Temporary legislation, better regulation, and experimentalist governance: An empirical study

This article presents the findings of an extensive multi-method empirical study that explored the relationship between temporary legislation, better regulation, and experimentalist governance. Temporary (or “sunset”) legislation – statutory provisions enacted for a limited time and set to expire unless their validity is extended – is often hailed as a key tool for promoting experimental and better regulation. Despite the importance of temporary legislation and the burgeoning theoretical scholarship on the subject, there is still a dearth of empirical studies about how temporary legislation is used in practice. The lack of empirical evidence creates a lacuna in at least three areas of theoretical scholarship, concerning temporary legislation, better regulation, and experimentalist governance. This paper is a first step to fill this gap.