Reputational Responsive Regulation: A case study of Irish Ombudsman

Recently there has been a growing expectation for public oversight bodies to act as governance reform advisers alongside their traditional watchdog function over abuse of public powers. The issue has been, though, that performing both roles successfully is seen as impossible: while the watchdog function occasionally requires an assertive appearance towards overseen public officials, which is often confrontational, the latter necessitates a more harmonic relationship in which the public official willingly embraces the reform advise of the oversight body. This has led authors to question whether the two roles are compatible at all (Pierre and Licht 2019). It is argued in this paper that the two functions could be bridged if a crafty reputational strategy is advanced. To illustrate one such crafty reputational strategy, the paper provides an analysis of the Irish Ombudsman’s work pursued under its previous head during his two mandates. The evidence reveals a sophisticated reputational strategy, in which, on the hand, the Ombudsman advanced a system of gradual escalation of negative reputational consequences to repeatedly non-compliant officials. Rather than being based on an outright resort to public ‘banking and shaming’, the observed system involved various enrollment strategies which reduced the confrontational ‘readiness’ of the overseen officials. While leading to improved levels of compliance with the standards of administrative justice, this system has also enabled the Ombudsman to maximise the effects of its role as a governance advisor. The case study reveals that responsive regulation could be developed even when a regulator does not possess formal sanctioning powers whose existence is central to the concept of the traditional pyramid.