Abstract
With the ongoing evolution from closed to open distributed systems and the lifting of the assumption that agents acting in such a system do not pursue own goals and act in the best interest of the society, new problems arise. One of them is that compliance cannot be assumed necessarily and consequently trust issues arise. One way of tackling this problem is by regulating the behavior of the agents with the help of institutions. However for institutions to function effectively their compliance needs to be ensured. Using a utility computing scenario as sample application, this paper presents a general applicable taxonomy for ensuring compliance that can be consulted for analyzing, comparing and developing enforcement strategies and hopefully will stimulate research in this area.