Enhancing the quality of legislation: the Italian experience

IF 1.5 Q1 LAW

Theory and Practice of Legislation Pub Date : 2022-01-02 DOI:10.1080/20508840.2022.2033944

Laura Tafani

{"title":"Enhancing the quality of legislation: the Italian experience","authors":"Laura Tafani","doi":"10.1080/20508840.2022.2033944","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The article is based on the observation of an increasingly poor quality of legislation in Italy which has led to citizens experiencing disaffection towards regulatory instruments and, at the same time, mistrust in the institutions responsible for producing, implementing and enforcing legislation. This situation has certainly become more and more serious during the Covid-19 pandemic with the adoption of regulatory acts containing rules that, on the one hand, severely restrict citizens’ freedoms and, on the other, are improvised, often contradictory and difficult to understand and interpret. Starting from this observation, the article analyses the reasons of this crisis, focusing on the complexity of a multi-level system, with the increasing influence of the legislation coming from the European Union, and on the growing weakness of parliamentary institutions and the consequent increase in government legislative power through ‘decree-laws’. The urgency and ‘occasionality’ that frequently characterises these law-making procedures are not compatible with a legislative design focused on better regulation tools, thereby making the commitment to clarity, consistency and homogeneity of legislative acts completely regressive. In this context, it is essential to increase the transparency of the legislative process and to enable citizens and stakeholders to take part in it, thereby restoring confidence in legislation. It is also necessary to bring together in the legislative rule-making process different professional skills and knowledge: legal, linguistic, economic-financial, statistical, social and even behavioural sciences. This will shape legislative intervention geared towards making regulatory acts as capable as possible of producing a phenomenon of spontaneous compliance with the objectives set by the legislation. Finally, these tools must be accompanied by a shift in political culture and a change in vision shared by all institutional actors, starting from Parliament, in order to recompose the material Constitution of the country on new bases.","PeriodicalId":42455,"journal":{"name":"Theory and Practice of Legislation","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Theory and Practice of Legislation","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20508840.2022.2033944","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article is based on the observation of an increasingly poor quality of legislation in Italy which has led to citizens experiencing disaffection towards regulatory instruments and, at the same time, mistrust in the institutions responsible for producing, implementing and enforcing legislation. This situation has certainly become more and more serious during the Covid-19 pandemic with the adoption of regulatory acts containing rules that, on the one hand, severely restrict citizens’ freedoms and, on the other, are improvised, often contradictory and difficult to understand and interpret. Starting from this observation, the article analyses the reasons of this crisis, focusing on the complexity of a multi-level system, with the increasing influence of the legislation coming from the European Union, and on the growing weakness of parliamentary institutions and the consequent increase in government legislative power through ‘decree-laws’. The urgency and ‘occasionality’ that frequently characterises these law-making procedures are not compatible with a legislative design focused on better regulation tools, thereby making the commitment to clarity, consistency and homogeneity of legislative acts completely regressive. In this context, it is essential to increase the transparency of the legislative process and to enable citizens and stakeholders to take part in it, thereby restoring confidence in legislation. It is also necessary to bring together in the legislative rule-making process different professional skills and knowledge: legal, linguistic, economic-financial, statistical, social and even behavioural sciences. This will shape legislative intervention geared towards making regulatory acts as capable as possible of producing a phenomenon of spontaneous compliance with the objectives set by the legislation. Finally, these tools must be accompanied by a shift in political culture and a change in vision shared by all institutional actors, starting from Parliament, in order to recompose the material Constitution of the country on new bases.

查看原文本刊更多论文

提高立法质量:意大利的经验

摘要本文基于对意大利立法质量越来越差的观察，这导致公民对监管工具产生不满，同时对负责制定、实施和执行立法的机构产生不信任。在新冠肺炎大流行期间，随着监管法案的通过，这种情况肯定变得越来越严重，其中包含的规则一方面严重限制了公民的自由，另一方面又是即兴的，往往相互矛盾，难以理解和解释。从这一观察出发，文章分析了这场危机的原因，重点是多层次体系的复杂性，欧盟立法的影响力越来越大，议会机构的日益薄弱，以及由此产生的政府立法权通过“法令法”的增加。这些立法程序经常具有的紧迫性和“偶然性”与专注于更好的监管工具的立法设计不兼容，从而使对立法行为的清晰性、一致性和同质性的承诺完全倒退。在这方面，必须提高立法程序的透明度，使公民和利益攸关方能够参与其中，从而恢复对立法的信心。还必须在立法规则制定过程中汇集不同的专业技能和知识：法律、语言、经济金融、统计、社会甚至行为科学。这将形成立法干预，旨在使监管行为尽可能产生自发遵守立法目标的现象。最后，这些工具必须伴随着政治文化的转变和从议会开始的所有机构行为者共同愿景的改变，以便在新的基础上重新制定国家的实质性宪法。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Theory and Practice of Legislation LAW-

CiteScore

4.50

自引率

10.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Theory and Practice of Legislation aims to offer an international and interdisciplinary forum for the examination of legislation. The focus of the journal, which succeeds the former title Legisprudence, remains with legislation in its broadest sense. Legislation is seen as both process and product, reflection of theoretical assumptions and a skill. The journal addresses formal legislation, and its alternatives (such as covenants, regulation by non-state actors etc.). The editors welcome articles on systematic (as opposed to historical) issues, including drafting techniques, the introduction of open standards, evidence-based drafting, pre- and post-legislative scrutiny for effectiveness and efficiency, the utility and necessity of codification, IT in legislation, the legitimacy of legislation in view of fundamental principles and rights, law and language, and the link between legislator and judge. Comparative and interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged. But dogmatic descriptions of positive law are outside the scope of the journal. The journal offers a combination of themed issues and general issues. All articles are submitted to double blind review.