Defining Regulatory management Systems

The research question for the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)–New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) Regulatory Project is: ‘Which elements of Regulatory Management Systems (RMSs) generate the most value’? The introduction to this note explores in more detail exactly what is meant by a regulatory management system and what the elements of an RMS are. We distinguish between the formal system (what is in place) and the requisite RMS (what is required for a high-performing regulatory system). In the diagram below, the equisite RMS is shown to include policy components (in dark blue at the centre), practices (in brown around the centre), institutions (at the bottom in grey), and the overall regulatory strategy at the top in light blue. Every country has a unique regulatory system to make laws, regulations, and rules, and a set of procedures for reviewing them. Increasingly, countries are introducing regulatory management policies and strengthening their institutions to make their regulatory systems more effective. Regulatory management (‘regulating the regulation makers’) is a form of meta-regulation that includes both regulatory policymaking (‘regulating regulation developers’) and regulatory administration and enforcement (‘regulating the wielders of regulatory power’).