"Honey, I shrunk the legislation!"

Armstrong, Kenneth A. (1997) "Honey, I shrunk the legislation!". In: UNSPECIFIED, Seattle, WA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Reform of EU regulatory policy has been guided by two distinct policy streams in the wake of the legislative explosion of the Single Market program. Whereas the principle of subsidiary gave rise to a program of legislative review, concerns as to the competitiveness of European business also prompted greater attention towards legislative and administrative simplification. The paper argues that these reform movements have failed to bring about a radical, horizontal change to regulatory culture. Rather, the political forces which have been unleashed have been mediated by the institutional (organisational, procedural and normative) structure of EU governance. An institutionalist approach is taken to argue that institutional structures mediate political forces even when the object of the force is the institutional structure itself. The European Commission's Simpler Legislation for the Internal Market (SLIM) initiative and changes to Commission standard operating procedures are used as case studies for the institutionalist approach.

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