The relation between citizens and their administration may not be a problem for policymakers, but it can be for citizens. Finding redress against mistakes and wrongful actions of the government or local administrators is not so easy in many countries. Organizing access to justice for citizens and ensuring that their complaints are handled swiftly and diligently by the administration, by ombudsmen and by administrative courts can be quite difficult. It is not at all self-evident that citizens have enough confidence in the right outcome of complaint and court proceedings. This book contains a comparative study of administrative pre-trial proceedings in England and Wales, France, Germany and the Netherlands. The analysis focuses on how to design administrative proceedings – objection proceedings, complaint proceedings and otherwise. While doing so, the authors make recommendations from which both public administration and citizens may benefit. After all, administrative pre-trial proceedings should contribute to the realization of a predictable public administration under the rule of law. The World Bank assigned the original study on which this book is based.