Effective Law from a Regulatory and Administrative Law Perspective

The question of effective law has been studied in many fields of research, such as philosophy and sociology of law, law and economics, public policy and behavioural sciences. This article aims to treat it as a genuine administrative law issue which is currently having a significant impact on administrative procedures, especially affecting the way in which rules are adopted and implemented. Furthermore, the article attempts to reconcile conflicting views in existing literature on the meaning of effective law and on which factors lead to effectiveness by proposing an integrated approach: starting from a regulatory perspective it considers both traditional determinants of effectiveness, ie compliance and enforcement, as well as the emerging aspect of outcomes, focused on the idea that a rule can be defined as effective when its desired effects have been achieved and the public interest which justifies the rule has been safeguarded without producing unwanted or disfunctional consequences. Far from being simply a decisional problem for institutions (arising in legislative, regulatory and administrative procedures), effectiveness calls for a “steering administration” and represents a criterion for decision-making, since expected effectiveness can be used in the logic of “whether” and “how” institutions should arrive at decisions.