Regulation has been an area of policy boom over the last few decades throughout most of the OECD member states. Even as this policy boom was starting, governments in the United States and the United Kingdom started to act on concerns that, without oversight, regulation could grow unchecked and damage the economy.  Regulation, after all, is a relatively inexpensive way to be seen to be delivering on political commitments. The Reagan government initiated a programme of de-regulation in the early 1980s and the UK under Thatcher quickly followed suit. The neo-liberal language of de-regulation in the 1980s has gradually given way to policies and instruments which recognise the value of regulation but reflect an aspiration for better regulation. A core aspect of these policies has been the introduction of measures to review new and current regulatory rules, through a process of regulatory impact assessment (RIA), which in most countries is supposed to include an evaluation of the grounds for the rules, a consideration of alternatives, and a form of cost benefit assessment of proposed instruments.

Since the 1990s the OECD has taken a lead in surveying the practices of national governments in respect of regulatory reform and better regulation, and seeking to foster learning about effective practices. In March 2012 the OECD Council adopted a new Recommendation on Regulatory Governance which seeks to encapsulate two decades of learning about best practices in better regulation for national governments. The context for the new recommendations is a belief that regulatory failures made a significant contribution to the global financial crisis, 2008-, and the view that there is still much to learn about how to regulate in a manner that is simultaneously effective and efficient.

In its Recommendation the OECD avoids simply setting down a one size fits all guide to best practice, for example by specifying the requirements of regulatory impact assessment. Rather it emphasises that effective regulation is a product of adaptation of instruments to particular contexts and developing the capacity for feedback and learning so that regimes can be developed and enhanced over time. These objectives require a degree of institutionalised oversight of regulatory activities operating at a level above the concerns of particular sectors. The recommendation for cross-sectoral oversight of regulation will not be implemented uniformly. For some countries there has been a tradition of seeking to detach oversight of regulation from politics.

In this institutional dimension Australia has been amongst the leaders with the activities of the Office of Regulation Review, originally located within the Productivity Commission.  For many the location of ORR at one remove from government was a virtue, emphasising the technical and expert nature of its tasks. More recently its successor, the Office of Best Practice Regulation, established in 2006, has been located within the newly christened Department of Finance and Deregulation since 2008. This move was made, in part, to enhance the political clout of better regulation policies across government following a 2006 review and is consistent with the OECD’s recommendation that there should be commitment ‘at the highest political level to a whole-of-government policy for regulatory quality.’(I.1).

In Ireland the Better Regulation Unit, with cross-sectoral responsibilities for oversight of regulation, regulatory impact assessment (RIA) and training, was located within the Department of the Taoiseach. A 2010 OECD report on regulation on Ireland found that whilst the BRU had been successful in developing its responsibilities, that cross-government support for better regulation was fragile. In the face of Ireland’s economic crisis the fragility was demonstrated by the abolition of the BRU as a cost-cutting measure. Though there are structures in place for reviewing red tape within the Department of Jobs Enterprise and Innovation, and a commitment to establishing a Government Economic and Evaluation Service, with some responsibility for RIAs, the government has admitted in its Action Plan for Jobs that the disbanding of this Unit creates a lacuna within government in terms of the capacity to deliver on commitments to better regulation.

For some, regulation is about meeting the requirements of particular sectors such as financial services or energy, and differences between regulatory requirements for such sectors make a whole-of-government approach inappropriate or unnecessary. The OECD is right to reject this viewpoint. There is much to be learnt across sectors concerning such matters as rule-making, participation and consultation, alternatives to rules, monitoring, effectiveness in enforcement, and so on. Furthermore some political commitment is required to hold departments and agencies to requirements to effectively review the rationales for new regulatory measures before legislating.  

These are matters not only for sharing of experience and expertise across sectors, but also with the growing scholarly field devoted to regulatory governance.  Within academic disciplines including economics, political science, law and business there is increasing capacity to understand the challenges of regulation as an instrument of government, with potential both for cross-sectoral and transnational learning. It must be said that regulators have increasingly become engaged in international learning through participation in networks where there is cooperation over both understanding responses to common problems, and operational matters. Whole-of-government  national oversight of regulatory governance addresses national capacity for implementation of and learning about regulatory capacity.