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.I nspectors 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 ...

This study investigates street-level bureaucrats' enforcement style and its underlying dimensions by developing and validating a multidimensional measurement scale. Developing a measurement scale for enforcement style is relevant because the number of underlying dimensions is contested and studies developing measurement scales are scarce. This complicates cross-sector and cross-national comparisons. Using a survey among inspectors of the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, street-level enforcement style is found to comprising three dimensions: (1) legal, (2) facilitation, and ( 3) accommodation. This study contributes to more validated measurement instruments by presenting a 13-item measure that can be used to study street-level bureaucrats' enforcement style.

Citizens encounter many street‐level bureaucrats in their lifetime. How do they assess the traits of the bureaucrats they meet? Understanding citizens’ assessments of bureaucrats is important, because citizens are not passive receivers of policies. This article explores citizens’ classifications of street‐level bureaucrats based on their core task. Using a factorial survey (n = 580), three clusters of bureaucrats are identified: those who are regulation oriented, those who are service oriented, and those who are both regulation and service oriented. Then, the article tests how these three types of bureaucrats are assessed on warmth and competence and whether their gender matters. A between‐subjects experiment (n = 1,602) reveals that regulation‐oriented bureaucrats are assessed as least competent and warm. Moreover, regardless of core task, female bureaucrats are assessed as warmer than males. Female and male bureaucrats are assessed as equally competent. This article shows that bureaucrats are stereotyped by citizens and discusses the implications for the public management literature. Evidence for Practice While researchers and practitioners tend to focus on commonalities between street‐level bureaucrats, focusing on differences—for instance, in terms of core task and gender—may be helpful to understand how citizens see and react to their encounters with bureaucrats. Much like street‐level bureaucrats’ stereotypical notions of citizens, citizens stereotype the bureaucrats they encounter. These stereotypes are based on cues related to the bureaucrats’ core task and gender. Especially for regulation‐oriented organizations and street‐level bureaucrats, such as inspectorates, being aware of stereotypes may be useful when engaging with citizens because they are rated as the least competent and warm.

A dominant assumption in the street-level bureaucracy literature is that bureaucrats' discretion is curtailed by automated systems. Drawing on survey and factual data (n = 549) from Dutch inspectors, we test the effect of automation on enforcement style and whether this can be explained by discretion-as-perceived. Our results show that automation (1) increases bureaucrats' legal and accommodation style; (2) discretion-as-perceived does not mediate this effect; but (3) automation does decrease discretion-as-perceived. The main implication is that we do not find empirical evidence for curtailment and future research should move beyond discretion to understand effects of digital systems on bureaucrats' behaviour.

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