The (un)intended effects of street-level bureaucrats’ enforcement style: Do citizens shame or obey bureaucrats?

Date01 October 2021
AuthorNoortje de Boer
Published date01 October 2021
DOI10.1177/0952076720905005
Subject MatterArticles
Article
The (un)intended
effects of street-level
bureaucrats’
enforcement style:
Do citizens shame or
obey bureaucrats?
Noortje de Boer
Department of Public Administration and Sociology,
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam,
The Netherlands; Utrecht School of Governance at Utrecht
University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Abstract
This paper studies the intended and unintended effects of street-level bureaucrats’
enforcement style. More specifically, it answers to what extent street-level bureaucrats’
enforcement style affects citizens’ obedience (i.e. intended effect) during face-to-face
encounters and willingness to publicly shame bureaucrats (i.e. unintended effect).
Building on insights from street-level enforcement and the social interactionist
theory of coercive actions, a trade-off is theorized between the effect of enforcement
style on citizens’ on-the-spot obedience and on public shaming. Results of an experi-
ment (n¼318) and replication (n¼311) in The Netherlands reveal that (1) neither the
legal nor facilitation dimension has an effect on on-the-spot obedience; (2) the legal
dimension does not affect public shaming but (3) the facilitation decreases it. These
findings are robust across both the experiment and replication.
Keywords
Enforcement style, experiments, obedience, public shaming, street-level bureaucracy
Corresponding author:
Noortje de Boer, Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus University Rotterdam,
Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: n.c.deboer@uu.nl
Public Policy and Administration
!The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0952076720905005
journals.sagepub.com/home/ppa
2021, Vol. 36(4) 452 –475
de Boer 453
Introduction
Why street-level bureaucrats behave the way they do is a central topic in public
management and public administration research (e.g. Lipsky, 2010; Petersen et al.,
2018; Tummers et al., 2015; Van Engen et al., 2016). There is also growing atten-
tion for how bureaucrats assess citizens (Harrits, 2018; Jilke and Tummers, 2018;
Keulemans and van der Walle, 2020; Pedersen et al., 2018; Raaphorst et al., 2018).
What is lacking from this debate, however, is how citizens assess street-level
bureaucrats. Citizens’ assessment of street-level bureaucrats is relevant to explore
since bureaucrats’ behaviour if often perceived more negative than intended
(Mascini and Van Wijk, 2009). Such assessments by citizens matter because they
can affect service provision by, for instance, increasing efforts by citizens during
bureaucrat–citizen encounters (Guul, 2018; Riccucci et al., 2016). This is especially
prevalent for bureaucrats working in enforcing professions such as police off‌icers,
traff‌ic wardens, conductors or inspectors who deal with disobedience which has
been labelled a ‘negative’ citizen behaviour (Gofen et al., 2019). These enforcing
bureaucrats limit citizens’ freedom by sanctioning non-compliant behaviour
(Sparrow, 2000) making them especially prone for negative assessments of citizens.
The frontline enforcement of bureaucrats is often referred to as enforcement
style which is def‌ined as their attitude during public encounters towards citizens
while enforcing public policies and issuing sanctions (De Boer, 2018; May and
Winter, 1999, 2000). Most scholarship investigates the effect of the compliers’
motivations or regulatory structures on citizens’ (dis)obedience (Ayres and
Braithwaite, 1995; Kagan, 1994; May, 2005; Winter and May, 2001) but rarely
focuses on what bureaucrats do during public encounters to ensure immediate or
‘on-the-spot’ obedience (i.e. compliance) (Gofen et al., 2019). In turn, surprisingly,
few studies test the direct effect of enforcement style on obedience during face-
to-face encounters and, in turn, no uniform conclusions can be drawn.
More importantly, scholars largely ignore that street-level bureaucrats’ enforce-
ment style can result in other citizens’ behaviour such as negative assessments (see
Mascini and Van Wijk, 2009; May and Winter, 2011) which happen largely in the
online public sphere. Governments are increasingly showing the public via online
channels how they are performing which empowers citizens to hold them account-
able (see Grimmelikhuijsen and Meijer, 2012; Hupe and Hill, 2016). There is,
indeed, growing indication that citizens do. To illustrate, police departments
across the globe are active in social media to enhance their perceptions among
citizens (Grimmelikhuijsen and Meijer, 2015). On top of that, citizens actively
provide feedback via social media platforms about the quality of services
(Griff‌iths and Leaver, 2018; Trigg, 2014; Van de Wale, 2016; Van Erp and
Loyens, 2018). Moreover, citizens also f‌ilm and photograph police and share it
on social media in order to expose police misconduct (see Potere, 2012). There is
also a rise of citizens organizing ‘cop-watching’ groups who record the behaviour
of police off‌icers with smartphones and publish their collected material online
2Public Policy and Administration 0(0)

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