The OECD Good Regulatory Practices Toolbox and Brazil’s Reform Through Transnational Lenses

Brazil has embraced institutional and legal reforms towards “good regulatory practices” (GRP) built on the OECD’s “better regulation” agenda. New laws and decrees made Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) mandatory in all public administration’s rulemaking, as well as stock reviews and “ex-post” evaluations. Following such steps, a regulatory oversight body is under scrutiny by policymakers. This paper assesses national regulatory reforms through international and transnational lenses. It primarily argues that nation-states make policy immersed in a dense web of networks, highlighting that it is not possible to understand domestic legal changes without assessing transnational legal processes. It further argues the importance of the OECD as a purveyor of ideas and a critical node in transnational regulatory governance. First, it unpacks the concept of GRP codified into the OECD recommendations and its construction through data collection, checklists, and toolkits, challenging its coherence and functions as a golden standard policy for “better regulation.” Secondly, it unveils how these techniques are disseminated worldwide through mechanisms of soft governance, such as peer review, persuasion, surveillance, comparison, and ranking. Then, it turns to the case of Brazil, assessing how these tools and technical knowledge have been transmitted to this specific institutional context. The case of Brazil sheds light on the effectiveness of policy and legal transfers through transnational processes involving peer pressure, social learning, the role of indicators, and cultural change.