. Policy Accumulation and the Democratic Responsiveness Trap. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108646888.
Bauer, Michael W., and Christoph Knill. 2012. “Understanding Policy Dismantling : An Analytical Framework.” In Dismantling Public Policy : Preferences, Strategies, and Effects, edited by Michael W. Bauer, Andrew Jordan, Christopher Green-Pedersen, and Adrienne Héritier. Oxford University Press. http://kops.uni-konstanz.de/handle/123456789/21355.
European Commission (European Commission). 2026. “Simplification.” https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-making-process/better-regulation/simplification-implementation-and-enforcement/simplification_en.
Hurka, Steffen, Nir Kosti, and Brigitte Pircher. 2026. “The Politics of Regulatory Simplification in the European Union: Actors, Processes and Outcomes.” Work in progress. Opening paper for a special issue in the Journal of European Public Policy.
Levi-Faur, David. 2005. “The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Capitalism.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 598 (1): 12–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716204272371.
OECD. 2026. Diagnostic: Trends and Challenges in Regulatory Simplification and Burden Reduction: Smart Regulations, Strong Business. Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/93d38770-en.
Pierson, Paul. 1994. Dismantling the Welfare State?: Reagan, Thatcher and the Politics of Retrenchment. Cambridge University Press.
Radaelli, Claudio M. 2007. “Whither Better Regulation for the Lisbon Agenda?” Journal of European Public Policy 14 (2): 190–207. https://doi.org/10.1080/13501760601122274.
Vogel, Steven K. 1996. Freer Markets, More Rules: Regulatory Reform in Advanced Industrial Countries. Cornell Studies in Political Economy. Cornell University Press.
1: What does simplification do to rules and obligations, and can burden fall while protection holds?
2: Why simplification now, who drives it, and with what business and electoral power?
3: What generates regulatory burden, and why do some political systems resist simplification?
4: Who gains and loses from simplification: legislatures, executives, bureaucracies, firms, citizens?
5: What would a simplified state look like, and whose state would it be?
1: Conceptualizing and measuring simplification, complexity, and burden.
2: What simplification does to rules, obligations, and rule stocks.
3: Simplification agendas in the EU, member states, and beyond, and why some systems resist them.
4: Politics of simplification: parties, business power, coalitions, and delegation to bureaucracies.
5: Accumulation, layering, and why regulatory systems grow rather than simplify.
6: Administrative and regulatory burden on firms, organizations, and citizens, and its distribution.
7: Strategies of simplification: consolidation, omnibus, offsetting, sunsets, review clauses.
