Legislation is the most important means for decision-makers to make social changes. High-quality law drafting and regulatory impact assessment have an all-important role in ensuring that legislation is effective in achieving its objectives. To ensure high-quality legislation, it is necessary to examine which factors contribute to high-quality preparation of laws. By this far, the quality of law drafting has been studied both qualitatively and quantitatively, as well as theoretically. Previous empirical research has often focused on examining how frequently or thoroughly certain quality criteria, such as regulatory alternatives or the assessment of costs and benefits, have been presented in law drafting documents. Based on the previous research, it can be concluded that there is room for improvement of the quality of law drafting in various parts of the globe.
A typical feature of previous research is that it has been carried out with relatively small data sets. Furthermore, there is currently little explanatory research on the factors that explain the level of law drafting quality. A research group at the UEF Law School has collected an extensive dataset on Finnish government bills (the main law drafting and impact assessment document in Finland) from several parliamentary years. The dataset includes multiple explained (law drafting quality) and explanatory variables. The data will be analyzed using quantitative methods (regression techniques) and the aim is to draw generalizable conclusions about how various factors (such as ministry, social/political significance, constitutional issues, pre-legislative scrutiny, EU-background, governmental cycle, etc.) are associated with the quality of legislative drafting. The purpose of the conference presentation is to present a research plan for utilizing the data in different studies.
