Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/p3919"

Over the past decades, there has been an ongoing debate on the need to reform regulatory frameworks in most OECD countries. One of the more recent developments in this field is the emergence of better regulation agenda, which can be defined as form of meta-regulation that sets regulatory principles and tools in order to control the regulatory process from formulation to enforcement. The aim of this study is to problematize and critically explain OECD's better regulation agenda. The method used in this study is poststructural discourse theory and specifically the logics approach developed by Glynos and Howarth, which aims to understand the social, political and fantasmatic logics of a social practice. The different logics were used to characterize and explain the underlying values and norms of better regulation as well as its emergence, change and 'grip'. The analyzed materials consist of the regulatory quality principles that OECD has published since 1995 and some complementary documents. The results show that there are distinct social, political and fantasmatic logics that OECD's regulatory agenda is built on. The social logics of markets, rational choice and public interest indicate that the overall discursive structure of OECD's better regulation can be understood through logics of depoliticization. All the social logics seek to simplify the regulatory process by limiting and structuring the world around the decision-making process and offering ostensibly neutral and objective set of principles to refer to. The logics of depoliticization are supported by drawing political frontiers between the new alternative regulatory tools and old command-and control forms of regulation and by beatific fantasies of prosperity as well as horrific fantasies of stagnation. It is argued that the logics of depoliticization hide the underlying political and communicative nature of the regulatory process. Completely neutral or unbiased principles are argued to be impossible and that defining quality as efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability is a political choice. By structuring the communicative aspects of the regulatory process, better regulation also increases the use of professional power in regulatory decision-making. It should be noted that regulation is seldom only concerned about maximizing welfare and bringing economic benefits. Rather, it should be seen as an organic process that requires balancing competing values and views concerning the society.