Paulien de Winter receives NIAS Fellowship to find out how group dynamics influence public servants’ enforcement style

Paulien de Winter, who has recently started at Utrecht University’s School of Law as an associate professor of Legal Theory and researcher with the Montaigne Centre for Rule of Law and Administration of Justice, has been granted a NIAS fellowship (sponsored by Instituut Gak) for the coming year. She will use the semester to delve deeper into her ongoing research: the implementation of social security regulation at a practical level, the so-called ‘frontline’ where public servants and citizens meet. Paulien will now look closer at the way group dynamics among street-level bureaucrats influence enforcement styles, and how these can help achieve a human-centred approach to enforcement. The recent Childcare benefits scandal illustrates the importance of this perspective.

Over the past decades there has been a rising call for stricter rules and enforcement, to combat the suspected misuse and fraudulous use of social security amenities. However, since the introduction in 2013 of legislation aimed at tighter enforcement and sanctioning (popularly known as the ‘Fraud Act’) this method of enforcement has been under discussion, and currently –  especially in the wake of the Childcare benefits scandal and the subsequent parliamentary inquiry – politicians are calling for a more humane approach. This raises the question: What can be done to achieve a fairer and more people-centered enforcement in the future?

A substantial part of the answer may be rooted in the organizational culture and internal group dynamics. How officials enforce rules, depends on how they apply them, whether they use persuasion or punishment, and how they respond to different situations. It is important to remember that these choices aren’t made in isolation. Bureaucrats are affected by social structures when they enforce rules.

Thus, the central research question is: What is the influence of group dynamics on the enforcement styles of street-level bureaucrats, and how can these group processes contribute to the realization of a human-centered approach to enforcement? Paulien will undertake a review of the literature and analyse interviews with frontline officials, to see how shared knowledge and collective beliefs may influence their work, and how informal norms evolve concerning the interpretation of rules and responses to citizens' transgressions.