The Evolution of Regulatory Policy in OECD Countries

In the past 20 years a key topic of public sector reform in OECD countries has been the emergence of regulatory policy. During this period, the nature of regulation has undergone profound and rapid change. It evolved from early efforts of eliminating regulation and gave way to more systemic regulatory reform, involving a mixture of de-regulation, re-regulation and improving the effectiveness of regulations. However, these initial formulations of regulatory reform often assumed that change was episodic in nature. Moreover, they aimed to restore a regulatory structure to some ideal state through a one-off set of interventions. Experience demonstrated that such views were untenable and they gave way in turn to the concept of regulatory management. Regulatory management differed in seeing the process of reform as being a dynamic one. With time, the process became increasing integrated into public policy making. Today, almost all OECD countries have established explicit institutions and tool to implement regulatory policy. As with other core government policies, such as a monetary or fiscal policy, regulatory policy is an integral role of government and is pursued on a permanent basis.