The Responsive Raid

An Analysis of the Dual Logics of Generalization in judging Businesses’ Tax Compliance and in doing Responsive Regulation

Abstract

The article investigates an instance of responsive regulation as a team of  inspectors  conducts  an  unannounced  raid. The raid takes  place in Denmark and its aim is to judge and regulate tax compliance in a number of small businesses. The article argues that different ‘logics of generalization’ is at play as inspectors as well as business owners value the state-­of-­affairs in the businesses. Furthermore, the article discusses how the inspectors are responsive in the raid. It argues that they are responsive – not primarily towards the behaviour of the taxpayers – but towards a general public. The article hereby engages in the debate concerning what responsive regulation is and how  it is played out in practice as the state regulates citizens and businesses. The overall analytical framework is inspired by Helen Verran’s notion of ‘relational  empiricism’, and the analysis is an example of how this analytic can be used as a heuristic to analyze ethnographic data.