Rik Peeters
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 4154734 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Rik Peeters |
| NOMBRES | Rik |
| APELLIDO | Peeters |
| FIRMA | PEETERS R |
| AFILIACIONES | Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9013-6192 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 31 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 345 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 30 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2013 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
La experiencia subjetiva de cargas administrativas
El estudio de cargas administrativas ha identificado los costos que los ciudadanos pueden experimentar en sus esfuerzos por obtener acceso real a servicios públicos y beneficios sociales. Sin embargo, se sabe menos sobre cómo la experiencia de cargas administrativas afecta emocionalmente a las personas. Se presenta el análisis de datos originales de una encuesta mexicana sobre si 1) el tiempo gastado en tareas administrativas o 2) la situación de…
Administrative Burdens as a Mechanism of Distributive Politics
This article presents a case study of Mexico City's social housing policy to expand our understanding of administrative burdens as a mechanism of political control over access to services and benefits. Faced with excessive and unclear waiting times for obtaining social housing via the city's social housing institute, citizens affiliate with social organizations that promise a reduction of those burdens in exchange for participation in collective …
A theory of the infrastructure-level bureaucracy
Digital government inclusion
Street-Level Bureaucracy in Weak State Institutions
Most research on street-level bureaucracy has historically been conducted in countries generally characterised by high levels of administrative capacity, professional bureaucracies, stable rules of law, and in industrialised and often liberal democratic societies. However, most of the world’s street-level bureaucrats work under very different social and institutional conditions. Politicised bureaucracies, low social trust in government, systemati…
Burdens on the gateway to the state
Population registries are the gateway to public services, benefits, and rights. However, despite clear formal rules and procedures, people eligible for registration may still face administrative burdens in obtaining access. In this article, we study the case of the municipal registration of people who experience homelessness in Belgium and the Netherlands—a group that typically suffers from administrative vulnerability. Using data from 61 intervi…
Relational street‐level bureaucracy
Various studies have provided evidence that, especially in the Global South, relational street‐level bureaucracy can play a constructive role in bridging the gap between vulnerable population groups and a distant, formal bureaucracy that often fails to guarantee citizens’ rights and factual access to public services and benefits. However, studies have also highlighted street‐level bureaucracies’ vulnerability to practices of corruption, patrimoni…
Burdens, bribes, and bureaucrats
Bribery and other forms of petty corruption typically arise in bureaucratic encounters and are a common element of the everyday experience of the state in many countries, particularly in places with weak institutions. This type of corruption is especially troublesome because it creates direct costs for citizens when accessing services and benefits to which they are formally entitled. However, only a few studies deal with how situational attribute…
Parabureaucracy
In the context of limited state capacity and a politicized public administration, democratic backsliding tends to exploit preexisting deficiencies in the functioning of the public sector. Whereas staffing managerial positions with regime supporters is well‐documented, less attention has been paid to the structuring and staffing of street‐level bureaucracies under a spoils system. In this article, we use document analysis and in‐depth interviews t…
“Nobody wants to be a dead hero”
This study analyzes how adverse working conditions shape frontline workers' behavioral and cognitive coping mechanisms. It builds on the idea of frontline work as a precarious profession and explores how workers deal with associated challenges. Specifically, evidence is provided for factors associated with alienative commitment among frontline workers. We do so against the background of the 2020–2021 Mexican and Brazilian pandemic response by hea…
Digital Administrative Burdens
Innovations in digital government are changing state–citizen interactions. While often seen as means to increase government efficiency and reduce compliance costs for citizens, a growing body of literature suggests citizens may also experience administrative burdens in such interactions. This article aims to provide some cohesion to the existing research and makes three specific contributions. First, it carves out a conceptual common ground by id…
Street-level bureaucracy in weak state institutions
The study of street-level bureaucracy has been dominated by research from the Global North. Mainstream conceptualizations are, therefore, based on observations from institutional contexts that may vary significantly from the working conditions of frontline workers elsewhere. This article takes stock of the growing body of literature on street-level bureaucracy in weak institutional contexts and brings together relevant insights from comparative p…
How information capacity shapes policy implementation
Administrative exclusion in the infrastructure‐level bureaucracy
