Regulatory Quality & Better Regulation

594 BC · about 2,620 years ago

Solon rewrote Athens's laws and had them publicly displayed

Appointed to resolve a crisis over debt and unequal justice, Solon replaced Draco's harsh code with new laws inscribed on rotating wooden tablets so citizens could see and know the rules that governed them.

653 · about 1,370 years ago

The Tang Code set the model for law across East Asia

The comprehensive Chinese legal code, covering criminal law, administration and family matters in systematic detail, was studied and adapted by Japan, Korea and Vietnam, shaping East Asian legal systems for centuries afterward.

around 1789 · 237 years ago

Jeremy Bentham argued for systematic codification of law

The philosopher campaigned against the accumulated complexity of English common law and called for clear, comprehensive legal codes designed deliberately rather than built up case by case, influencing codification movements across the following century.

1804 · 222 years ago

France enacted the Napoleonic Code

The civil code replaced a patchwork of feudal, regional and customary laws with a single, clearly organised body of law written in accessible language, and was subsequently adopted or adapted by dozens of countries.

1869 · 157 years ago

The United Kingdom created the Office of Parliamentary Counsel

Bringing bill drafting together in a specialist office within government professionalised what had previously been an inconsistent, ad hoc process, and the model of a dedicated legislative drafting office was later adopted across the Commonwealth.

1946 · 80 years ago

The United States passed the Administrative Procedure Act

The law required federal agencies to give public notice of proposed rules and consider comments before adopting them, and made agency decisions reviewable in court, becoming a model for administrative law elsewhere.

1965 · 61 years ago

The United Kingdom established the Law Commission

The independent body was given a standing mandate to review the law and recommend reform, simplification and codification, providing a permanent institutional mechanism for improving legislative quality outside the pressures of day-to-day politics.

1981 · 45 years ago

The United States required cost-benefit analysis of major federal regulations

Executive Order 12291 directed agencies to weigh the costs and benefits of significant new rules before adopting them, establishing regulatory impact assessment as a standard practice later copied by governments worldwide.

1995 · 31 years ago

The OECD adopted a recommendation on improving the quality of government regulation

The recommendation set out principles such as impact assessment, public consultation and periodic review that member governments were encouraged to apply before adopting new rules, shaping regulatory reform programmes across dozens of countries.

1997 · 29 years ago

UK government established the advisory Better Regulation Task Force

The creation of the Better Regulation Task Force marked the start of "better regulation" as a sustained theme of British government action. The task force identified five principles used as the basic tests of whether a regulation is fit for purpose, and estimated the total cost of regulation to the UK economy at 10–12% of GDP, or £100 billion. It gave the UK an institutional advisory mechanism for scrutinising regulatory burdens.

2003 · 23 years ago

The European Union signed the Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Law-Making

The agreement between the Commission, Parliament and Council committed the institutions to clearer drafting, impact assessment and simplification of EU legislation, and was later strengthened by a renewed agreement in 2016.

2006 · 20 years ago

UK Parliament passed the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006

The Act placed statutory principles of good regulation on the books, based on the work of the Better Regulation Task Force. It converted advisory tests of regulatory quality into a legal framework binding on regulators.

2025 · last year

India's government pursued a second wave of decriminalising minor business offences

Building on the 2023 Jan Vishwas Act, further proposals sought to convert more low-level regulatory offences from criminal penalties to civil fines, aiming to reduce the compliance risk that smaller firms said discouraged formalisation.

• Industry bodies pressed for faster state-level adoption

2025 · last year

The United Kingdom set up a Regulatory Innovation Office

The unit was tasked with helping regulators keep pace with fast-moving fields such as artificial intelligence, engineering biology and autonomous vehicles, after ministers argued that slow or fragmented approval processes were holding back innovation.

2025 · last year

The European Commission proposed a digital omnibus to simplify overlapping tech rules

The plan aimed to streamline how the AI Act, data protection law and other digital rules interacted, after businesses and some member states argued that overlapping obligations created uncertainty about which rules applied and when.

December 2024 · last year

Brazil's Senate approved a bill setting rules for artificial intelligence

The legislation set out a risk-based framework for AI systems and rights for people affected by automated decisions, similar in structure to the EU's approach, and moved to the Chamber of Deputies for further debate.

• Technology companies lobbied to soften some provisions

August 2024 · 2 years ago

China's State Council introduced Fair Competition Review Regulations

The rules required government bodies to assess whether new policies and local rules would distort competition before adopting them, aimed at curbing the patchwork of local protectionist measures that had fragmented China's domestic market.

July 2024 · 2 years ago

Kenya's Court of Appeal ruled the 2023 Finance Act unconstitutional over inadequate public participation

Judges found that parliament had not properly consulted the public before passing the tax law, upholding a lower court finding and forcing the government to rely on the previous year's tax rules while it appealed to the Supreme Court.

• The ruling cost the government billions in expected revenue

2024–2025 · last year

The International Organization for Standardization saw growing reference to its AI management standard by regulators

ISO/IEC 42001, a management-system standard for organisations building or using AI, was increasingly cited by companies and some regulators as a practical benchmark for demonstrating responsible governance ahead of binding rules taking full effect.

2024–2025 · last year

African Union member states continued ratifying the AfCFTA's digital trade and investment protocols

Domesticating the protocols into national law progressed unevenly across the continent, reflecting the wider challenge of aligning dozens of separate regulatory systems into the single market the free trade area is meant to create.

2024–2025 · last year

Egypt continued a regulatory guillotine programme reviewing outdated business rules

The initiative, supported by international development partners, worked through thousands of licences, permits and procedures inherited from previous decades, aiming to cut those that no longer served a clear purpose or duplicated other requirements.

2024–2025 · last year

South Korea continued expanding its regulatory sandbox programme

New rounds of temporary exemptions let fintech, healthtech and mobility firms trial products otherwise blocked by existing rules, part of a longer-running effort to let regulation catch up with technology already in use.

January 2008 · 18 years ago

Better Regulation Commission closed and was replaced by the Better Regulation Executive

The commission was wound up in January 2008 after two years of operation. Its functions passed to the Better Regulation Executive, shifting regulatory-quality oversight from an independent advisory body to an executive arm of government.

January 2006 · 20 years ago

UK government replaced the task force with the permanent Better Regulation Commission

On 1 January 2006 the advisory Better Regulation Task Force was superseded by the Better Regulation Commission, a non-departmental public body independent of any department but overseen by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Its remit was to advise government on reducing unnecessary regulatory and administrative burdens and to ensure regulation was proportionate, accountable, consistent, transparent and targeted. The government stated it was committed to implementing the commission's recommendations.