Laws as blades: A conceptual framework of legislative design

Legislation is all around us. When people apply for parental allowances, when they smoke a cigarette in public spaces, or when they buy meat in a grocery store—people are invariably bound by the power of the law. Legislation is therefore the primary vehicle through which governments translate preferences into rules, yet not all laws are designed in the same way. Beyond the question of how much policy output governments produce (Adam et al., 2019) lies the question of how laws are crafted; whether they are broad and multifunctional or narrowly focused and precise. We address this gap by answering the research question of how we can conceptualize and compare the policy substance contained in democratic legislation in a way that allows the tracking and comparison of policy substance across policy domains, institutional settings, and time. To this end, we deliver a new typology of legislative design and demonstrate its value by applying it qualitatively to a small sample of environmental and financial policies in the European Union (EU).

This is an important endeavor for several reasons. First, legislative design shapes policy implementation, influencing bureaucratic behavior, citizen compliance, and governments’ capacity to adapt to complex challenges (see, e.g., Fernández-i-Marín et al., 2021; Howlett & Mukherjee, 2020). Consequently, understanding how democracies design legislation carries considerable normative and analytical relevance.

Second, while research has examined determinants of legislative productivity (e.g., Bergman et al., 2024), comparatively little attention has been paid to the architecture of laws themselves (see Fernández-i-Marín et al., 2021 for an important exception). Analyses of legislation are often narrowly focused in their temporal, geographical, or substantive context and, therefore commonly use conceptual approaches tailored to specific research questions. For example, scholars of social policy often focus on matters of generosity and (re-)distribution (e.g., Scruggs & Ramalho Tafoya, 2022), scholars of environmental policy often study the design of regulatory instrument mixes (e.g., Steinebach, 2022), and scholars of tax policy largely focus on the existence of loopholes, derogations, and complexity (e.g., Hoppe et al., 2023). Similarly, most theories of the policy process conceive of the policy subsystem as the core venue in which legislation is formulated, negotiated, and evaluated. Though this focus on the subsystem level has led to major breakthroughs in how we understand and explain policy design and change (Baumgartner & Jones, 2009), the lack of cross-fertilization across these ‘subsystemic silos’ implies a failure to understand broader dynamics that govern the design of democratic legislation more generally.

Third, design choices have important implications for how legislation evolves. For example, the structure, clarity, and flexibility of a law might help determine its long-term trajectory. Laws with precise definitions and clearly delineated responsibilities may be more resistant to frequent amendments or judicial reinterpretation, providing stability and predictability in governance. Broad but imprecise laws may be produced by policymaking processes engaging multiple stakeholders who want more breadth, carving out greater discretion for bureaucratic groups; we might also expect that these laws are particularly resistant to change. Alternatively, imprecise laws may allow greater adaptability in response to changing circumstances, while also being more vulnerable to contested implementation, legal challenges, and political disputes. Systematically investigating legislative design using our framework can therefore help explain why some legislation endures and other laws are revised or overturned. In doing so, we position legislative design as a consequence of institutional arrangements, legal settings, and political pressures.

Addressing these challenges requires a conceptual approach that identifies the design of democratic legislation at a more abstract level than in the extant literature. We therefore conceptualize legislative design along two core dimensions: versatility, the breadth of subjects, objects, and instruments a law encompasses; and precision, the degree to which its provisions contain dilution, derogation, and delegation. These dimensions capture trade-offs in lawmaking; whereas versatile laws promote integration and coordination across policy issues at the risk of complexity, precise laws provide clarity and predictability at the cost of flexibility. We illustrate this typology using a metaphor of blades as ideal types of legislative design. Blades differ in shape, size, and sharpness—qualities that determine both their versatility in performing general or specialized tasks, and their precision in making delicate or crude cuts. Like blades designed for different cutting tasks, laws vary from versatile and precise Swiss army knives, precise but hardly versatile scalpels, versatile but imprecise machetes, to low-versatility and imprecise scythes. Our framework therefore offers a broadly applicable vocabulary to analyze the scope and specificity of legislation; allowing researchers to compare legislative design from individual legal provisions, to the entire law, to the broader policy domain, up to the political system. This paper therefore contributes to the development of a general theory of legislative design by offering a tool that bridges (sub-)disciplinary boundaries.

