Legislative Impact Analysis: Field Studies
Social causality is very complex. It most cases, it cannot be proven in a strict
sense.
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Field studies refer to the examination of the impact of law by actually
considering how the law appears to affect society. This has a great strength in
that it involves looking directly and specifically at the intended subject of
study.
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It means that the results bear directly on the question in hand.
This approach also has an inherent weakness in that the results lack the higher
degree of certainty that pertains in the experimental sciences. This is the case
because there is a problem in trying to examine the effect of legislation in a
scientific way. This has several related facets.
First, in social science the ideal means of investigation is through controlled
research because this makes scientific experimentation feasible. Controlled
research entails controlling all the variables in such a way that the most
plausible if not the only logical explanation for a difference between two
situations is the operation or non operation of the variable that is under
consideration (the dependent variable). Hence the changes observed in the two
situations can be attributed to the effect of this variable.
When this is done it is possible to put forward a plausible view that one thing,
the variable under consideration, causes certain effects. But many social
phenomena cannot be specifically investigated in a laboratory by a controlled
experiment. This is almost invariably the case with the operation of statute law.
It cannot, therefore, be directly subjected to completely scientific analysis.
Hence any conclusions drawn from legislative impact research will always be
tentative.
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Second, social change can occur for many reasons besides the enactment of a
law. Therefore when change occurs it is not always possible to identify the
precise cause. It may be caused solely by the law, by the law interacting with
some other factors, or by other factors entirely. A hypothetical example can
illustrate this. Assume that a government legislates for a road safety campaign
and that shortly after the legislation is passed there is an economic recession.
Two years later the statistics show a significant fall in road accidents and
fatalities. While the campaign may in part or in whole be responsible for the
result, an alternative explanation is that during the recession households saved
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Mader (2001) p 123
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Baldwin (1990) reports on an empirical study of why rules do and do not
work in the area of health and safety, then seeks to draw conclusions from the
study. See also Black (1996).
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Ross (1975)
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