A key insight in the literature on administrative burdens and exclusion is that they can be a form of policy making by other means to disincentivize people's access to services, rights, and benefits. Using the case of the Dutch daycare benefit scandal, in which tens of thousands of citizens were wrongfully accused of welfare fraud and subsequently excluded from benefits, we argue for a broader understanding of the way administrative burdens can b…
Policy improvisation
How do frontline workers behave when they are, from one day to the other, left without clients because the policy that organized their street‐level interactions has been terminated? This is what happened in early 2019 to the staff of medical centers across Mexico after the sudden transformation of the long‐standing social program Prospera. Interviews with frontline workers show that they respond to this “policy void” by developing strategies of i…
A cascade of exclusion
Administrative burdens can hinder people’s social, political and economic participation. However, most empirical studies usually tackle the issue of how they affect access to citizenship merely indirectly. This article examines administrative exclusion from Argentina’s National Identity Document and its effects on a key social policy: the Universal Child Allowance. Findings indicate that: (1) administrative exclusion from official identity docume…
The unequal distribution of administrative burden
Recent studies have demonstrated that administrative burdens often reinforce existing social inequalities. However, less attention has been paid to explaining which factors cause variation in people's experience of administrative burden. This article builds upon an emerging body of literature on citizen factors to make two contributions. First, a theoretical framework is constructed to provide a coherent overview of existing economic (cost–benefi…
Acting out or playing along
Working under the assumption that societal pockets of low trust in government are likely to proliferate, this introduction to the special issue on “governance in low‐trust settings” integrates insights from the Global South and Global North to analyze how citizens respond to formal rules and service arrangements of public organizations they perceive as untrustworthy. We develop a typology of low trust responses—submission, avoidance, gaming, and …
Taking the bite out of administrative burdens
Despite taking the citizen experience of policy implementation as starting point for analysis, the literature on administrative burdens has mostly portrayed citizens as passive victims of burdens. Based on a literature review, three hypotheses are formulated regarding citizens' capacity to ease the impact of administrative burdens through behavioral adjustment, use of social and human capital, and strategic behavior. Evidence for these strategies…
The Political Economy of Administrative Burdens
Most research on administrative burdens focuses on measuring their impact on citizens’ access to services and benefits. This article fills a theoretical gap and provides a framework for understanding the organizational origins of administrative burden. Based on an extensive literature review, the explanations are organized according to their level of intentionality (deliberate hidden politics or unintended consequences) and their level of formali…
Gaming the system
Citizens' responses to dissatisfaction with public services are often portrayed as following one of four distinct patterns, each consistent with current provision structures: exit, voice, loyalty or neglect (EVLN). Citizens may also initiate efforts to access public services through more subversive supply mechanisms. This study focuses on ‘gaming’ as an additional, understudied response pattern, within which individuals aim at improving the perso…
The agency of algorithms
With the rise of computer algorithms in administrative decision-making, concerns are voiced about their lack of transparency and discretionary space for human decision-makers. However, calls to ‘keep humans in the loop’ may be moot points if we fail to understand how algorithms impact human decision-making and how algorithmic design impacts the practical possibilities for transparency and human discretion. Through a review of recent academic lite…
Smart cities and the architecture of security
The architecture of security is often thought of in terms of situational crime prevention and defensible space. In this article, we argue that the emergence of smart cities and smart technology compel a broader conceptualisation of the design of security, which has the potential to transform the governance of our urban landscape. Drawing on the case of the city of Eindhoven’s “De-escalate” project—in which sound, smell and lighting programming co…
The digital cage
Machine justice
The use of algorithms to predict behaviour is becoming the gold standard in criminal justice in various countries. This article critically analyses the algorithm-driven risk assessment tools used in predictive policing and predictive justice. First, we propose to see algorithms as essentially bureaucratic instruments. They are the digital offspring of the classic bureaucratic procedure, creating classification through standardised and impersonal …
The digital cage
The unequal distribution of administrative burden
Recent studies have demonstrated that administrative burdens often reinforce existing social inequalities. However, less attention has been paid to explaining which factors cause variation in people's experience of administrative burden. This article builds upon an emerging body of literature on citizen factors to make two contributions. First, a theoretical framework is constructed to provide a coherent overview of existing economic (cost–benefi…
The Political Economy of Administrative Burdens
