Examining Business Reform Committees : Findings from a New Global Dataset

Reform committees (also known as reform councils) are institutional mechanisms or structurestasked with holding policy discussions pertaining to (and making specific recommendations on) regulatory issues, tomonitor improvement efforts and ensure regulatory coherence between agencies while enhancing regulatory quality. Thispaper presents novel granular data on business reform committees for 160 economies collected over 2020–22. Thepaper presents 35 questions and 238 variables grouped into three pillars: (i) mandate and scope, (ii) organizationalstructure and operational framework, and (iii) stakeholder engagement and communication. The dataset is unique in thatit covers a large number of developing economies and presents detailed insights into the goals, structures, andcomponents of reform committees while contributing to debates on strategies for promoting better regulations.Reform committees are heterogeneous structures, prevalent in lower-middle-income economies, followed byupper-middle-income economies. Most economies with a functioning reform committee state that their mandate is toimprove competitiveness globally by improving the business regulatory/legislative framework, going beyond improvementsof the business environment for domestic companies. In more than 50 percent of the economies the priorities are set atthe ministry level, most commonly the Ministry of Finance or equivalent, followed by the Prime Minister’s office.However, reporting lines can be very different—across a quarter of the economies, the chair of the reform committeereports to the President or the head of state, while in close to one-fifth the chair reports to the Prime Minister.In most economies, public sector representatives are members of both the steering board and the working groups. Thesefindings provide new insights into the scope, mandate, and functioning of business reform committees at differentincome levels and across different regions; they also provide a robust foundation on which subsequent researchefforts can build.