Laws as blades: A conceptual framework of legislative design

Abstract Legislation shapes every aspect of public life and stands at the core of governance. Despite sustained attention on a variety of aspects of legislation, we still lack a comprehensive and integrated framework of legislative design. To address this gap, we introduce a novel conceptual framework that analyzes legislative design along two dimensions— versatility and precision —using six indicators: objects, subjects, instruments, dilution, derogation, and delegation. Taken together, these two dimensions offer four ideal types of legislative design which we conceptualize using the metaphor of blades. Some laws resemble Swiss army knives, highly versatile and precise; others are scalpels, precise but narrowly scoped; machetes are versatile but imprecise; and scythes are imprecise but focused. We demonstrate the validity of our framework by applying it to environmental and macroprudential legislation in the European Union, identifying laws that approximate each ideal type. By focusing on the internal architecture of legislation, our framework offers a tool to comparatively analyze legislative design across policy domains, institutional settings, and time.