Public Encounters as Venues for Citizen Participation: Probation in Belgium as an Extreme Case to Study the ‘In-Between’

Public encounters (Goodsell, 1981) are one of the primary venues through which citizens experience the state (Moynihan & Herd, 2010). Hence, nothing less than the legitimacy and trust attributed to the state apparatus are at stake (Moynihan & Soss, 2014). While public encounters have long been characterized as a one-way street dominated by frontline bureaucrats (e.g., Lipsky, 1980/2010; Prottas, 1978), as venues for policymaking on the ground (Brodkin, 2012), they are promising for participatory governance (see Bartels, 2014). Recent studies recognize the agency citizens may enjoy in public encounters, thereby participating in the construction of these interactions and their outcomes (e.g., Hand & Catlaw, 2019; Raaphorst and Loyens 2018). However, how citizens participate in the course and outcomes of public encounters remains unclear. As public encounters are fundamentally processual and interactional (Bartels, 2013; Samanta & Hand, 2022), this study assumes that, to fill this gap, we must shed light on the “in-between”, namely on the process of “(…) interwoven situated performances (…)” (Bartels, 2013, p. 476) involving frontline agents and citizens. This paper looks at the performances of the actors, how they respond to each other, and what it means regarding the outcomes of public encounters (see Cissna and Anderson, 1998). Public encounters in the Belgian probation sector are examined as an “extreme” case (Flyvberg, 2006), given their punitive nature: the constrained and codified context of probation likely shapes the participation of probationers in public encounters. These interactions are burdensome for probationers as they entail compliance with a set of conditions (i.e., compliance costs) and a loss of freedom (i.e., psychological costs). This undoubtedly has an impact on their participation (Moynihan et al., 2015) and, subsequently, on probation agents’ performances. Methodologically, a qualitative multi-method approach (Mik-Meyer, 2020) was implemented. Fifty public encounters between probationers and probation agents were observed. They were complemented with Problem-Centered Interviews (Witzel & Reiter, 2012) with most of the actors involved in these interactions. These interviews allow to gain a better understanding of the meanings that each actor gives to his performances. A thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021) was conducted on the dataset. The preliminary results reveal that public encounters are standardized when docile probationers face mechanistic treatment by agents. In probationers-dominated encounters, protesting individuals face withdrawn and lenient probation agents. Encounters are conflictual when agents confront refractory offenders. Finally, in collaborative encounters, probationers comply and actively contribute to shaping the direction of the interactions, while agents give significant importance to their input. The analysis reveals the decisive role of probationers’ relationship with the judiciary in the administrative burden perceived and, therefore, in their interactions with probation agents (see Dupuy and Defacqz, 2022). The ambivalent impact of administrative burden on probationers’ participation in public encounters is emphasized: while psychological costs (e.g., stress, fear, etc.) prompt docility, compliance costs (e.g., prescribed conditions and procedures) encourage protest and resistance. This research raises the issue of the democratization of public services in their daily functioning and contributes to the literature on administrative burden (Herd & Moynihan, 2018).