Cooperation as a Trend? Patterns of Use and Causes of cooperative Policy-making in the Netherlands, USA and Germany

The assumption that cooperative approaches are increasingly being used in public policies instead of authoritative approaches is shared by many authors. It is also commonly suggested that the use of such policy instruments in different countries implies a policy change of similar depth and that the reasons for the use of cooperative approaches are the same everywhere. Analyzing the use of voluntary environmental agreements in the Netherlands, the USA, and Germany, this paper challenges these three hypotheses. The result is that quantitative and qualitative patterns of use vary considerably: There is no proof of an overall trend toward an ever increasing use of cooperative approaches, and the change that is brought about by such instruments is of unequal profundity. While in all three countries there are different reasons why such agreements are being used, it can be shown that overall, institutional factors have not been adequately addressed by studies on cooperative policies so far.