The process of protecting the environment is big business. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now the federal government's largest regulatory agency, with 18,000 employees and a budget of $ 7.8 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2001. Complying with the laws and regulations that EPA is charged with upholding is even bigger business. Compliance costs induced by environmental regulations in the United States are estimated to have cost the regulated community $ 180 billion in 1999.¹ Thus, there is cause for keen interest among the regulated community, legislators, and commentators about how EPA goes about its business. In recent years, EPA has been under considerable criticism by business leaders, and their supporters in state governments and the Congress, for being too heavy-handed—too aggressive, too quick to sue, and too adversarial with those it regulates.² As a result, an effort is underway to attempt to reform EPA and how it does the work of protecting the environment and ensuring compliance with environmental laws. Reformers want to make EPA more "user friendly." EPA's critics say that if EPA were to take a more cooperative approach, the regulated community would be more receptive and less hostile to environmental regulation. The argument is that if EPA functioned more as an adviser and less as an environmental policeman, the same goals could be met at less cost. The logic is that an ethic of trust and cooperation would be forged that fosters openness, and a spirit of partnership would emerge that would replace the old command-and-control paradigm.

In contrast to the enforcement program in the United States, the United Kingdom has a long tradition of working cooperatively with British industry in social regulation including environmental compliance. This Article examines how the American and British versions of environmental compliance assurance and enforcement evolved and shows that cultural, social, and historical differences account for both the divergences in the systems and the efficacy of the system in each country.