Publications

Grand challenges are shaping twenty-first-century politics. Threats connected to health, climate, demographics and welfare are increasingly intruding on the lives of citizens. Still, governments are often found off-guard, and policymakers need strategies grounded in longer-term perspectives. Strategic foresight (SF) helps us to design and shape policies to prepare to withstand shocks, anticipating and adapting to changes. However, as governments work towards embedding SF into their policymaking processes, the empirical evidence suggests that applications are still piecemeal and predominantly limited to the agenda-settings and policy formulation stages. In this article, we argue that to drive anticipatory governance, foresight needs to be applied at all stages of the policy cycle, including in evaluating policies to draw lessons for future interventions. We maintain that considering SF systemically throughout the policymaking cycle, from agenda setting to evaluation, strengthens anticipatory governance.

Il numero di ottobre della Rassegna trimestrale dell'Osservatorio AIR propone analisi sullo sviluppo di diversi strumenti della qualità della regolazione, sia relativamente alla metodologia, sia relativamente alla loro attuazione. Nei primi tre contributi si commentano altrettante recenti analisi OCSE su tre rilevanti strumenti: il test PMI, le consultazioni e le sandboxes. Nei restanti due commenti ci si concentra sull'aspetto attuativo, con un contributo di analisi sullo stato dell'arte dell'AIR e della VIR a livello nazionale (con un commento alla Relazione annuale del DAGL al Parlamento sull'applicazione di AIR e VIR) e sulla sperimentazione che il Friuli-Venezia Giulia ha effettuato in tema di enforcement, relativamente ai controlli nel settore lattiero-caseario.

In Republican and Democratic administrations, regulatory and funding decisions have both been made with close reference to benefit-cost analysis (BCA). With respect to regulation, there has been a great deal of scholarly discussion of BCA and its limits, but almost no attention has been paid to the role of BCA in government funding. That is a serious gap, not least in connection with climate-related risks, such as wildfire, drought, extreme heat, and flooding. In OMB Circular A-94, the Office of Management and Budget has long required applicants for federal funding to demonstrate that the benefits of their projects would exceed the costs. Under Circular A-94, efficiency-based BCA can produce results that fail to maximize welfare and that are also highly inequitable. The 2023 draft revision of Circular A-94, focused on welfare and equity, reflects an effort to incorporate new academic thinking over the past three decades, which is now—not uncontroversially—being brought directly into policy. At the same time, the new draft Circular A-94 raises fresh questions about how best to promote welfare, and to consider equity, in practice. Pressing issues involve the use of distributional weights in funding decisions and also the use of averages across populations, which might be seen as a form of distributional weighting. More broadly, the trajectory of this benefit-cost guidance, which predates the guidance for regulation and originally covered regulation, helps uncover the logic under which BCA has been operating and deeper challenges and tensions within BCA, in the past and going forward.

The 2024 Commission Work Programme, adopted on 17 October 2023, puts a strong focus on simplifying rules for citizens and businesses across the European Union. This follows up on President von der Leyen’s commitment to reduce reporting requirements by 25%, in line with our strategy to boost the EU’s long-term competitiveness and to provide relief for SMEs.

This interim Report examines the factors behind recent AI developments, highlights the benefits offered by the technology, and identifies a series of challenges for policymakers. It is examined how the UK Government has responded, and how this compares to other countries and jurisdictions.

The European Commission presented the 2023 Strategic Foresight Report, which analyses how to put ‘sustainability and people's wellbeing at the heart of Europe's Open Strategic Autonomy' and suggests ten concrete actions to achieve this aim. The 2023 report provides an overview of the challenges we face and proposes ten areas for action to achieve a successful transition. To equip policymakers with economic indicators which also consider wellbeing, it proposes to adjust Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to take account of different factors such as health and the environment. This approach will bolster the EU's Open Strategic Autonomy and global standing in its pursuit of a resilient net-zero economy.

Regulatory experimentation tools are used to test new economic, institutional and technological approaches, and legal provisions, outside of existing regulatory structures. This report focuses on regulatory sandboxes, where authorities engage firms to test innovative products or services that challenge existing legal frameworks. Participating firms obtain a waiver from specific legal provisions or compliance processes to innovate. This report presents lessons learnt from fintech regulatory sandboxes and their positive impacts, such as fostering venture capital investment in fintech start-ups. It covers challenges and risks involved in implementing regulatory sandboxes and their testing processes. This report presents policy considerations for AI regulatory sandboxes, including institutional interdisciplinary cooperation and the need to build up AI expertise within regulatory authorities. Findings underline the need for regulatory interoperability and the role that trade policy can play. Finally, it discusses the need for comprehensive criteria to determine sandbox eligibility and assess trials, and the potential impact of sandboxes on innovation and competition.