Regulated professions
Authors:   , Bruin Gerardus Johannes 
Published: May 2024

Regulated professions: Public-private partnership for drafting legislation

This research is about the cooperation between the government and a professional association in the regulation of professions. Well-known regulated professions are the classic professions such as doctors, lawyers and notaries. For the regulation of these professions, both the government and the professional association have an important responsibility. When regulating other professions in cooperation between the government and a professional association, the responsibility of the professional association or of the government may also be more limited. This research focuses on how the government and the professional association can achieve a division of responsibilities in regulating a profession.

The division of the responsibility between the government and a professional association for the regulation of a profession is the result of a process of negotiation in the creation of laws. During this negotiation process, the parties involved do not only negotiate the drafting of legislation, but also the joint responsibility for the implementation of the regulations by assigning tasks and powers to these parties. This provides an additional dimension compared to other, regular legislative processes or negotiated law-making processes, where only the government is responsible for the exercise of tasks and powers. In order to determine the outcome of the drafting process, the question arises as to what drafters of regulations should pay attention to in order to achieve the intended purpose of regulating a profession.

The purpose of this research is to help politicians, lawyers and policy officers involved in the drafting of legislation to make decisions about the allocation of responsibilities between the parties involved in protecting the public and private interests involved in regulation.

This research addresses the following topics, which are summarised below for each chapter. In Chapter 2 of this research, a literature review was conducted on topics that are relevant to the development of laws and regulations and on the conditions for cooperation between the parties involved in the regulating of a profession. In addition, the research in Chapter 3 consists of a case study based on document analysis. In the case study, four cases were used to further explore the division of responsibilities between the government and a private party, such as the professional association. Taken together, the description and the analysis of the theory and the case study provide the necessary knowledge about the division of responsibilities in the regulation of a profession by the government and a professional association for the protection of public and private interests. This knowledge is described in Chapter 4.

Chapter 5 uses the results of this research to provide a practical framework for allocating responsibility in the regulation of the profession. With this framework, the government and a professional association can make decisions about the allocation of responsibilities between the parties when drafting legislation to protect the public and private interests involved. Finally, in Chapter 6, I reflect on this practical framework. In doing so, I discuss the interest of the autonomy of the professional association and the profession. I also discuss the restraint that the government should exercise in intervening in the regulation of a profession. Finally, as a reflection on the practical framework, I discuss the context of the social and political negotiation.