A street‐level perspective on government transparency and regulatory performance: Does relational distance matter?
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Author | Noortje de Boer,Jasper Eshuis |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12517 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
A street-level perspective on government
transparency and regulatory performance:
Does relational distance matter?
Noortje de Boer | Jasper Eshuis
Department of Public Administration and
Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam,
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Correspondence
Noortje de Boer, Department of Public
Administration and Sociology, Erasmus
University Rotterdam, Burgemeester oudlaan
50, Rotterdam 3000 DR, The Netherlands.
Email: n.c.deboer@essb.eur.nl
Funding information
Netherlands Food and Consumer Product
Safety Authority
This study investigates the extent to which inspectors perceive
government transparency as impacting regulatory performance. It
theorizes that when inspectors perceive an increase in transpar-
ency, they find that the perceived relational distance between
themselves and their inspectees rises and this, subsequently,
increases regulatory performance. The findings from a survey
among Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority
inspectors (n= 466) confirm that inspectors view an increase in
transparency as enhancing regulatory performance. This study fur-
ther investigates this mechanism by comparing two divisions with
different levels of factual relational distance (i.e., frequency of
inspector–inspectee interactions). The findings reveal that only in
the division with small factual relational distance does perceived
relational distance mediate the effect of transparency on regulatory
performance. More specifically, in divisions with small factual rela-
tional distance, more perceived transparency increases perceived
relational distance; this in turn, increases perceived regulatory
performance.
1|INTRODUCTION
Government transparency is commonly understood to contribute to better governance in general (Hood 2007) and
to improving regulation in particular (Meijer and Homburg 2009; Van Erp 2011; Van Dooren and Van de Walle
2016). The external pressure that develops when governments make information public about the compliance of
inspectees such as business owners is assumed to help governments in executing their task of ensuring and improv-
ing the compliance of inspectees (Van Dooren and Van de Walle 2016). Encouraging inspectees' compliance also
implies that the public sector itself performs better, in the sense of its effectiveness in ensuring compliance with pub-
lic rules and regulations. However, empirical evidence to support this assumption is scarce and mixed (see Meijer and
Homburg 2009; Im et al. 2013; Porumbescu 2017). The actual effect of government transparency on regulatory per-
formance, therefore, remains unclear.
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12517
This is an open access article under the termsof the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution
in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
© 2018 The Authors. Public Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
452 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm Public Administration. 2018;96:452–467.
Regulatory performance depends, to a large extent, on the ways inspectors interact with inspectees during
face-to-face encounters (Hood et al. 1999; Boyne et al. 2002; Baldwin et al. 2012). During these encounters,
inspectors interact and form relationships with inspectees through often-repeated interactions. The relational dis-
tance between insp ector and inspectee can have importa nt implications for regulatory perf ormance. An intimate
and cooperate relationship may foster inspectees' compliance (see Ayres and Braithwaite 1994; Pautz 2009; Bald-
win et al. 2012; Pautz and Wamsley 2012; Etienne 2013), but it can also result in the ‘capture’of inspectors. An
inspector's position will be weakened because s/he gets too close to the businesses s/he regulates and, in turn,
gets captured (Mak kai and Braithwaite 1992; James 200 0; Ashworth et al. 2002). Governm ent transparency inter-
feres with this street-level relationship because the behaviour of both inspectees and inspectors becomes visible
(see Winter 2003; Etienne 2014; de Boer et al. 2018) to all stakeholders in the public sphere, making i t, in turn, less
intimate (see Black 2010).
Transparency research has barely addressed this effect on the relational distance between inspector and inspec-
tee at the street level, nor the implications for inspectors' perceptions of regulatory performance (see Meijer and
Homburg 2009; Grimmelikhuijsen et al. 2017; Porumbescu 2017). There is, thus, a lack of research on government
transparency and regulatory performance in which inspectors' perceptions are put at the centre—even though they
are crucial actors in regulatory governance (see de Boer et al. 2018). This study sets out to contribute empirical evi-
dence to the debate on government transparency and regulatory performance by answering the question: To what
extent do inspectors perceive government transparency as impacting regulatory performance? It is hypothesized that
this effect can be explained by the perceived relational distance between inspector and inspectee.
The remainder of this article is structured as follows. First, the theoretical framework of government transpar-
ency, regulatory performance, and relational distance between inspector and inspectee is highlighted. Second, the
method is discussed, followed by the results of a survey (n= 466) among Dutch inspectors from the Netherlands
Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA). Third, a concluding section summarizes the main points and
provides a discussion on the implications for public administration and management scholarship, as well as policy
implementation.
2|CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND EXPECTATIONS
This section theoretically explores the main concepts and their interrelations. It discusses the independent variable
of government transparency, the dependent variable regulatory performance, and the mediating variable relational
distance between inspector and inspectee.
Governments are increasingly making information transparent about their own and inspectees' regulatory
performance (see Grimmelikhuijsen and Welch 2012; Van Dooren and Van de Walle 2016; de Boer et al. 2018).
Government transparency has been defined in many ways. Cucciniello et al. (2017) emphasize that these defini-
tions often address the availability of information about decision-making processes such as budgetary matters,
about operational aspects, or about the performance of governmental bodies. Government transparency
enables inward observability. Inward observability allows stakeholders to monitor governmental bodies' internal
workings, for example regulators' activities and decision-making (Grimmelikhuijsen and Meijer 2012; Grimmelik-
huijsen et al. 2013). Stakeholders will be able to monitor and make judgements about whether or not regulators
are performing well because regulators make the level of compliance by inspectees transparent. Therefore, gov-
ernment transparency is defined as ‘the availability of information about an organization or actor allowing exter-
nal stakeholders to monitor the internal workings or performance of that organization’(Grimmelikhuijsen 2012,
p. 55). For instance, when regulators disclose how restaurants are performing concerning hygiene rules and reg-
ulations, this allows citizens to observe not only the performance of specific restaurants but also the perfor-
mance of regulators; if restaurants fail to comply with hygiene regulations, the regulator has failed to enforce
those rules.
DE BOER AND ESHUIS 453
To continue reading
Request your trial