Paulien de Winter

Paulien de Winter is assistant professor at the department of Constitutional Law, Administrative Law & Public Administration. Her expertise is qualitative empirical research. She studied Sociology at the University of Groningen. In 2019 she completed her PhD thesis, titled ‘Between the rules’ at the Faculty of Law at the University of Groningen. She conducted a social-legal study of the enforcement of social security law in the Netherlands. She studied five implementing agencies (Social Assistance Agencies and Employee Insurance Agencies) and used several data collection methods: participatory observations, in-depth interviews and analysis of policy documents and files.

For her post-doc, Paulien conducted research on implementing a digital instrument for civil servants, helping them to distinguish different types of beneficiaries based on their compliance posture. Her main research interests are street-level bureaucrats, enforcement, discretionary space, enforcement styles and group processes. In her future research, Paulien will focus on street-level bureaucrats and influences of group processes on their enforcement behavior.

Paulien teaches different courses in public administration and sociology of law: Introduction of Sociology of Law, Policy Analysis (bachelor), Elementary Public Administration, Seminar Policy Analysis (master) and Policy Science. She also coordinates the Minor Politics and Governance at the University of Groningen. Besides this, she is editorial secretary for Law of Reality (Recht der Werkelijkheid, Boom juridisch), secretary of the Association for Public Administration (Vereniging voor Bestuurskunde Kring Noord) and permanent author of Ars Aequi Quarterly Signal Sociology of Law.