Cataloging State Regulation
Our Story Thus Far
Even though writing and enforcing regulations are a major part of the actual work of government at every level, it is surprisingly difficult to obtain a basic understanding of the size and scope of the administrative state. How much regulation is there? Whom does it apply to? Who wrote it?
The RegData line of research introduced by Patrick McLaughlin and Omar Al-Ubaydli began to tackle this question at the federal level by counting the number of regulatory restrictions — words and phrases that indicate a specific mandatory or prohibited activity — in the Code of Federal Regulations, ascribing them the agencies, and identifying their most relevant industries. And because RegData is built using the open-source QuantGov framework, this approach can now be replicated at the state level, as well.
Over the past several months, my Mercatus Center colleagues James Broughel, Daniel Francis, and I have collected and analyzed the administrative codes for seven states: Kentucky, Virginia, Missouri, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Oregon.
So which state has the most restrictions so far? The overall number of restrictions for each state analyzed can be seen in the chart below.
Among the seven states so far analyzed, Illinois is a clear stand-out. At nearly 260,000 regulatory restrictions, the Illinois code contains over 55 percent more restrictions than Oregon’s, the next largest we we have seen, and over double the number of restrictions we found in the Kentucky and Missouri codes.
Whether Illinois continues to stand apart from the pack as more states are analyzed remains to be seen. Be sure to check back at SmartRegs.org for updated rankings as we continue to expand State RegData to more and more states.
Learn More in the State RegData Snapshots
For more information on any of the state administrative codes we’ve analyzed, including agency and industry-specific results, see the state snapshots listed below:
