Abstract
To tackle social problems inspectors need to organize the involvement of others. The involvement of others fosters inspectors to create a wider picture of the situation and expand their repertoire of actions. The literature on regulatory bureaucracies overlooks the need to organize the involvement of relevant others. The concept of collective discretionary room fills this gap. Collective discretionary room organizes: (1) interaction between inspectors, regulated services, citizens and all relevant others, (2) reflective processes that open up opportunities to improve ways of working and enhance responsiveness. In addition, the notion of collective discretionary room explicates skills inspectors need to develop that is the skill to recognize alternative views and to demonstrate impact. With the example of the Joint Inspectorate Social Domain in the Netherlands, we illustrate how inspectors involve others in these ways.
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- 1.
In addition to the enforcement pyramid, the literature on responsive regulation comprises various other strategies; tripartism, enforced self-regulation and partial industry regulation (Ayres and Braithwaite 1992).
- 2.
The enforcement pyramid was complemented by a pyramid of support (Braithwaite et al. 2007; Ford and Affolder 2011; Mascini 2013). The pyramid of support is designed to encourage learning by recognizing and rewarding innovation and improvement. It is supposed to urge the regulated services to expand their strengths in order to raise the performance of actors, breaking through new ceilings, and to tackle problems of concern to inspectorates (Braithwaite 2011).
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Rutz, S., de Bont, A. (2019). Collective Discretionary Room: How Inspectors Decide with Providers and Citizens. In: Van de Walle, S., Raaphorst, N. (eds) Inspectors and Enforcement at the Front Line of Government . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04058-1_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04058-1_10
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