Enforcement of building regulations: from public regulation to self-regulation; a theoretical approach

A number of construction-related incidents at the beginning of the 21st century, some of them fatal, sent local building control straight to the top of the Dutch political and public agenda. For some time now national government, local building control authorities and private organisations work together to come to more effective and efficient building control processes; however, a general view upon enforcement strategies seems to be absent. In this paper a range of conceptual enforcement models will be introduced on a continuum of total public regulation to pure selfregulation. The models will be based on both notions from literature on self-regulation and notions on Neo Institutional Economics and clarified with examples of international building control systems.