Deregulation is the work that governments do to remove regulations that restrict business, individuals, or other institutions. The regulatory restrictions may be related to economic development, changes in environmental protections, changes in the political philosophy that organizes a nation, or for a number of other reasons. Removing regulations can come for a number of reasons, including changing political philosophies, changing technologies or demographics, or the successes of regulatory policies that render them obsolete.

Until the New Deal's regulatory legislative program that began in 1932, the United States had historically followed an economic policy of laissez faire taken in part from the writings of Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations (1776). The goal was to allow free enterprise the maximum amount of room for creating ...