Tom Gash Photo Credit: Institute for Government

Governments are increasingly recognising that they cannot regulate themselves out of the problems they currently face – and that they must learn to look outwards to improve their effectiveness, writes Tom Gash.

All countries face their own unique challenges but advanced democracies also have much in common: the global economic downturn, aging populations, increasingly expensive health and pension spending, and citizens who remain as hard to please as ever.

At an event last week in Bavaria, attended by representatives of Bavaria’s governing party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) and their guests, it also became clear that there is a growing consensus that governments face another common problem. They have relied for too long on traditional legislation and regulation to drive change. The consensus was that simply prescribing in law what citizens and companies can and can’t do will not solve the complex problems governments are facing, that governments cannot legislate their way to improved citizen health, wealth and wellbeing.

Oliver Letwin, Minister for Government Policy, and Dr Johannes Ludewig, Chair of the German semi-independent National Regulatory Control Council (NKR) which ensures the regulatory impact of Federal legislation is assessed and published, both argued that there was in fact both too much legislation and much of it was failing to achieve its intended effects. Letwin shared the experience of the UK’s ‘red tape challenge’ – now known as the ‘Cutting Red Tape’ programme, run by the Cabinet Office. Ludewig explained the methods of his NKR – while also pointing out that there were limits to what could be achieved by the Federal Government alone, estimating that 50% of the legislative burden on German companies was imposed from Brussels.

The attempts of Britain, Germany and indeed Netherlands – the country seen by most experts as enjoying the most robust arrangements for minimising the regulatory burden – to reduce regulatory sprawl and improve the quality of legislative decisions provide useful lessons. But there was as much or more excitement about the potential to use broader government tools to help tackle social issues and improve outcomes for citizens. I picked out a number of developments that are reasonably well known in the UK but from which both UK and international policymakers and practitioners can learn to improve government effectiveness.

Christian Bason, former head of Mindlab, an innovation centre within the Danish government, presented his work examining the processes that allow governments to understand what citizens want and need – and to pick which of the above solutions, if any, are appropriate in a specific case.

His insights were hugely valuable, though he was too polite to point out the elephant in the room. The CSU’s ‘Think In’, as this annual multi-day event is known, is a commendable tradition – one that allows debate and new thinking. On this occasion, Angela Merkel spoke to delegates in an attempt to manage growing tensions between her Christian Democrats and the CSU over Germany’s response to the ‘refugee crisis’. But the event remains a traditional one, with speakers presenting and limited time for discussion. The design approaches Bason rightly advocates would have led to a very different event, with CSU parliamentarians working on and debating real problems, playing with new concepts in real-time and co-producing solutions with citizens, civil servants and frontline workers.

All governments are clearly some way from achieving perfection – both in terms of their use of regulation and in harnessing the full power of its alternatives. However, it is increasingly clear that there is a global conversation on effective government, one in which it is worth taking an active part.

Tom Gash is a senior fellow at the Institute for Government think tank. He is also an independent adviser to governments in the UK and internationally. You can follow him on Twitter @Tom_Gash

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