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This article provides some reflective thoughts on current research on regulatory impact assessment (RIA) in Europe. The narrative draws on the author's fieldwork diaries. It starts from the methodological problems of identifying and analysing regulatory impact assessment in the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. This leads to more fundamental theoretical questions about research design, the relationship between supply and demand of research and, ultimately, the aims of academic research in this area. The conclusions draw lessons for the emerging research agenda on better regulation. The main problem is not whether 'real' RIAs exist or not, since this would be equivalent to trying to fit the amoeba-like RIA 'substance' into our abstract 'forms'. The interesting problems are: what are the functions of different approaches to assessment, how are they used and how can they improve governance? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the theoretical development of evaluation research from the perspective of public-policy analysis. The discontinuity between the first stage of evaluation research and its more recent stage is assessed by arguing that the main problems in early evaluation research were related to an inadequate conceptualization of the evaluator's role, whilst the recent debate in evaluation research correctly acknowledges the endogeneity of the evaluator to the policy process. Consequently, it seems possible to elaborate upon this by investigating the strategies available to the evaluator as actor. In this respect the literature on the cognitive aspects of politics provides useful hints. Following a discussion of this literature, the authors argue that the choice of evaluation strategies is contingent upon the characteristics of the policy process. Two dimensions of the policy process (i.e. the degree of social conflict and the degree of innovation) are employed in order to present a typology of strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]