Most research on administrative burdens focuses on measuring their impact on citizens’ access to services and benefits. This article fills a theoretical gap and provides a framework for understanding the organizational origins of administrative burden. Based on an extensive literature review, the explanations are organized according to their level of intentionality (deliberate hidden politics or unintended consequences) and their level of formali…
Taking the bite out of administrative burdens
Despite taking the citizen experience of policy implementation as starting point for analysis, the literature on administrative burdens has mostly portrayed citizens as passive victims of burdens. Based on a literature review, three hypotheses are formulated regarding citizens' capacity to ease the impact of administrative burdens through behavioral adjustment, use of social and human capital, and strategic behavior. Evidence for these strategies…
The agency of algorithms
With the rise of computer algorithms in administrative decision-making, concerns are voiced about their lack of transparency and discretionary space for human decision-makers. However, calls to ‘keep humans in the loop’ may be moot points if we fail to understand how algorithms impact human decision-making and how algorithmic design impacts the practical possibilities for transparency and human discretion. Through a review of recent academic lite…
Parabureaucracy
In the context of limited state capacity and a politicized public administration, democratic backsliding tends to exploit preexisting deficiencies in the functioning of the public sector. Whereas staffing managerial positions with regime supporters is well‐documented, less attention has been paid to the structuring and staffing of street‐level bureaucracies under a spoils system. In this article, we use document analysis and in‐depth interviews t…
Responsibilisation on Government's Terms
The notion of ‘governance’ is often studied from a public management perspective and is associated with the image of a modest or even retreating state. However, ‘governance’ can also be studied from a political perspective, which focuses on issues of power and interests in governance practices. This shifts attention from a modest state to the techniques governments use to step into society and influence citizen behaviour. Whether in crime policy,…
Gaming the system
Citizens' responses to dissatisfaction with public services are often portrayed as following one of four distinct patterns, each consistent with current provision structures: exit, voice, loyalty or neglect (EVLN). Citizens may also initiate efforts to access public services through more subversive supply mechanisms. This study focuses on ‘gaming’ as an additional, understudied response pattern, within which individuals aim at improving the perso…
Manufacturing Responsibility
Responsibilisation is commonly associated with a neoliberal transfer of responsibilities from state to social actors. However, it also covers the construction of responsibility where it does not exist yet – where citizens need socialisation to manufacture responsibility so they become economically and socially active, healthy, and productive subjects. This article aims to bring more conceptual clarity in these practices. Based on an analysis of l…
Machine justice
The use of algorithms to predict behaviour is becoming the gold standard in criminal justice in various countries. This article critically analyses the algorithm-driven risk assessment tools used in predictive policing and predictive justice. First, we propose to see algorithms as essentially bureaucratic instruments. They are the digital offspring of the classic bureaucratic procedure, creating classification through standardised and impersonal …
Acting out or playing along
Working under the assumption that societal pockets of low trust in government are likely to proliferate, this introduction to the special issue on “governance in low‐trust settings” integrates insights from the Global South and Global North to analyze how citizens respond to formal rules and service arrangements of public organizations they perceive as untrustworthy. We develop a typology of low trust responses—submission, avoidance, gaming, and …
Burdens, bribes, and bureaucrats
Bribery and other forms of petty corruption typically arise in bureaucratic encounters and are a common element of the everyday experience of the state in many countries, particularly in places with weak institutions. This type of corruption is especially troublesome because it creates direct costs for citizens when accessing services and benefits to which they are formally entitled. However, only a few studies deal with how situational attribute…
The Preventive Gaze
How information capacity shapes policy implementation
A cascade of exclusion
Administrative burdens can hinder people’s social, political and economic participation. However, most empirical studies usually tackle the issue of how they affect access to citizenship merely indirectly. This article examines administrative exclusion from Argentina’s National Identity Document and its effects on a key social policy: the Universal Child Allowance. Findings indicate that: (1) administrative exclusion from official identity docume…
The birth of mindpolitics
The price of prevention
Over the past decades, the much-debated ‘punitive turn’ has substantially transformed the field of crime policy. However, a simultaneous ‘preventative turn’ has changed the role of the state at least as fundamentally. A case study of Dutch crime policy shows how prevention both complements and contradicts the classic judicial approach under the rule of law. Not the judge and judicial apparatus, but the executive power is pivotal in the approach t…
Burdens on the gateway to the state
