Behavioral Insights, Public Consultation, and Regulatory Policy: Perspectives from Europe

September 21, 2022
The European Commission’s “better regulation” agenda recognizes public consultation as an essential tool for enhancing the effectiveness of rules and strengthening compliance with them. In this webinar, Nicoletta Rangone, Professor of Administrative Law at LUMSA University in Rome and a visiting scholar at Penn Carey Law and the Penn Program on Regulation (PPR), presents new research on cognitive biases among decision-makers, stakeholders, and citizens that can limit the effectiveness of public consultation, and she explains what can be done about these biases to improve the consultation process in Europe and beyond.
Following Prof. Rangone’s remarks, Christiane Arndt-Bascle, Head of Programme on Measuring Regulatory Performance at the OECD, offers commentary drawing on the OECD’s work on public consultation. PPR Director Cary Coglianese, the Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, moderates the discussion.
The research paper that Prof. Rangone presents here is "Improving Consultation to Ensure the European Union's Democratic Legitimacy: From Traditional Procedural Requirements to Behavioural Insights," European Law Journal (2022), available at pennreg.org/wp-content/upload...
Viewers also may find the following EU resources to be of interest:
Reporting (Conference on the Future of Europe): futureu.europa.eu/pages/repor...
Methodologies for Analysing Impacts in Impact Assessments, Evaluations and Fitness Checks: ec.europa.eu/info/files/chapt...
Stakeholder Consultation: ec.europa.eu/info/files/chapt...
Assessment of Current Initiatives of the European Commission on Better Regulation: www.europarl.europa.eu/RegDat...
Also, these essays from The Regulatory Review:
Public Input in Rulemaking: www.theregreview.org/2022/03/...
Analyzing Language to Identify Stakeholders: www.theregreview.org/2022/09/...
Creating Trusted Regulatory Policy: www.theregreview.org/2018/01/...
Mass Comments in Administrative Rulemaking: www.theregreview.org/2021/12/...
Viewers also may find the following OECD resources helpful:
Better Regulation Practices across the European Union: www.oecd.org/publications/bet...
OECD Regulatory Policy Outlook: www.oecd.org/publications/oec...
OECD Library Resources:
www.oecd-ilibrary.org/governa...
Behavioural Insights (OECD): www.oecd.org/gov/regulatory-p...
A Behavioural Science Perspective on Government-Citizen Interactions (OECD working paper): www.oecd-ilibrary.org/governa...
OECD Framework for Regulatory Policy Evaluation: www.oecd.org/regreform/framew...
Measuring Regulatory Performance: www.oecd.org/regreform/regula...
Evaluating Stakeholder Engagement in Regulatory Policy (The Hague OECD MRP Conference): www.oecd.org/gov/regulatory-p...
Viewers also may want to look at:
Susan Rose-Ackerman, Democracy and Executive Power: yalebooks.yale.edu/book/97803...
Cary Coglianese, Citizen Participation in Rulemaking: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...