ABSTRACT
I would like to examine the issue of alternatives to legal regulation (hereafter: ‘alternatives’). I want to say how I think alternatives are conceived and elucidate the context from which they have emerged. With the downturn in world economic activity in the mid-1970s, welfare state interventionism began to lose its attractiveness and came under severe attack. Legislative interference increasingly was believed to be an hindrance to achieving the very economic and social well-being for which it was intended. Numerous authoritative reports and studies, especially those produced by international economic and financial organisations, gravely denounced unaccountable administrative discretion, lack of transparency, opaque decision processes, pursuit of narrow mission goals at any cost, and lack of attention to reviewing, updating and eliminating unnecessary or harmful legislation. Governments were said to act too often without adequate information base regarding the choices about policy instruments, about the design of a specific instrument, or about the need to change or discontinue an existing instrument.1
