ElectronicjournalofcomparatiVeLaw,vol.9.1(january2005),<http://www.ejclorg/> authors of this white paper makes clear, the strategy of legally conditioned self-regulation is especially attractive when the government aims to regulate professional conduct: when there is not too much difference between the interests of the individual and the group on the one hand and the public interest on the other, and when effective compliance with government regulation is difficult or impossible to achieve. 5 2. Legislative strategy and its discontents In view of the enthusiasm with which this strategy of legally conditioned self-regulation was received and the wide area of its potential application, it is rather surprising to see that since 1991 the strategy has not been applied all that frequently and seems not to have affected the whole style of government regulation in its appointed domains. Legally cond itioned self regulation has indeed been prominent in the fields of privacy law and primary education(in regard to articulating the objectives of teaching, the so-called kerndoelen), but these are areas where at the same time other legislative strategies have proliferated simultaneously. On the whole, it must be concluded that the areas that in theory lend themselves to self-regulation have in recent years also been visited by streams of orthodox government regulation, often emanating from the European Union. As a result, those participants in processes of self regulation who really aim at taking the margins set by the central legislature as serious cond itions for self-rule are confronted with intrusions into their domain of free deliberation by uncoord inated regulations in which the government denies them this deliberative freedom Of course, that may well be the work of another government agency, pursuing its own gislative strategy, but the effect of such uncoordinated interventions is that the potential space for deliberations about self-rule is turned into an illusion Imagine, in a shift of perspective, that you are a responsible actor in one of the domains supposedly engaging in processes of legally conditioned self-regulation. You may for instance, imagine yourself to be the principal of a primary school. From this position, you would not see a coherent legislative strategy at all. On the one hand, there would be initiatives taken by the Ministry of Education to organize a broad debate about the desirability of certain forms of regulation; it is even prepared to listen to suggestions about the rules that should actually be removed so that schools can find their own solutions for pressing social and educational problems. Let us suppose that some of these consultations indeed result in a degree of deliberative freedom for your school to experiment with the rules and that after some time, upon positive evaluation, a whole set of schools comes to adopt the new line of regulation. ( This scenario has not yet occurred in practice, but it is part of the rhetoric of educational policy. Even when everything goes according to such a scenario of gally cond itioned self-regulation, as the principal of your school you will still be confronted with new directives almost weekly on all kinds of other aspects of school life and these directives, originating perhaps also from other departments or from local government, do not fit into a consultative strategy; they are presented as legislative commands. Very likely, in your position of responsible actor in the domain of primary education, you will not Philip Erlander, Zelfregulering en wetgev ingsbeleid', in: P. Ei lander, P C. Gihuis and J. A F. Peters (eds ) Overheid en :elfregulering Alibi voorvrijblijvendheidofprikkel tot aktie?( Zwolle: W.E.J. Tjeenk Willink,1993)pp.129-140,atp.136Electronic Journal of Comparative Law, vol. 9.1 (January 2005), <http://www.ejcl.org/> 3 authors of this white paper makes clear, the strategy of legally conditioned self-regulation is especially attractive when the government aims to regulate professional conduct: when there is not too much difference between the interests of the individual and the group on the one hand and the public interest on the other, and when effective compliance with government regulation is difficult or impossible to achieve.5 2. Legislative strategy and its discontents In view of the enthusiasm with which this strategy of legally conditioned self-regulation was received and the wide area of its potential application, it is rather surprising to see that since 1991 the strategy has not been applied all that frequently and seems not to have affected the whole style of government regulation in its appointed domains. Legally conditioned self￾regulation has indeed been prominent in the fields of privacy law and primary education (in regard to articulating the objectives of teaching, the so-called kerndoelen), but these are areas where at the same time other legislative strategies have proliferated simultaneously. On the whole, it must be concluded that the areas that in theory lend themselves to self-regulation have in recent years also been visited by streams of orthodox government regulation, often emanating from the European Union. As a result, those participants in processes of self￾regulation who really aim at taking the margins set by the central legislature as serious conditions for self-rule are confronted with intrusions into their domain of free deliberation by uncoordinated regulations in which the government denies them this deliberative freedom. Of course, that may well be the work of another government agency, pursuing its own legislative strategy, but the effect of such uncoordinated interventions is that the potential space for deliberations about self-rule is turned into an illusion. Imagine, in a shift of perspective, that you are a responsible actor in one of the domains supposedly engaging in processes of legally conditioned self-regulation. You may, for instance, imagine yourself to be the principal of a primary school. From this position, you would not see a coherent legislative strategy at all. On the one hand, there would be initiatives taken by the Ministry of Education to organize a broad debate about the desirability of certain forms of regulation; it is even prepared to listen to suggestions about the rules that should actually be removed so that schools can find their own solutions for pressing social and educational problems. Let us suppose that some of these consultations indeed result in a degree of deliberative freedom for your school to experiment with the rules and that after some time, upon positive evaluation, a whole set of schools comes to adopt the new line of regulation. (This scenario has not yet occurred in practice, but it is part of the rhetoric of educational policy.) Even when everything goes according to such a scenario of legally conditioned self-regulation, as the principal of your school you will still be confronted with new directives almost weekly on all kinds of other aspects of school life and these directives, originating perhaps also from other departments or from local government, do not fit into a consultative strategy; they are presented as legislative commands. Very likely, in your position of responsible actor in the domain of primary education, you will not 5 Philip Eijlander, ‘Zelfregulering en wetgevingsbeleid’, in: P. Eijlander, P.C. Gilhuis and J.A.F. Peters (eds.), Overheid en zelfregulering. Alibi voor vrijblijvendheid of prikkel tot aktie? (Zwolle: W.E.J. Tjeenk Willink, 1993), pp. 129-140, at p. 136