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This paper outlines the use of disclosure in the regulation of the franchise sector in Australia, demonstrating that it does not meet conditions considered necessary for effective informational regulation. First, there is not enough reliable information to gauge the risks in informing the design of regulatory process and the choice of tools; second, the information in the disclosure document is not uniformly reliable, accessible and useable; and, third, a franchisee’s ability to act on the information is limited because the franchise contract is not subject to negotiation and there are limited alternatives in the market. As potential solutions, this paper proposes that increased cooperation among and fuller representation of stakeholders, better information from dispute resolution processes, and registration of disclosure would improve the level of information about the sector generally. To ensure reliable, accessible and useable information, the information that is required to be disclosed should be identified by all stakeholders, with assurance that it is provided in an accessible, useable way. Finally, educational initiatives are needed to enhance franchisees’ ability to act on the information. This paper also briefly surveys some other regulatory tools used in the regulation of franchising, but urges that these tools be selected as part of a democratic and participative regulatory process that accurately represents the interests of all stakeholders.

The main message of this report is that if Kazakhstan wants to take advantage of global integration and diversification opportunities, the government needs to improve its trade policy framework, its management, and its regulations. It is also finalizing accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) while its trade strategy includes a number of free trade agreements to be negotiated. It is an active member of the Central Asia Region Economic Cooperation (CAREC). This report is composed of three policy notes that discuss how to improve the trade policy framework, management, and regulations: note one is on the trade policy framework and recommends joining the WTO on a tariff schedule that is more liberal than Russia’s; note two postulates that to benefit more fully from the WTO membership and future regional or bilateral agreements, the institutional framework for trade policy management will need a clearer strategic vision, better coordination within the government and with private sector, and enhanced human capacity; and note three suggests that for the private sector to benefit from global integration and diversification, the government should ease the burden of regulations that affect trade (non-tariff measures (NTMs)).

This article deals with the globalization of regulation in the area of pharmaceuticals. It shows that the current regime complex in this area, in which the setting of international standards through the international conference on harmonization (ICH) plays the greater role and the WHO a more minor one, makes sense in the context of a historical shift towards a different, standardbased and more administrative way of regulating pharmaceuticals. This shift is clearly observable in the history of the monitoring of pharmaceutical products. The article recounts that history, and in so doing highlights a number of factors that are important to understand how the ICH has come to prevail. Overall, the article demonstrates the value of connecting the analysis of international regimes with policy analysis and political sociology, specifically to gain a more precise understanding of why and how neo-liberalism and market-based policy scripts frequently inform international regimes.

Standardisation of professional work is a major policy concern to ensure quality and efficiency of services and a number of hospitals are now focusing on the use of clinical pathways as an important tool to standardise their work. This study sheds light on the processes set in motion when notions of standardisation meet local practice. In order to gain insight into what clinical pathways mean for professional work in mental health care, the focus of the study was to explore the contexts in which standardisation by “rule production” takes place. Two empirical cases from Norwegian mental health care show how dedicated professionals are in charge of carrying out the standardisation work, strongly influenced by a steering framework of defined governmental policies where employee involvement and responsibility ensured loyalty to the idea. Along with a “package” of ideas, new bodies and techniques, clinical pathways contribute to the institutionalisation of prima facie knowledge in demonstrating that evidence basing is linked to steering and control of employees. Thus, professional autonomy is threatened in an insidious way: through the institutionalisation of evidence-based knowledge as ‘prima facie’ knowledge in combination with professionals who standardise and control their own work. The thesis therefore concludes that the control of professional work has now become a complex and sophisticated process where professional work is “controlled by knowledge”.

Reforming business licenses is part of a suite of products delivered by the World Bank group's investment climate advisory services, under the business operations practice. The approach to reforms highlighted in this handbook fits into the broader policy framework for business licensing reform and simplification. The framework paper provides the context for business licensing practices; establishes the key principles and concepts underpinning licensing; and gives an overview of licensing reform objectives, issues, and processes. It includes an overall introduction to the use (and abuse) of business licenses, and a further elaboration on the way business licensing reforms can be organized. This handbook is part of a suite of knowledge management products dedicated to business licensing. This handbook is written for business regulation practitioners. It aims to provide reformers with detailed information and guidance on how to implement fast-track, top-down licensing and regulatory reform projects. Its structure follows the process underpinning such reforms, taking readers step-by-step through the successive stages of reforms.

