Rules as data

Rules lie at the core of many disciplines beneath regulatory studies. Such a broad interest inevitably comes with fragmented understandings and technical choices that hinder knowledge cumulation and learning. This introduction tackles these limitations through an encompassing analytical blueprint from measurement theory. First, it addresses ambiguities to establish formal rules as a distinct research object. Then, it builds on legal, institutional analytic, and computational linguistic frameworks to pinpoint their constituting elements. Last, it revises strategies for assigning meaningful numbers to objects and outlines how the contributions to this Special Issue foster different aspects of the blueprint.