Legislative design reflects both the substance and the form of the law (Piris, 2005). Such design is often operationalized along a continuum of “quality”; the degree of certainty in the law’s text, and conformity with principles of good legislation (see e.g., Osnabrügge & Vannoni, 2025). Legislative design is an important step in the drafting procedure, “structuring the legislative text in a manner that facilitates understanding, and consequently invites implementation” (Xanthaki, 2013, p. 59), and is therefore understood as a political process in which the structuring of text not only determines how laws are interpreted by courts, administrators, and stakeholders, but also affecting compliance and implementation.

In political science, legislative design reflects the incentives of actors engaged in the legislative process. Studies consider, for example, conditions under which legislators delegate design authority to the bureaucracy given personal incentives (Epstein & O’Halloran, 1999), or the institutional setting within which they operate (Huber & Shipan, 2011). Here, legislative design is a core element of the policymaking process that reflects the institutional rules and power dynamics (e.g., between branches, between or within political parties). A parallel debate in public administration scholarship views legislative design as a determinant of policy success. Ambiguity can create space for bureaucratic expertise and adaptation (Fernández-i-Marín et al., 2021) but can also produce uncertainty or inconsistent application (Adam et al., 2021). Design choices therefore influence the actions of street-level bureaucrats, courts, and target populations.

Beyond institutional incentives, legislative design is an intentional activity that connects instruments to policy goals under conditions of complexity (Howlett, 2014). Design choices shape the internal coherence of laws and determine whether they enable or constrain the adaptability of governance in dynamic policy environments (del Rio & Howlett, 2013). Yet, scholarly attention to the topic of policy design has been declining since the mid-1980s, prompting calls for renewal (Howlett & Lejano, 2013) given the fundamental issues which remain unknown (Capano & Howlett, 2020).¹

Accordingly, different branches of scholarship share an interest in the topic of legislative design but remain oddly disconnected. Policy scholars broadly view legislation as a vehicle for the communication of policy goals, instruments, and targets (e.g., Fernández-i-Marín et al., 2021; Howlett, 2023), that might collectively be thought of as relating to a law’s versatility; the diversity of objects, subjects, and instruments. In contrast, legal scholars are often more interested in matters of legislative drafting (Hart, 2016), ambiguity and vagueness (e.g., Endicott, 2011), or the origins and consequences of legal complexity (e.g., Ruhl & Katz, 2015), elements that might relate to a law’s precision; the clarity and accuracy with which the text is written. Accordingly, though both disciplines analyze legislation as their primary data source, they view this legislation through distinct conceptual lenses. Using the strengths of both perspectives, we develop a comprehensive conceptual approach to systematically measure, and compare legislative designs across laws, policy domains, political systems, and time.²

We start from the premise that legislative design is a latent characteristic of a law’s text that takes diverse shapes and forms, depending on their versatility and precision. Unlike other aspects of a law—like complexity, origin, or procedural background—versatility and precision directly capture the actual policy substance contained in the legislation. By focusing on these dimensions, we do not suggest that other aspects of a law are unimportant for its long-term survival or effectiveness. Rather, we argue that those aspects are not directly related to its policy substance. Additionally, though versatility and precision are implicitly identified in much of the previous literature as the relevant dimensions of a law’s design, they have never been analyzed explicitly and jointly under a common conceptual umbrella. Analytically, these dimensions are abstract enough to describe the substance of any law regardless of its precise policy domain, the institutional context in which it was formulated, and the time period in which it was crafted. They are also concrete enough to enable systematic measurement and comparison. Conceptualizing legislative design along these dimensions enables analysis of how designs vary across policy domains, how they distinguish themselves across political systems, and how they evolve over time.

To distill ideal types of legislative design from the previous discussion, we use the metaphor of legislative design choices as analogous to different types of blades. Laws and blades are both tools designed to achieve a defined purpose that can be categorized according to their versatility and precision. Blades vary in shape, size, and sharpness; characteristics that determine whether they perform specialized or general tasks, and whether those cutting tasks are delicate or crude. Legislation likewise differs in breadth and specificity. Some laws are adaptable and multifunctional, whereas others are narrowly targeted. As a toolmaker selects the right blade for the job, policymakers design legislation to fit the policy challenge.

