Evidence-Based Policy or Policy-Based Evidence? Quality of Polish ‘Regulatory Impact Assessments’ after ‘Better Regulation’ Reform

Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) – was designed as part of ‘better regulation’ agenda in order to facilitate ‘evidence-based policymaking’ and improve quality of legal framework. To achieve that, RIA needs to provide decision makers with full, unbiased, best-available information on the relevant problems. Thus, it is vital to determine whether RIAs genuinely improved the decision making process or they are just another paper-pushing exercise to cover up old habits of bureaucracy. Using data on 215 bills passed by Polish Parliament during 2014-15, this paper develops unique methodology of RIA’s quality measurement. It compares key conclusions summarized in RIA with alternative (private sector) ex-ante estimates of expected impacts of a given bill. Thus, it allows examination of RIA’s content – currently domain of detailed, small sample studies –using large sample, suitable for statistical analysis – currently domain of ‘compliance tests’ scorecards. Moreover, as the examined sample covered substantial reform of the RIA process, it attempts to uncover whether reform actually shifted political process towards more ‘evidence-based policymaking’. Preliminary results suggest that conclusions reported in RIAs frequently differed from ex-ante private sector assessments. In some cases that would indicate attempts to ‘cover up’ policies assessed by private sector as harmful, or to claim benefits of neutral policies (‘policy based evidence making’). Moreover, in cases of bills assessed by private sector as beneficial, RIAs seemed excessively pessimistic. That suggests that Polish RIA process – while sensitive to budgetary costs – does quite poor job in providing decision makers with likely impacts on the whole economy.