The systems and practices that governments use to manage the stock of regulation are often framed (by governments) as technocratic, objective, apolitical frameworks. This framing is rooted in the idea that regulatory management systems are procedural policy instruments, addressing process rather than outcome, and that they are tools for the production of evidence-based policy-making. The European Commission, for instance, describes its regulatory management system (Better Regulation) as ‘a tool to provide a basis for timely and sound policy decisions’, and adds that ‘it can never replace political decisions’.
Much of the scholarship is clear that such a distinction between regulatory management and political decision-making cannot be sustained. In the case of the EU’s Better Regulation agenda, research has examined how this system strengthens the Commission vis-à-vis both the legislative institutions and its own civil service, and its broader role in supporting the political agenda of the Commission President. However, this research has predominantly focused on the implications of regulatory management for (internal) executive control and legislative decision-making; less attention is paid to the implications for agenda-setting. This article addresses precisely this gap, exploring the role of regulatory management systems in setting public policy agendas.
Combining (European) public administration and public policy insights, it draws theories of non-decision making, to demonstrate the role of regulatory management in mobilising bias. Focusing on the case of the EU’s Better Regulation agenda, the article presents examples of short-term influence and long-term manipulation, in which influential actors create and maintain Better Regulation instruments that enable them to ‘organise out’ some issues whilst ‘organising in’ others. In so doing, the article argues that Better Regulation structures are used to control not only the short-term policy process but also the long term policy agenda, and should therefore be approached as a tool of agenda-setting and bureaucratic politics.