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

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 experiment (n = 318) and replication (n = 311) 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.