Does Disclosure of Performance Information Influence Street‐level Bureaucrats’ Enforcement Style?

• Author: Jasper Eshuis,Erik‐Hans Klijn,Noortje de Boer
• Date: 01 September 2018
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12926

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 5, pp. 694–704. © 2018 The

Authors. Public Administration Review

published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12926.

694 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

and is not used for commercial purposes.

Erik Hans Klijn is professor in the

Department of Public Administration and

Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam

in the Netherlands. His research focuses

on complex decision making in networks,

network management, public-private

partnerships, branding, and media influence

on complex decision making.

E-mail: klijn@essb.eur.nl

Jasper Eshuis is associate professor in

the Department of Public Administration

and Sociology at Erasmus University

Rotterdam in the Netherlands. His main

research interests are governance, public

branding, and various forms of stakeholder

involvement and coproduction. His research

has been published in journals such as

Public Administration Review, Public

Management Review, Urban Studies,

and Environment and Planning C.

E-mail: eshuis@essb.eur.nl

Noortje de Boer is a doctoral candidate

in the Department of Public Administration

and Sociology at Erasmus University

Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Her research

focuses on the street-level effects of

disclosing performance information by

governments and other stakeholders, with

a special interest in bureaucrat-citizen

interactions.

E-mail: n.c.deboer@essb.eur.nl

Does Disclosure of Performance Information Influence

Street-level Bureaucrats’ Enforcement Style?

Noortje de Boer

Jasper Eshuis

Erik-Hans Klijn

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Abstract: Governments use different regulatory instruments to ensure that businesses owners or “inspectees” comply

with rules and regulations. One tool that is increasingly applied is disclosing inspectees’ performance information to

other stakeholders. Disclosing performance information has consequences for street-level bureaucrats because it increases

the visibility of their day-to-day work. Using a survey (n = 507) among Dutch inspectors of the Netherlands Food and

Consumer Product Safety Authority, this article shows that the disclosure of performance information has an impact

on enforcement style at the street level. Findings show that perceived disclosed performance information positively

enhances all three dimensions of street-level bureaucrats’ enforcement style (legal, facilitation, and accommodation).

This effect is strongest for facilitation and accommodation and weakest for the legal style. Perceived resistance by

inspectees partly explains this effect. Contrary to expectations, more perceived disclosure does not result in more but in

less perceived resistance of inspectees by street-level bureaucrats.

Evidence for Practice

• Disclosing performance information may have implications not only for business owners and citizens

but also for inspectors. This study shows that disclosure of performance information influences the way

inspectors behave during face-to-face encounters with inspectees.

• Disclosure of performance information makes inspectors more active in the sense of intensifying

their enforcement style. They especially use their discretionary space to apply a more facilitative and

accommodative style, but they also—to a lesser extent—become more legal in their enforcement style.

• Inspectors do not see growing problems of resistance among inspectees as result of disclosing performance

information; instead, they perceive less resistance.

Inspectors are classic street-level bureaucrats with

considerable autonomy and discretion to make

judgments about the applicability of sanctions

during interactions with clients (Lipsky 2010)

such as business owners. However, they are not the

only ones responsible for ensuring that businesses

or “inspectees” adhere to rules and regulations.

Inspectors function in a network of stakeholders

(Klijn and Koppenjan 2016; Meijer 2013) that

includes, for instance, consumers, public service

organizations, business organizations, and the media.

This context triggers regulators to use that network

to stimulate compliance of inspectees, such as schools

and hospitals. Making the compliance performance

of inspectees available to the public is an instrument

that helps activate stakeholders operating in networks.

This disclosure of performance information allows

stakeholders to hold inspectees accountable (Bovens

2007). For example, parents can question schools

when they underperform, or consumers can hold

firms responsible for poor quality of products (Van de

Walle and Bouckaert 2003). The media may catch up

with this information and report negatively, which, in

turn, can damage the image of inspectees (see Bennett

2016; Eshuis and Klijn 2012).

Regulators disclose performance information in

different ways, such as passively presenting policy

information (de Fine Licht 2014; Grimmelikhuijsen

and Meijer 2014; Grimmelikhuijsen et al. 2013; Van

Erp 2010), actively publishing sanctions (Ayres and

Braithwaite 1992; Van Erp 2011), or constructing

rating and rankings (Hood, Dixon, and Beeston 2008;

Van de Walle and Roberts 2008). Different ways of

disclosing performance information by governments

vary, for instance, in their degree of completeness,

coloring, and usability (Douglas and Meijer 2016).

However, they all share the intention of stimulating

compliance of inspectees (Meijer 2013; Meijer and

Homburg 2009; Van de Walle and Roberts 2008) by

activating other stakeholders to act on the information

(e.g., Meijer 2013). For instance, consumers may stop

eating at a local lunchroom if it is disclosed that it

does not comply with hygiene rules and regulations.

Research Article