A Study of Street-Level Bureaucracy: A look at current applications of Michael Lipsky's Street-Level Bureaucratic Theory; defining the bureaucracy, the street-level bureaucratic paradox, the development of routines and heuristics, the innate complexity of bureaucratic work, and coping mechanisms employed

1. Bureaucratic
Discretion
Michael-Paul James

2. POLITICWhat is a Bureaucracy
A Bureaucracy is a rational actor that
aims to provide informed decision
making following reliable procedures.
Features (Max Weber)
● Strict hierarchical structure
● Rigid division of labor
● Formal chains of authority
Characteristics
● Specialized expertise
○ Authority for oversight
● Certainty
○ Standard procedures on
tested assumptions: rules
● Continuity
○ Commitment to procedures.
● Unity
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3. POLITICThe Shaping of Policy
● Enabling Legislation
○ Assigns authority to agencies to fill in the
details of how a policy is to be
implemented
● Implementation
○ Process of putting a policy, plan, law, or
regulation into practice
● Autonomy
○ Bureaucrats enter a political process with
high levels of autonomy
● Proposed regulations
○ published in the federal register, daily
journal of the federal government.
● Laws to Control the Bureaucracy
○ Freedom of information act (1966)
○ National Envirnomental Policy Act (1969)
○ Privacy Act (1974)
○ Government in the Sunshine Act (1976)
● Congressional Oversight Power
○ Budgetary and personal controls
○ Congressional committees
○ Judicial Review
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4. POLITICIron Triangle Congress
Interest Groups Bureaucracy
Funding&
PoliticalSupport
PolicyChoices&
Execution
Congressional Support, via Lobby
Low Regulation, Special Favors
ElectoralSupport
FriendlyLegislation&
Oversight
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5. POLITICListofFederal
Agenciesinthe
UnitedStates
● United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
● United States Department of Commerce
● United States Department of Defense (DOD)
● United States Department of Education
● United States Department of Energy
● United States Department of Health and Human Services
● United States Department of Homeland Security
● United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
● United States Department of the Interior
● United States Department of Justice
● United States Department of Labor (DOL)
● United States Department of State (DOS)
● United States Department of Transportation
● United States Department of the Treasury
● United States Department of Veterans Affairs
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6. DEFINELimitations of the Bureaucrats
● Street-Level Bureaucrats (SLB):
○ People who meet citizens at the interface between citizenship and government.
○ Teachers, Social Workers, Postal Workers, Police Officers, Firefighters, Judges, etc.
○ Responsible for delivering the policy created elsewhere.
● Exercise of discretion is a critical component
○ Limited by time, information, and resources, while processed in mass.
○ Difficult to apply what one knows quickly to a particular situation without full information
● Seemingly unrelated bureaucratic functions have unifying characteristics.
○ Value add is the comparative quality of comparing diverse occupations horizontally
“Policy implementation in the end comes down to the people who actually implement it.” -Lipsky, 1980
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7. DEFINEThe Reality of Policy Implementation
● Paradox: How to treat everyone equally while being responsive to individual
distinctiveness.
● Policy is the result of the aggregation of many roles, actions, and events.
○ The idealized state during creation quickly evolves as bureaucrats attempt to apply it.
● Heuristics and routines become the policy, regardless of original intent.
○ De jure discretion describes legally recognized practices
○ De facto describes conditions as they exist, although not necessarily legitimate
● Street level bureaucrats shape policy outcomes, and thus policy.
● Complexity makes equal and adequate service impossible.
● Inspite difficulties, citizens express a high level of satifisfaction with SLBs
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8. COMPLEXComplex Working Conditions
Problem of resources
● Demand for services is almost always higher than supply.
● Government tries to provide service to as many people as possible.
● Better services often increases demand resulting in increased capacity
not increase in quality.
Ambiguity of Goals
Challenging relationship with clients
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9. COMPLEXComplex Working Conditions
Problem of resources
Ambiguity of Goals
● Conflicting goals faced by professionals.
● Attempts to measure job performance may cause goal displacement:
such as focus on measurements or outputs and not the outcome or
purpose of the measurement..
Challenging relationship with clients
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10. COMPLEXComplex Working Conditions
Problem of resources
Ambiguity of Goals
Challenging relationship with clients
● Client participation is often not voluntary, unlike costly private market.
● Less affluent persons are more likely to engage multiple service providers
● Street Level Bureaucrats have relative leverage over clients.
● Inherent inequality + overburdened: incentivizes to minimize time spent.
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11. COMPLEXComplex Working Conditions
Under time and resource constraints, professionals tend to gauge a client’s
“worthiness of service” based on general characteristics and first impressions
to expedite decision making.
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12. COPINGCoping Strategies: How to decide?
Complex working conditions
● Problem of resources
● Goal Ambiguity of goals
● Challenging relationship with
clients
Aim of Coping Strategies
● Reduce complexity
● Maintain occupational control
● Manage stress
Two primary Strategies
● Rationing services
● Conserving resources
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13. COPINGRationing services
Vary the amount of services given to clients
● Queueing:
Prioritizing profesional time.
○ First come first serve
○ By appointment
○ Waiting list
● Prioritising
○ Paying more for personal attention.
○ Making exceptions to rules.
○ Ignoring a clients indiscretion.
● Creaming
○ Choosing only clients that are more
likely to be successful
● Worker bias
○ Likeability
○ Social demographic variables
○ Societal norms
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14. COPINGConserving resources
Controlling the sitution by
● Husbanding
○ Creating a reservoir of excess resources that can be used when
needed
● Screening
○ The processing of information about clients before they interact with
service professionals
● Rubberstamping
○ When professionals routinely accept the judgement of other
professionals as their own.
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15. CASECulture (Cohen 2018)
Informal Payments for Healthcare (IPHC) Illegal Activity Legal or Semi-Legal
Better Treatment from Payment Black Payment Grey Payment
Equal or Worse treatment from Payment Lost Payments Gratitude Payments
Attitudes n Positive (%) Partly Positive (%) Negative (%)
Accepting Gifts 87 62% 22% 16%
Favoritism (Protektsia) 63 13% 17% 70%
Taking Bribes 98 2% 3% 95%
Protektsia, a cultural norm in Israel, refers to the practice of showing friends and family preferential
treatment.
43%
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16. CASERDI (Brattström and Hellström 2019)
Research, Development, and Innovation at Swedish Energy Agency (SEA)
Discretion Social Aspect Epistemic Aspect
Scope Broadening Find & fund new partners Evaluating market of ideas
Narrowing Steering competencies toward niches Finding epistemic niches
Programming Downward Create new processes for new priorities Create new content for future-orientation
Upward Create structure; introduce competitors Modifying former content with new themes
Criteria Selectivity Collaborate criteria, modify rules Create sub-criteria for specific fields
Flexibility Use criteria for ex-post justification Interpreting criteria to fund new fields
Epistemic Basic Steer towards commercialization Steer to basic science from innovation
Applied Steer towards applied sciences Steer to basic science from commercial
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17. CASERangers (Maier and Winkel 2017)
Integrative conservation combines conservation objectives and sustainable forest management practices in service of timber production
Five factors of Influence
● Individual factors or characteristics
● Contextual factors, public pressure
● External actors, experts
● Organizational factors, internal norms
● Political factors, policy and process
Q1: How do local forest managers perceive their role and performance in the implementation of integrative
nature conservation policies?
Q2: To what extent are local management decisions related to nature conservation influenced by individual,
contextual, organizational or political factors, or external actors?
Q3: What general conclusions can be drawn for the implementation of integrated nature conservation
policies in forests primarily managed for timber production?
Findings
● Conflict between timber and conservation
○ Limited by local decisions
○ Internal struggle with public reaction
○ Different goals than management in
timber, recreation, and conservation
● Support for Integrative Conservation 17

18. CASEGap
Street-level bureaucracy primary looks at the individual and aggregates
decisions to determine the realized policy (Lipsky 1980).
