Policy complexity - Measurement, Origins and Consequences, Steffen Hurka,

Policy complexity - Measurement, Origins and Consequences, Steffen Hurka,
What makes a law complex, how can we measure this complexity and why does complexity vary so much across individual laws, over time, and between and within policy areas? How does the complexity of laws affect political institutions and to what extent is implementation affected by increasing complexity? Based on data from his research project EUPLEX, Steffen Hurka will shed light on these and other questions from an empirical perspective, focusing on the political system of the European Union (EU). Furthermore, Steffen Hurka will also briefly introduce his new ERC project DEMOLAW (The design, creation and survival of democratic laws), in which he will assess legislative designs in different policy domains in a cross-temporal and cross-national perspective using computational methods of text analysis.
Steffen Hurka is Chair of European Politics at Zeppelin University, where he leads the ERC-funded DEMOLAW project (2024-2029). This project uses computer-assisted text analysis to explore the design logics of democratic laws and the causes of legal (in)stability. Hurka has also been directing the Emmy Noether Junior Research Group EUPLEX since 2019, in which he analyzes the measurement, orgins and consequences of policy complexity in the European Union. He earned his doctorate from the University of Konstanz in 2015 and worked as a post-doctoral researcher at LMU Munich’s Geschwister-Scholl-Institute (2014-2019). His research focuses on EU legislative processes, the European Parliament’s organization, and democratic legislation.