[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-127292-en":3,"doc-seo-127292-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":92},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},127292,2336475104957,"Seraphina","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/22000c4c6bd8a5076e1?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1786593998035447633",8,"Research & Report","Concepts and measures of bureaucratic constraints in European Union laws - from hand-coding to machine-learning","Scholars analyze how executive constraints embedded in European Union legislation are operationalized through two main measurement strategies: one based on variation in the use of restriction types and another based on the frequency of constraint use. These approaches represent distinct conceptualizations of bureaucratic control, termed the “toolbox perspective” and the “design perspective.” Evidence indicates the frequency-based measure yields fewer validity problems for estimating legislators’ intent and reduces measurement errors. The text assesses a recent computational model using hand-coded provisions and proposes a syntactic machine-learning framework.","Regulation & Governance (2024) 18, 688–703 doi:10.1111/rego.12543  \nConcepts and measures of bureaucratic constraints in European Union laws from hand-coding to machine-learning  \nFabio Franchino   \nDepartment of Social and Political Studies, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy  \nMarta Migliorati  \nInstitute for European Studies, University of Malta, Msida, Malta  \nGiovanni Pagano and Valerio Vignoli  \nDepartment of Social and Political Studies, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy  \nAbstract  \nScholars employ two main measures of the executive constraints embedded in European Union laws: one is based on the variation in the use of different types of restrictions, and the second is based on the frequency of such use. They reflect two alternative conceptualizations of bureaucratic control. We label them, respectively, as the “toolbox perspective” and the “design perspective”. We illustrate that the constraint frequency measure poses fewer validity problems in estimating legislators’ intent to constrain implementation and tends to produce less severe measurement errors. We then evaluate the performance in estimating constraint variation of a recent computational application and identify potential drawbacks of automated learning from hand-coded provisions. We lastly introduce a skeletal framework for a machine-learning approach based on the syntactic structures employed by legislators that could improve the performance of this innovative technique.  \nKeywords: bureaucratic constraints, conceptualization, EU law, machine-learning, measurement.  \n1. Introduction  \nPick up any law and you read a procedure or a prescription of some sort. They are ubiquitous. These constraints are the nuts and bolts of legislative design, and they are core components of the formal executive discretion of implementing agents. Their use reflects the important trade-offs legislators make between the benefits of delegation and the risks of agency drift. Yet, measuring the legislative intent to delimit the room for maneuver of implementers is arduous, and doing so for thousands of pieces of legislation is treacherous. Scholars of legislative politics in the European Union (EU) have adopted different measurement strategies, some of them inspired by the literature on congressional politics in the United States. Yet, the choices scholars make and the assumptions that underlie these decisions are hardly discussed.  \nIn this article, we carry out such an examination, especially in light of ever more sophisticated procedures to extract estimates of constraints from legal texts that can scale up to large corpora in an efficient and (presumably) valid manner. We first review the different procedures scholars have employed to measure the executive constraints embedded in EU laws. Next, we argue that these procedures reflect two different conceptualizations which we call the toolbox perspective and the design perspective on bureaucratic control. Scholars that adopt the former employ measures that are based on the variation in the use of different types of restrictions. Those that prefer the latter use measures that are based on the frequency of use of such constraints. Which of the two provides a more valid estimation of legislators’ intent to constrain implementation? Employing the data from  \nCorrespondence: Fabio Franchino, Department of Social and Political Studies, Università degli Studi di  \nMilano, Via Conservatorio 7, 20122 Milan, Italy. Email: [fabio.franchino@unimi.it](fabio.franchino@unimi.it)[ ](fabio.franchino@unimi.it)Conflict of interest: None declared.  \nAccepted for publication 9 June 2023 .  \n© 2023 The Authors. Regulation & Governance published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.  \nThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.  \nCONCEPTS AND MEASURES OF CONSTRAINTS F. Franchino e","cbCaimigfHZZe8EU","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaimigfHZZe8EU","pdf",823720,1,16,"English","en",105,"# Abstract\n# 1. Introduction\n# 2. 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