Population registries are the gateway to public services, benefits, and rights. However, despite clear formal rules and procedures, people eligible for registration may still face administrative burdens in obtaining access. In this article, we study the case of the municipal registration of people who experience homelessness in Belgium and the Netherlands—a group that typically suffers from administrative vulnerability. Using data from 61 intervi…
Relational street‐level bureaucracy
Various studies have provided evidence that, especially in the Global South, relational street‐level bureaucracy can play a constructive role in bridging the gap between vulnerable population groups and a distant, formal bureaucracy that often fails to guarantee citizens’ rights and factual access to public services and benefits. However, studies have also highlighted street‐level bureaucracies’ vulnerability to practices of corruption, patrimoni…
Digital government inclusion
Responsibilisation on Government's Terms
The notion of ‘governance’ is often studied from a public management perspective and is associated with the image of a modest or even retreating state. However, ‘governance’ can also be studied from a political perspective, which focuses on issues of power and interests in governance practices. This shifts attention from a modest state to the techniques governments use to step into society and influence citizen behaviour. Whether in crime policy,…
The Preventive Gaze
Punishment, protection, and precaution
In the aftermath of severe and unprecedented riots in a small Dutch town, local inhabitants express a broad and contradictory set of interpretations of what had happened and opinions on who should be held responsible. In order to understand this variety, we reinterpret Ewald’s theory on the transformations in the modern attitude towards risk and responsibility. Instead of distinct historical phases, the three attitudes identified by Ewald are sim…
The price of prevention
Over the past decades, the much-debated ‘punitive turn’ has substantially transformed the field of crime policy. However, a simultaneous ‘preventative turn’ has changed the role of the state at least as fundamentally. A case study of Dutch crime policy shows how prevention both complements and contradicts the classic judicial approach under the rule of law. Not the judge and judicial apparatus, but the executive power is pivotal in the approach t…
The birth of mindpolitics
Manufacturing Responsibility
Responsibilisation is commonly associated with a neoliberal transfer of responsibilities from state to social actors. However, it also covers the construction of responsibility where it does not exist yet – where citizens need socialisation to manufacture responsibility so they become economically and socially active, healthy, and productive subjects. This article aims to bring more conceptual clarity in these practices. Based on an analysis of l…
Smart cities and the architecture of security
The architecture of security is often thought of in terms of situational crime prevention and defensible space. In this article, we argue that the emergence of smart cities and smart technology compel a broader conceptualisation of the design of security, which has the potential to transform the governance of our urban landscape. Drawing on the case of the city of Eindhoven’s “De-escalate” project—in which sound, smell and lighting programming co…
The digital cage
Machine justice
The use of algorithms to predict behaviour is becoming the gold standard in criminal justice in various countries. This article critically analyses the algorithm-driven risk assessment tools used in predictive policing and predictive justice. First, we propose to see algorithms as essentially bureaucratic instruments. They are the digital offspring of the classic bureaucratic procedure, creating classification through standardised and impersonal …
The Political Economy of Administrative Burdens
Most research on administrative burdens focuses on measuring their impact on citizens’ access to services and benefits. This article fills a theoretical gap and provides a framework for understanding the organizational origins of administrative burden. Based on an extensive literature review, the explanations are organized according to their level of intentionality (deliberate hidden politics or unintended consequences) and their level of formali…
Gaming the system
Citizens' responses to dissatisfaction with public services are often portrayed as following one of four distinct patterns, each consistent with current provision structures: exit, voice, loyalty or neglect (EVLN). Citizens may also initiate efforts to access public services through more subversive supply mechanisms. This study focuses on ‘gaming’ as an additional, understudied response pattern, within which individuals aim at improving the perso…
The agency of algorithms
With the rise of computer algorithms in administrative decision-making, concerns are voiced about their lack of transparency and discretionary space for human decision-makers. However, calls to ‘keep humans in the loop’ may be moot points if we fail to understand how algorithms impact human decision-making and how algorithmic design impacts the practical possibilities for transparency and human discretion. Through a review of recent academic lite…
The unequal distribution of administrative burden
Recent studies have demonstrated that administrative burdens often reinforce existing social inequalities. However, less attention has been paid to explaining which factors cause variation in people's experience of administrative burden. This article builds upon an emerging body of literature on citizen factors to make two contributions. First, a theoretical framework is constructed to provide a coherent overview of existing economic (cost–benefi…
