ABSTRACT
So-called voluntary agreements between the state and private actors, particularly industry, are in fact seldom entirely voluntary. Quite often, they are linked to more general legal obligations and can as such rather be seen as implementation agreements. And even if they are not placed in a bruader legal context, the state may use the introduction of formal regulations as a stick to beat with if 'voluntary' negotiations do not bring the desired results. Nevertheless, voluntary agreements are often regarded as a form of deregulation, as they are assumed to reduce the regulatory burden on industry. However, examining the phenomenon of voluntary agreements more closely this view may be questioned. Although the use of voluntary agreements, or more interactive modes of policy-making generally, may indeed give room to firms for more flexible responses to environmental requirements, focusing on this aspect appears to be somewhat one-sided. In this paper it will be argued that the increasing popularity of voluntary agreements should rather be seen as an expression of the shifting role of the state in dealing with environmental problems in a more encompassing sense. This shift can be associated with the crisis of the welfare state which gradually took shape during the 1970s and 1980s, and, in the environmental field, with the perceived ineffectiveness of traditional 'command-andcontrol' strategies.
