1/ Regulations are ultimately about managing risk, whether that risk is fraud, unsafe practices or someone building an ugly building.
The more (actually or performatively) worried you are about the specific risk, the more checks, approvals, rules and guidelines you put in place.
Their regulations tend to assume that management are bastards, and must be monitored and constrained lest they exploit people or generate negative externalities for profit.
Their regulations tend to assume folks are out to scam any benefits scheme, and must be monitored and constrained lest they take advantage of the tax-payer's generosity.
The specific behaviors targeted tend to be different (criminalizing hate speech vs criminalizing drug use, for example), but it's still all regulation.
Because cutting regulations on something you don't think should be controlled is harder administratively and politically than new rules on an area you think is too lax, the democratic back and forth tends to lead to ever increasing aggregate levels of regulation.
"We want to (largely performatively) trim some regulation in the areas we aren't worried about, but we'll be adding much more in the areas we are."
Transparency, digitization, single windows, removing arbitrary gatekeepers, and removing pointless redundancy. /end
