IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/reggov/v9y2015i1p30-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Crowdsourcing and regulatory reviews: A new way of challenging red tape in British government?

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Lodge
  • Kai Wegrich

Abstract

Much has been said about the appeal of digital government devices to enhance consultation on rulemaking. This paper explores the most ambitious attempt by the UK central government so far to draw on “crowdsourcing” to consult and act on regulatory reform, the “Red Tape Challenge.” We find that the results of this exercise do not represent any major change to traditional challenges to consultation processes. Instead, we suggest that the extensive institutional arrangements for crowdsourcing were hardly significant in informing actual policy responses: neither the tone of the crowdsourced comments, the direction of the majority views, nor specific comments were seen to matter. Instead, it was processes within the executive that shaped the overall governmental responses to this initiative. The findings, therefore, provoke wider debates about the use of social media in rulemaking and consultation exercises.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Lodge & Kai Wegrich, 2015. "Crowdsourcing and regulatory reviews: A new way of challenging red tape in British government?," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 9(1), pages 30-46, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:reggov:v:9:y:2015:i:1:p:30-46
    DOI: 10.1111/rego.12048
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12048
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/rego.12048?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Coglianese, Cary, 2006. "Citizen Participation in Rulemaking: Past, Present, and Future," Working Paper Series rwp06-027, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    2. Beierle, Thomas C., 2003. "Discussing the Rules: Electronic Rulemaking and Democratic Deliberation," Discussion Papers 10681, Resources for the Future.
    3. Peter G. Moffatt & Simon A. Peters, 2004. "Pricing Personal Services: An Empirical Study of Earnings in the UK Prostitution Industry," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 51(5), pages 675-690, November.
    4. Alon Peled, 2011. "When transparency and collaboration collide: The USA Open Data program," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(11), pages 2085-2094, November.
    5. Beierle, Thomas, 2003. "Discussing the Rules: Electronic Rulemaking and Democratic Deliberation," RFF Working Paper Series dp-03-22, Resources for the Future.
    6. Michael Gibbons & David Parker, 2012. "Impact assessments and better regulation: the role of the UK's Regulatory Policy Committee," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(4), pages 257-264, July.
    7. Martin Lodge & Kai Wegrich, 2009. "High-quality regulation: its popularity, its tools and its future," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(3), pages 145-152, May.
    8. Alon Peled, 2011. "When transparency and collaboration collide: The USA Open Data program," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(11), pages 2085-2094, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Berliner, Daniel, 2023. "Information Processing in Participatory Governance," SocArXiv snerh, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gabriela Viale Pereira & Marie Anne Macadar & Edimara M. Luciano & Maurício Gregianin Testa, 2017. "Delivering public value through open government data initiatives in a Smart City context," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 213-229, April.
    2. Gabriela Viale Pereira & Marie Anne Macadar & Edimara M. Luciano & Maurício Gregianin Testa, 0. "Delivering public value through open government data initiatives in a Smart City context," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-17.
    3. Teresa M. Harrison & Theresa A. Pardo & Meghan Cook, 2012. "Creating Open Government Ecosystems: A Research and Development Agenda," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-29, October.
    4. Frédérik Lesage & Robert A. Hackett, 2014. "Between Objectivity and Openness—The Mediality of Data for Journalism," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 2(2), pages 42-54.
    5. Oliver Fritsch & Jonathan C. Kamkhaji & Claudio M. Radaelli, 2017. "Explaining the content of impact assessment in the United Kingdom: Learning across time, sectors, and departments," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(4), pages 325-342, December.
    6. Sarah Giest, 2017. "Big data for policymaking: fad or fasttrack?," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 50(3), pages 367-382, September.
    7. Alan Ponce & Raul Alberto Ponce Rodriguez, 2020. "An Analysis of the Supply of Open Government Data," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-18, October.
    8. Junyoung Jeong & Keuntae Cho, 2024. "Proposing Machine Learning Models Suitable for Predicting Open Data Utilization," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(14), pages 1-23, July.
    9. Heimstädt, Maximilian, 2017. "Openwashing: A decoupling perspective on organizational transparency," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 77-86.
    10. Trevon D. Logan & Manisha Shah, 2013. "Face Value: Information and Signaling in an Illegal Market," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 79(3), pages 529-564, January.
    11. Kai Wegrich, 2010. "Governing "Better Regulation" in Europe: The Logic, Limits of and Prospects for a "Middle-aged" Reform Policy," ifo DICE Report, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 8(1), pages 34-41, 04.
    12. Spagnolo, Giancarlo & Berlin, Maria & Immordino, Giovanni & Russo, Francesco, 2020. "Paper Withdrawn," CEPR Discussion Papers 15188, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Idunn Nørbech, 2024. "Does policy context matter for citizen engagement in policymaking? Evidence from the European Commission's public consultation regime," European Union Politics, , vol. 25(1), pages 130-150, March.
    14. Della Giusta, Marina & Di Tommaso, Maria Laura & Bettio, Francesca & Jewell, Sarah, 2018. "Criminalising clients: some evidence from the UK," MPRA Paper 91480, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Steven J. Balla & Benjamin M. Daniels, 2007. "Information technology and public commenting on agency regulations," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 1(1), pages 46-67, March.
    16. Rocío Albert & Fernando Gómez & Yanna Gutierrez Franco, 2007. "Regulating Prostitution: A Comparative Law and Economics Approach," Working Papers 2007-30, FEDEA.
    17. Alex Acs, 2019. "Congress and Administrative Policymaking: Identifying Congressional Veto Power," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 63(3), pages 513-529, July.
    18. Alexander Muravyev & Oleksandr Talavera, 2018. "Unsafe Sex in the City: Risk Pricing in the London Area," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 65(5), pages 528-549, November.
    19. Peter Egger & Andreas Lindenblatt, 2015. "Endogenous risk-taking and physical appearance of sex workers," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 16(9), pages 941-949, December.
    20. Niklas Jakobsson & Andreas Kotsadam, 2013. "The law and economics of international sex slavery: prostitution laws and trafficking for sexual exploitation," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 87-107, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:reggov:v:9:y:2015:i:1:p:30-46. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1748-5991 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.