Introduction

Every year, almost every day, and in almost every country in the world, regulatory inspectors working in different policy areas get into their cars and go on inspection visits. Before the visits, they have spent some time at the office answering emails, returning phone calls and going through the case files of the businesses that they are going to. The businesses are often quite various; some are large, some small; some are public businesses, others are private; some are on the verge of bankruptcy, others are booming. Some businesses have everything under control and may even have trained employees responsible for observing the regulations. Other businesses have no idea about the regulations and what the inspectors are telling them. During a year, it adds up to several thousand kilometres on the road, hundreds of handshakes, countless instructions, injunctions, recommendations and agreements, and a huge number of meetings, telephone conversations and follow-ups.

According to Lipsky's seminal definition, regulatory inspectors are street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) since they ‘interact directly with citizens in the course of their jobs, and have substantial discretion in the execution of their work’ (Lipsky, 2010 (1980, p 3). Regulatory inspection includes health and safety, environment, fire precaution, veterinary inspection, nursing homes, and so on. As all SLBs, regulatory inspectors work at the interface between citizens and the state and they act as state agents, but because direct citizen interaction is difficult to assess and monitor, regulatory inspectors exercise considerable discretion, and, as such, they have significant opportunities to influence the implementation of public policies (Meyers and Nielsen, 2012). This presents two important questions: how and why do the dynamics of the interaction between inspector and regulatee affect the behavior and discretionary choices of regulatory inspectors? And how does the behavioural outcome of the interaction fit with the normative requirements and expectations about those who work as ‘law enforcers at the frontier of the state’?

Based primarily on Danish empirical studies in various policy areas, this chapter focuses on the behaviour and discretionary choices of regulatory inspectors. Focus is on the interaction between inspectors and regulatees, and on how and why the dynamics of the interaction between regulatory agents and regulated stakeholders affect the outcome of the interaction.