Acting out or playing along
Working under the assumption that societal pockets of low trust in government are likely to proliferate, this introduction to the special issue on “governance in low‐trust settings” integrates insights from the Global South and Global North to analyze how citizens respond to formal rules and service arrangements of public organizations they perceive as untrustworthy. We develop a typology of low trust responses—submission, avoidance, gaming, and …
Taking the bite out of administrative burdens
Despite taking the citizen experience of policy implementation as starting point for analysis, the literature on administrative burdens has mostly portrayed citizens as passive victims of burdens. Based on a literature review, three hypotheses are formulated regarding citizens' capacity to ease the impact of administrative burdens through behavioral adjustment, use of social and human capital, and strategic behavior. Evidence for these strategies…
Policy improvisation
How do frontline workers behave when they are, from one day to the other, left without clients because the policy that organized their street‐level interactions has been terminated? This is what happened in early 2019 to the staff of medical centers across Mexico after the sudden transformation of the long‐standing social program Prospera. Interviews with frontline workers show that they respond to this “policy void” by developing strategies of i…
A cascade of exclusion
Administrative burdens can hinder people’s social, political and economic participation. However, most empirical studies usually tackle the issue of how they affect access to citizenship merely indirectly. This article examines administrative exclusion from Argentina’s National Identity Document and its effects on a key social policy: the Universal Child Allowance. Findings indicate that: (1) administrative exclusion from official identity docume…
“Nobody wants to be a dead hero”
This study analyzes how adverse working conditions shape frontline workers' behavioral and cognitive coping mechanisms. It builds on the idea of frontline work as a precarious profession and explores how workers deal with associated challenges. Specifically, evidence is provided for factors associated with alienative commitment among frontline workers. We do so against the background of the 2020–2021 Mexican and Brazilian pandemic response by hea…
Digital Administrative Burdens
Innovations in digital government are changing state–citizen interactions. While often seen as means to increase government efficiency and reduce compliance costs for citizens, a growing body of literature suggests citizens may also experience administrative burdens in such interactions. This article aims to provide some cohesion to the existing research and makes three specific contributions. First, it carves out a conceptual common ground by id…
Street-level bureaucracy in weak state institutions
The study of street-level bureaucracy has been dominated by research from the Global North. Mainstream conceptualizations are, therefore, based on observations from institutional contexts that may vary significantly from the working conditions of frontline workers elsewhere. This article takes stock of the growing body of literature on street-level bureaucracy in weak institutional contexts and brings together relevant insights from comparative p…
How information capacity shapes policy implementation
Administrative exclusion in the infrastructure‐level bureaucracy
A key insight in the literature on administrative burdens and exclusion is that they can be a form of policy making by other means to disincentivize people's access to services, rights, and benefits. Using the case of the Dutch daycare benefit scandal, in which tens of thousands of citizens were wrongfully accused of welfare fraud and subsequently excluded from benefits, we argue for a broader understanding of the way administrative burdens can b…
Street-Level Bureaucracy in Weak State Institutions
Most research on street-level bureaucracy has historically been conducted in countries generally characterised by high levels of administrative capacity, professional bureaucracies, stable rules of law, and in industrialised and often liberal democratic societies. However, most of the world’s street-level bureaucrats work under very different social and institutional conditions. Politicised bureaucracies, low social trust in government, systemati…
Burdens on the gateway to the state
Population registries are the gateway to public services, benefits, and rights. However, despite clear formal rules and procedures, people eligible for registration may still face administrative burdens in obtaining access. In this article, we study the case of the municipal registration of people who experience homelessness in Belgium and the Netherlands—a group that typically suffers from administrative vulnerability. Using data from 61 intervi…
Relational street‐level bureaucracy
Various studies have provided evidence that, especially in the Global South, relational street‐level bureaucracy can play a constructive role in bridging the gap between vulnerable population groups and a distant, formal bureaucracy that often fails to guarantee citizens’ rights and factual access to public services and benefits. However, studies have also highlighted street‐level bureaucracies’ vulnerability to practices of corruption, patrimoni…
Political science (26 obras) · Sociology (17 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Economics (15 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Politics (14 obras) · Business (13 obras) · Public Administration (13 obras) · Public relations (12 obras) · Public Administration (11 obras)