HOW CONTEXT MATTERS
Wednesday, 28 July 2004
12
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For the politician, quality may well mean responsiveness to pressure groups, or the median voter,
or even responsiveness to external pressure created by the EU, the International Monetary Fund,
and so on. Let us assume that the politician uses consensus as the main criterion and success is
evaluated in terms of the outcome of negotiations.
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The firm perceives quality in terms of minimisation of costs and defines success in terms of profit.
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The citizens use yet another criterion, the effective protection from risk.
Table 1 - How different stakeholders look at RIA quality
ECONOMIST
CIVIL
SERVANT
POLITICIAN
FIRM
CITIZEN
CRITERIA
Efficiency
Conformity to
rules
Consensus
Cost-
minimisation
Cost-effective
protection from
risk
SUCCESS
Achieving
goals in terms
of real-world
impact
Following
legitimate
procedures
Outcome of
negotiation
Profit
Enabling
regulation
LOGIC OF
ACTION
Social sciences
Standard
operating
procedures
Negotiation
Logic of
influence
Participation
The criteria to establish whether RIA is good or bad vary considerably. They are not
necessarily mutually exclusive, though. Regulation produced via proper and
legitimate procedures can result in efficient and fair regulation. But one cannot
establish a sort of mechanical equivalence of every criterion used by different
stakeholders.
The logic of action is also different. The civil servant follows the logic of standard
operating procedures, the politician uses negotiation, and the expert draws on the
logic of the social sciences. The citizen’s behaviour, instead, is informed by the logic
of participation. Finally, the firm draws on the logic of influence.
In real-world regulatory policy processes, the diverse criteria and logics interact
continuously. The expert, the politician, the civil servant, the citizen, and the
corporate actor are ideal-types. Real-world RIA programmes show women and men
who share some of the characteristics of the expert, some features of the classic
Weberian public officer, and also take into account political considerations. Take the
case of the European Commission. Its political role in the EU policy process is clearly
Convention