Statistical relationships between the rule-making activity of state bodies in Russia

Abstract

The article provides the analysis of the relationship between the rule-making activity of Russia’s state authorities: parliament, president, government and federal executive bodies. The analysis of Granger causality, carried out for statistical series of federal authorities rulemaking activity, indicates that the level of laws specification largely determines the level of by-laws specification (government decrees and orders of federal executive bodies), thereby exerting a significant impact on entire Russian regulatory framework volume. Econometric analysis based on a corpus of federal laws and aggregated corpus of regulations shows that the entire rule-making activity of the Russian parliament and federal authorities is explained by overlapping sets of factors. The findings indicate that to consolidate the effect of the “regulatory guillotine” it may be useful to develop mechanisms (procedural rules) that correct the balance between the pace and quality of developing legislative initiatives.