The Higher School of Economics launched the project “Regulation 3.0”
The project “Regulation 3.0” was initiated by the Institute for Public Administration and Governance of the Higher School of Economics. The project’s name reflects the evolution that developed countries have gone through during the last 35 years in terms of regulatory policy: from the idea of less regulation to better regulation and, finally, to “smart regulation”, or “Regulation 3.0”. The goal of “smart regulation” is to foster the development of the economy and, ultimately, boost well-being of citizens. In this sense, reasonable regulatory policy is no less important than tax and monetary policy of the state.
Certain steps were taken to introduce elements of such policy in Russia in the early 2000s. This developments took place within the framework of administrative reform, and then during introduction of regulatory impact assessment and attempts to improve Russia's position in the Doing Business ranking. A number of measures were proposed by the HSE experts when updating the “Strategy 2020”, and when preparing proposals for the Development Strategy of the Russian Federation for 2018-2024, developed by the Center for Strategic research.
But despite all these efforts, the regulatory environment in Russia has rather deteriorated. Huge number of adopted regulations is growing. At the same time, such regulations do not rely on empirical evidence and cause negative side effects for business and citizens. Often the government having realized the mistake made makes unsuccessful attempts to change the situation. This leads to a constant and unpredictable change in the rules of the game.
As a result, in Regulatory Quality Ranking (this is one of the six components of the World Governance Indicators, which are annually calculated by the World Bank) Russia fell to 129th place in the end of 2015, which means returning to the situation of the early 2000s.
“A new understanding of regulatory policy is needed to change the situation, – says Daniel Tsygankov, the head of the project “Regulation 3.0” – It should be integrated, ensure high-quality lawmaking and be based on relevant socio-economic research and modern legal techniques. The priority tasks are deregulation in breakthrough sectors, stabilizing regulatory burden in other areas and developing measures that contribute to sustainable economic growth”.
These issues will become key issues within the framework of the project “Regulation 3.0”. On the one hand, it is an information and analytical resource, which contains materials from past years (in particular, the results of projects, trainings, expert discussions) and a library of best practices (including research papers, monitoring and regulatory policy guidelines). On the other hand, “Regulation 3.0” was meant to be a prototype of a platform for the exchange of opinions on the improvement of regulatory policy in Russia. Representatives of government authorities, civil society, businessmen, experts and journalists are invited to participate in such discussions.