AbstractIn the search for effective environmental policy instruments (EPIs), the interest in combining environmental policy instruments – such as taxes and charges, tradable permit schemes, voluntary agreements, information measures, and traditional command‐and‐control regulation – in synergistic policy mixes has intensified recently (OECD, 2001a). However, there is also a need to analyse the longer term pattern in the choice of instruments for a cumulative policy mix. The aim of this paper is to examine two aspects of this pattern – diversity and coerciveness – in the field of municipal waste management in Sweden and England. Based on an inventory of instruments adopted at the national level in 1995–2005, it is concluded that the diversity has increased in both countries, although the national instrument preferences differ. Two contrasting hypotheses on coerciveness in the sequencing of instruments are then tested; the ‘minimal‐coercion’ hypothesis by Doern and Wilson (1974) and van der Doelen's (1998) ‘give‐and‐take’ strategy. It is found that Sweden has made relatively consistent choices of more coercive instruments, while a pattern of ‘give‐and‐take’ of positive and negative instruments can be discerned in the instrument mix in England. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.