How left-wing government sparks growth of rules
Rules — in the form of laws and regulations — are a key output of government, and many people have tried to explain why the level of rule production rises and falls. In the current issue ofGovernance, Mads Leth Felsager Jakobsen and Peter B. Mortensen add to existing knowledge by emphasizing the importance of politics. Their long-term study of Danish government finds that “the rule-based bureaucratization of society” increases when left-wing parties hold power. Rule production within a policy domain may also increase when that domain is positioned higher on the policy agenda — but this “agenda effect” is only observable in policy domains with low technical complexity. Read the article.
