How do public authorities make laws? Which input is taken into account, and how are different interests weighed against each other? Who has real influence in deciding what a law will look like? It is virtually impossible for outsiders to get an idea of this.
Suzan Stoter at Erasmus University Rotterdam, however, is no real outsider. She used to be a legal expert in the government herself. She currently works as a researcher studying mechanisms behind law-making, but she still has useful contacts within the government. As a result, she knows how to get access to the government’s public legislation files, but also to law-makers’ personal logs. In addition, Stoter is interviewing the law-makers.
“This way I can reconstruct the entire process,” says Stoter. “I can see which interests played a role at which points in time, who provided input, what happened, and which factors proved to be important. The main objective of my research is to identify different patterns in the law-making process.” This approach is quite ground-breaking, as she notes. It is one of the first studies in which an ‘outsider’ is looking at internal processes in various law-making departments.
One of the things that caught Stoter’s attention is the close relationship between politics and law-making. “Law-making is strongly influenced by what is regarded to be politically desirable,” she explains. “In determining their focus, law-makers seek consultation from a wide range of actors, but these are usually only the larger, more influential players in the field. These players are also the ones who have important influence on the question whether or not a law will get through parliament. Law-makers simply don’t have the time to consult with smaller partners as well.”
According to Stoter, two possible options can be derived from this observation. Either the eventual law itself should clearly specify which parties were involved in the preparatory phase so that everybody – including members of parliament – can check on which interest the law is based. “The other possibility is that wider consultation should be institutionalised,” she says, “and input can be sought for instance through the Internet. This has an interesting side effect: it will most likely influence the way we look at public values. After all, it is now mostly the influential lobby and established experts who determine what is important.”