Although research has been conducted on computerization within the
healthcare market (Giest and Raaphorst 2018), the field suffers a gap on the
effects of external structural norms and interfaces between the public and
SLBs.
Why does the gap exist?
What assumptions might be blurred through normalizing all client interface?
What can be learned through examining the channels of interaction?
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19. SOURCESBibliography
● Brodkin, Evelyn Z. “Reflections on Street‐Level Bureaucracy: Past, Present, and Future.” Public Administration
Review. Hoboken, USA: Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., November 2012.
● Funder, Mikkel, and Mweemba, Carol Emma. “Interface Bureaucrats and the Everyday Remaking of Climate
Interventions: Evidence from Climate Change Adaptation in Zambia.” Global Environmental Change 55 (March
2019): 130–138.
● Brattström, Erik, and Hellström, Tomas. “Street-Level Priority-Setting: The Role of Discretion in Implementation
of Research, Development, and Innovation Priorities.” Energy Policy 127 (April 2019): 240–247.
● Maier, Carolin, and Winkel, Georg. “Implementing Nature Conservation through Integrated Forest Management:
A Street-Level Bureaucracy Perspective on the German Public Forest Sector.” Forest Policy and Economics 82
(September 2017): 14–29.
● Cohen, Nissim. “How Culture Affects Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Bending the Rules in the Context of Informal
Payments for Health Care: The Israeli Case.” The American Review of Public Administration 48, no. 2 (February
2018): 175–187.
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20. SOURCESBibliography
● Hoyle, Louise. “‘I Mean, Obviously You’re Using Your Discretion’: Nurses Use of Discretion in Policy
Implementation” 13, no. 2 (April 2014): 189–202.
● Buvik, Kristin. “The Hole in the Doughnut: a Study of Police Discretion in a Nightlife Setting.” Policing and
Society 26, no. 7 (October 2, 2016): 771–788.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10439463.2014.989157.
● Chiarello, Elizabeth. “The War on Drugs Comes to the Pharmacy Counter: Frontline Work in the Shadow of
Discrepant Institutional Logics.” Law & Social Inquiry 40, no. 1 (February 2015): 86–122.
● Maynard-Moody, Steven, and Michael Musheno. "Dealing with Faces." In Cops, Teachers, Counselors: Stories
from the Front Lines of Public Service, 3-8. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003.
www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11924.5.
● Lipsky, Martin. 2010 (reprint). Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. Russell
Sage Foundation, Preface & Chapters 1-2.
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21. SOURCESBibliography
● Evans, Tony. Professional Discretion in Welfare Services Beyond Street-Level Bureaucracy. London: Taylor and
Francis, 2016.
● Cooper, Maxwell J F, Sornalingam, Sangeetha, O’Donnell, Catherine, and Cooper, Maxwell J F. “Street-Level
Bureaucracy: An Underused Theoretical Model for General Practice?” The British journal of general practice :
the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners 65, no. 636 (July 1, 2015): 376–377.
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1692293289/.
● Evans, Tony, and John Harris, Street-Level Bureaucracy, Social Work and the (Exaggerated) Death of Discretion,
The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 34, Issue 6, September 2004, Pages 871–895,
https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bch106
● Buffat, Aurélien. "When and Why Discretion Is Weak or Strong: The Case of Taxing Officers in a Public
Unemployment Fund." In Understanding Street-level Bureaucracy, edited by Buffat Aurélien, Hupe Peter, and Hill
Michael, 79-96. Bristol, UK; Chicago, IL, USA: Bristol University Press, 2015. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1t89bw0.9.
● Prottas, Jeffrey Manditch. People-Processing : the Street-Level Bureaucrat in Public Service Bureaucracies
Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books, 1979.
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22. AMAZINGYou are
AmazingAsk me all the questions you desire. I will do my best to answer
honestly and strive to grasp your intent and creativity
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