Well-designed, clear and enforceable agreements are essential to a complex collaborative endeavour such as development.

The website Better Regulation explains actions in the Better Regulation field, taken by the European Commission, other EU institutions as well as the EU Member States.

Inclusive development must reach and engage all members of society, in their diverse livelihoods.

Easy access to treaties (and statutes that need to be compliant with them) facilitate transparency of the political process, and a constructive dialogue among stakeholders. This will benefit the treaty and statute fit (are problems solved and have stakeholders been heard ?) and their adoption: stakeholders who have been able to participate in the political process are more likely to comply, as participation is likely to ensure a more fair access to benefits, and a better balance of burdens.

The coexistence of multiple treaties and statutes create difficulties in reconciling confusing or conflicting provisions.
Those difficulties can be structurally reduced by engaging more stakeholders in the treaty and statute shaping, and by a culture of periodic reviews and subsequent statute improvement.

Structuring treaty and statute books by COFOG class supports the clustering of their provisions. The interactions and claims to which provisions pertain support an open and constructive dialogue with stakeholders, in the first instance, as represented by actors at the macro and meso level, listed in the national actor maps.

Poor quality treaties and statutes pose significant constraints to development initiatives, for instance those listed at national initiative books. Unlike other constraints, such as for instance the limited access to resources such as water and finance, the constraints to development imposed by unfit treaties and statutes are easy to remove: only the political will is required. The Initiative Books support mutual awareness of ongoing and forthcoming initiatives.

A treaty is a written agreement between two or more states. A treaty takes effect either immediately on signature or, more often, on ratification.

For most COFOG classes below, a treaty will define standards for the function of its signatories' and their constituencies, and it will determine the structure and claims of supporting international organisation, and their relationships to corresponding national actors.

In their interactions¹, actors in the jurisdiction of a treaty or statute, must comply. Often, actors in the corresponding COFOG class, who can be found in the national actor maps are created to actively promote and ensure the compliance of stakeholders.

For a national actor, for instance a Department of Health, the relationship with the international organisation, such as the World Health Organisation will usually not be the core business. Yet a treaty may list objectives and provide instruments that national actors could rely upon in their work. In such a case, a treaty could describe procedures that national actors could follow to use (or contribute to) resources of the group.

Some initiatives listed in the national initiative books may include roles for international organisations. Governmental work, performed as part of COFOG 01.1 - Executive and legislative organs, financial and fiscal affairs, external affairs may include the drafting of new statutes or the modification of existing ones.