In combination, versatility and precision provide a two-dimensional space with four ideal types of legislative design (Table 2). Swiss army knife designs are versatile and precise. These laws have a variety of objects, subjects, and instruments, and their provisions are clear and unambiguous. Normatively, these laws seem particularly desirable, given their breadth and clarity. Yet, these properties may also make them particularly hard to agree upon. Scalpel designs are defined by narrow scope and high precision. Laws with these designs are not versatile, targeting a limited set of objects, subjects, and instruments, while their provisions are clearly articulated, leaving little room for interpretation. These designs are hence narrowly intentioned and specific, offering control and clarity but less adaptable to diverse problems.

Large, versatile blades like a machete can cut through many different types of obstacles, but lack the precision for intricate work. In the realm of legislation, machete designs therefore have a broad scope, but are imprecise. These laws connect diverse objects, address a broad variety of subjects, and employ various policy instruments. Yet, these laws are formulated with uncertainty, with imprecise language, derogations, and broad delegation leaving much to interpretation. Finally, scythe designs feature a narrow set of objects, subjects, and instruments that are addressed in an imprecise manner. These designs are targeted to solve a singular problem, but do so in a way that is hard to control.

Both blades and legislative designs therefore involve trade-offs between power and control, and between breadth and specificity of usage. The blade metaphor also conveys how legislation functions in practice as an instrument of governance that shapes the political order. Blades can be designed for long-term or temporary use, much as laws can be durable frameworks or ad hoc emergency measures. Legislative design determines whether laws achieve their intended effect precisely or leave room for interpretation and unintended consequences. Our goal of conceptualizing legislative design as blades is to emphasize that legislation is capable of broad changes or fine adjustments depending on its versatility and precision. One advantage of this novel framework is that, due to its simple and abstract nature, it does not require us to focus on a particular policy type (e.g., regulative or distributive policies) or conflict dimension (e.g., restrictiveness or generosity) to distinguish the policy substance of democratic laws conceptually. Our framework therefore allows for the comparison of legislative design across different hierarchical levels—law, domain, system—for practically any policy in a legislative text.

We demonstrate the use and validity of our framework by applying it qualitatively. Though large-N empirical application and analyses are our long-term goal, we believe that a careful examination of the underlying conceptual framework should precede the extension to a larger universe of democratic laws. Our qualitative application provides a nuanced understanding of the components that define legislative designs and their interaction in real-world legislation. The goal is therefore to demonstrate the variance of legislative designs and show how the six indicators jointly define the character of a law.

As shown in Fig. 1, versatility and precision are continua along which legislative designs vary. Consequently, the designs described in the previous section represent ideal types that we should not necessarily expect to often empirically observe in their ‘pure’ form, with most laws combining elements of different designs. Yet, to illustrate the utility of our framework, we present case studies of legislative designs that come close to these ideal types.⁶ Though the framework allows for the study of any policy domain in any political system, its potential can best be assessed if we narrow our focus to two policy domains and hold the institutional setting constant. Specifically, we focus this initial application on eight laws across two policy domains in a single institutional setting: environmental and macroprudential financial legislation in the political system of the EU.⁷ The motivation behind the selection of environmental and macroprudential financial laws is to explore the plausibility of our framework in two salient but distinct policy domains. We justify our focus on these domains in the supplementary material.

We apply our framework to laws from the EU, a good case due to its complex legislative environment (Hix & Høyland, 2022). As a supranational entity, the EU must reconcile diverse national interests, traditions, and political cultures, leading us to expect variation in the versatility and precision of legislative designs. The EU’s institutional design inherently demands negotiation and compromise. Because EU legislation requires consensus among national governments and passes both the European Parliament and Council, laws are likely to vary in their precision. These features allow us to observe dilution, derogation, and delegation as tools potentially used by legislators to manage disagreement, align interests, and ensure successful adoption.

