The growth of policies, rules, and regulations: A review of the literature and research agenda

Abstract

This article reviews the vibrant literature on policy growth in political science and adjacent disciplines, thus offering a conceptual framework for situating past and future research efforts and facilitating the engagement between them. The first part presents important concepts that capture policy growth or aspects of it (rule growth, policy layering, policy mixes, policy accumulation, policyscapes, the policy state) and dominant measurement approaches. The second part provides an overview of the main drivers of policy growth in advanced democracies, discussing the role of societal demands, political competition, institutional fragmentation, and bureaucratic processes. The third part outlines the multi‐faceted and far‐reaching consequences of policy growth for policy, politics, and the polity. While policy growth is often portrayed as the price to pay for upholding the democratic capitalist order in constantly modernizing and diversifying societies, the existing research also points to the negative consequences emanating from increased state activity. Policy growth not only threatens to overburden bureaucracies and thereby undermine policy effectiveness; it may also transform the institutional structure of the democratic state and make its politics more complicated and conflictual.

Bureaucratic overburdening in advanced democracies

“…This does not mean that the phenomena of policy and rule growth have been neglected in the literature. There are several studies that shed light on the drivers of policy growth (Adam et al, 2019; Hinterleitner et al, 2023; Jakobsen & Mortensen, 2015; Kaufmann & van Witteloostuijn, 2018), analyzing the role of party ideology, political institutions, endogenous growth dynamics, and external shocks. However, despite these developments, we still lack theoretical and empirical accounts that examine the relationship between policy growth and bureaucratic capacities.…”

Autocracies and policy accumulation: the case of Singapore

“…Policy accumulation and its implications may thus constitute an important but so far “neglected aspect of the new system competition between democracies and autocracies” (Hinterleitner et al. 2023, 14).…”

“…In consequence, democratic governments constantly tend to produce more policies than they eliminate – regardless of the exact policy sector in question (Hinterleitner et al. 2023).…”

“…Policies, in turn, create expectations and dependencies and thus are difficult to terminate or dismantle once they have been established. In consequence, democratic governments constantly tend to produce more policies than they eliminateregardless of the exact policy sector in question (Hinterleitner et al 2023).…”

Policy growth, implementation capacities, and the effect on policy performance

“…The case of the EA points to a general phenomenon that characterizes governance in modern democracies. Governments have constantly added new policies to existing policy stocks to confront societal, economic and ecological challenges (Hinterleitner et al, 2023). However, more policies and programs, regardless of how ambitious they are, are at best a necessary but insufficient condition for policies to reach their goals.…”