Inspectors and Enforcement at the Front Line of Government

Steven Van de Walle is Professor of Public Management at the Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Belgium. His research focuses on public sector reform and service interactions between citizens and government.Nadine Raaphorst is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on interactions between bureaucrats and citizens, and on street-level decision making.

• Introduction: The social dynamics of daily inspection work.- Studying uncertainty in decision making by street-level inspectors.- Inspectors as information-seekers.- Are you a true offender? Bus ticket inspection as deviance enactment.- Strict enforcement or responsive regulation? How inspector-inspectee interaction and inspectors´ role identity shape decision making.- Dynamics of inspectors’ enforcement styles.- Power dynamics and power asymmetries in the interaction between street-level inspectors and inspectees.- Stimulating collaboration and cooperation in tax inspection.- Welfare fraud inspectors between standardization and discretion.- Collective discretionary room: How inspectors decide with providers and citizens.- A micro-level perspective on joint inspections: how teamwork shapes decision making.- The decision made. On the inspection encounter.