Between Scylla and Charybdis - Regulators’ Supervisory Practice in the Face of Harmful but Legal Regulatee Conduct

Public regulators frequently come across organizational conduct which they consider harmful, even though this conduct is not forbidden by regulations. Remarkably, almost all regulators examined in this dissertation undertake ‘interventions beyond the law’ – supervisory interventions not based on enforcement powers – to counteract such conduct. A range of research techniques provides insight into why and how regulators thus go beyond their legal enforcement mandate. In practice their response is rarely driven by explicit policy. The response rather emerges from how regulators see their own role. Domain characteristics play a part, as well as inspectors’ individual viewpoints (although it seems, surprisingly, not their demographic characteristics). To what extent regulators are effective in averting harmful but legal conduct may depend on how inspectors play the supervisory game and navigate the moral and relational vulnerabilities as detailed in this dissertation. But ultimately the legitimacy of interventions beyond the law may depend on how a regulator maintains alignment with its environment and copes with the associated dilemmas