Strategies and Design Principles for Compliance and Enforcement

Compliance and enforcement activities are essential to effective implementation of environmental legislation. Despite, or perhaps because of, the decades of experience government agencies have had in designing and deploying a wide range of compliance and enforcement techniques, there exists no unified theory of environmental compliance and enforcement. Instead, a variety of theories and program design principles have emerged, perhaps because compliance and enforcement approaches must reflect unique circumstances in each particular program and in each cultural setting. Several of these strategies and design principles are discussed in this article. It is important to note that these approaches are not mutually exclusive. Government officials may rely on a combination of several of these theories in managing compliance and enforcement programs.