We introduce a novel conceptual approach to capture the substance of democratic legislation that will allow for the comparison of legislative designs across policy subsystems, institutional settings, and time. Our approach is based on the idea that legislative design is a combination of a law’s versatility and its precision. Versatility varies in the law’s diversity of objects, subjects, and instruments; precision is affected by the vagueness of its language, the way it formulates derogations, and the extent to which it delegates rule-making authority. These dimensions yield four different ideal types of democratic laws: the Swiss army knife (high versatility, high precision), the scalpel (low, high), the machete (high, low), and the scythe (low, low). To illustrate the usefulness of this approach, we show how legislative design varies within two policy domains, applying our framework to four environmental and macroprudential laws in the EU. Our qualitative application shows that legislative design is not determined by functional pressure or necessity dictated by the broader policy domain, suggesting that legislative design is a political choice.

A unified framework of legislative design is long overdue. For too long, distinct subfields have approached the subject without a common conceptual language, limiting the scope for advancing theory and empirical interdisciplinary collaboration. Prioritizing universality—with few, if any, laws falling outside its scope—our framework will hopefully benefit scholars of public policy, street-level bureaucracy, law, sociology, economics, and even philosophy. The practical nature of our approach, applicable to any written law that emerges from the legislative process, offers benefits for comparativists both within and beyond the discipline of political science; being concrete enough to allow for systematic measurement, yet abstract enough to allow for interdisciplinary exchange.

Leveraging recent developments in computational social science, natural language processing, and large language models offers one avenue to measure legislative designs across laws, political systems, and time. The logical next step will be to enhance the qualitative approach pursued here with a large-N analysis of legislative designs. Doing so not only requires the collection, pre-processing, and coding of vast amounts of textual data, but also the development of a theoretically and empirically informed data aggregation strategy. Doing so will enable the systematic comparative analysis of democratic legislation from the level of the individual legal provision, to the broader policy domain, to the political system as a whole. Though initial attempts at measuring and analyzing individual components of legislative designs with methods of computational text analysis have been undertaken (e.g., Anastasopoulos & Bertelli, 2020; Vannoni et al., 2021), what is needed is a comprehensive attempt to study multiple components jointly across space and time. Our large-N application will also identify whether some indicators are more important for legislative design than others.

In this article, we discussed legislative designs as a static characteristic of a law, but are conscious that laws change over time. The extent to which laws are adapted and transformed over time might potentially be related to their initial design. Versatile and imprecise machete laws might be the end product of contested policy-making processes in which stakeholder interests are reconciled through complex policy compromises. Such designs might then prove to be more stable if the costs of changing them are considered too high. In contrast, targeted and precise scalpel laws might result from an exclusive and technical decision-making process, potentially enabling the adaptation of these laws in a changing environment. Understanding these relationships requires comparing legislative design at scale; the conceptual framework we provide here therefore serves as a ‘navigation system’.

Future research might analyze whether legislative designs are specific to policy domains or political systems, and how they evolve. Are certain policy domains more versatile and precise than others, or is legislative design largely a reflection of the institutional arrangements in which laws are formulated? How are legislative designs maintained (Knill et al., 2025; Mettler, 2016), adjusted, and transformed after their initial adoption? Similarly, our approach allows the investigation of which contextual factors facilitate—or impede—the adoption of different legislative designs. How do the political and institutional costs of policy formulation affect the design of a law beyond its complexity (Hurka, 2025)? Are there spillover or learning effects across domains (Goyal & Howlett, 2024)? What makes certain legislative designs more robust and effective than others (Howlett & Ramesh, 2023)? By systematically comparing laws according to our conceptual approach, we hope to be in a better position to understand how legislative design shapes policy outcomes.

Given that many democracies face increasing systemic pressures, developing a deeper understanding of the factors that drive the design, creation, and survival of democratic laws also carries normative importance; for street-level bureaucrats responsible for policy implementation, and for fundamental questions of democratic accountability and transparency. Precise designs might enable clearer accountability by explicitly defining responsibilities, reducing ambiguity, and limiting discretionary interpretations. Conversely, versatile and imprecise designs may diffuse accountability, complicating oversight processes, and reducing transparency. Though precise laws may enhance accountability, rigid designs might limit the flexibility to accommodate diverse interests that vary over time. Laws with high versatility and lower precision may better capture pluralistic values but risk ambiguity in implementation. We consider the question of how policy-makers solve this balancing act as central to future enquiries, and our conceptual approach should be understood as a first step in this research agenda.