Institutionalized enforcement of administrative compliance: state regulator use of noncompliance burdens

Abstract Administrative burden scholarship typically examines rules and regulations affecting access to public benefits during initial citizen–state interactions. Scholars agree that individual burdens function as “hidden politics” because policy changes during implementation through bureaucratic discretion. Less is known about bureaucratic behavior or hidden politics enforced on third-party service providers maintaining compliance. In this article, we address this by examining noncompliance burdens imposed on abortion providers to understand if regulators emulate peers’ behavior. Using an institutional theoretical framework and administrative records from the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (FAHCA) on abortion provider oversight, we construct a directed dyadic event history model using 1540 dyad-year observations to predict isomorphism or divergence of sanction activities across regulatory field offices. We find that regulatory field offices emulate behavior of others based on peer’s previous sanction behavior and oversight workload. We also find that regulators diverge from peers based on the regulatory conditions of their own jurisdiction.