This report is an output of the Better Regulation for Growth Program between the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and IC, the Investment Climate Advisory Services of the World Bank Group. The reports identifies a set of minimum requirements for a well-functioning Ria light system that is tailored to the requirements of developing countries. Embracing the overall objectives and relevance of RIA, the paper explores the fundamental set of building blocks and activities required to establish and maintain a RIA light system, taking into account what it is considered as good practice. The paper argues that the following five basic criteria have to be in place for a functioning RIA system, which is referred to as "RIA light": 1) political commitment to establish and operate an effective and self sustaining RIA process; 2) a unit or group of regulatory reformers - preferably based in a central area of government - which oversees, comments and reports on the quality of regulatory proposals before decisions are made about regulation; 3) clear and consistently applied criteria and rules employed to screen regulatory proposals; 4) a transparent regulatory policy development process, which includes consultation with stakeholders; and 5) a capacity building program, involving preparation of guidelines; training of officials preparing RIA and facilitating the required cultural changes, and establishing monitoring, evaluation and reporting systems.

Over the last few years the Standard Cost Model (SCM) has become the regulatory reform tool of choice in European Union (EU) and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries for identifying and reducing regulatory compliance costs. SCM provides a relatively simple methodology to measure and communicate businesses' paperwork obligations arising from compliance with governments' regulations. More recently the SCM has also been adapted and applied in a number of developing countries, including Kenya, Zambia, Vietnam, Burkina Faso, and Rwanda. It is still too early days to conclude much on the SCM model's general applicability in developing countries. However as part of a broader reform package the SCM has proven capable of strengthening momentum by providing new insights into regulatory obligations, by quantifying the costs and time associated with information obligations both at aggregate and at a rule-specific level. It has hence proven useful both as a tool to target specific interventions and to monitor the impact of reform. This document provides a number of lessons from the first few years of using SCM in regulatory reforms, with a focus on business licensing, in developing countries. These lessons are not intended to provide a final account on how SCM is to be carried out in developing countries. Along with its dissemination across the globe, SCM has experienced a constant development. This document aims to point out a number of important issues that have been observed and tested during the initial measurements in World Bank client countries to prevent future practitioners from the need to re-invent the wheel.

In this first working paper the authors present and compare systems of indicators of regulatory quality, analyzing their conceptual underpinnings, technical properties, and usage by governments, stakeholders and academics. After having discussed the datasets and the types of data available, they authors consider a set of critical aspects related to the design, data gathering and utilization of indicators, providing suggestions for improvement. The authors' major findings and proposals are the following: systems of indicators have been developed ad hoc, by organizations pursuing different objectives over time and across the world. Conceptual underpinnings, modalities of data-gathering, and types of usage reflect different operationalizations of regulatory quality. In the construction of regulatory indicator datasets, the first essential step is to gauge the quality of data, in order to construct insightful and meaningful measurements. Especially in developing countries, the consideration of the quality of data is preliminary to any technical and statistical discussion on how to treat data. Western governments tend to use single measures with the specific purpose of improving methods of regulatory analysis (through studies that analyze the conduct of regulators). The authors have not found systematic attempts to measure how regulatory reform is changing the attitudes towards regulation of regulators and policy officers who develop legislation. Aggregation should reflect basic technical rules, but more importantly, it should be performed in a way that conveys messages to those who are supposed to make use of the composite measures. To illustrate, if the goals of regulatory reform are institutionalization, economic growth, accountability, interaction with the stakeholders and communication, aggregation should be performed along these four dimensions, not in relation to abstract technical properties.

This survey paper examines various information insufficiencies in biodiversity conservation and their impact of regulatory choices. We surveyed the literature in the field and identified four major types of informational insufficiencies in making efficient biodiversity conservation decisions: 1) biological uncertainty 2) natural uncertainty 3) individual information, and 4) monitoring problem. The consequences of these four types of information insufficiencies on the choice of regulatory tools are explored. We discuss in this context three types of regulatory tools: land takings, environmental fees/charges, and contracts. The efficiency of each type of regulatory tools is shown dependent on the specific informational constraints that the regulatory faces.