Getting to grips with quality in the diffusion of regulatory impact assessment in Europe

'Quality' features in all initiatives for better regulation launched by the OECD and the European Union. Yet policy-makers who have tried to import regulatory impact assessment (RIA) from its original Anglo-Saxon context to other European contexts have found it difficult to scratch below the surface of new public management rhetoric and implement successful RIA programmes. One reason for that is that the notions of quality that circulate in the current debate are insensitive to context. This article shows that quality is intrinsically linked to context, and why assessing context will improve the chances of getting significant results in RIA.