Street Level Bureaucracy

Street-Level Bureaucracy is an insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs.

This book draws together internationally acclaimed scholars from across the world to address the roles of public officials whose jobs involve dealing directly with the public. Covering a broad range of jobs, including the delivery of benefits and services, the regulation of social and economic behavior, and the expression and maintenance of public values, the book presents in-depth discussions of different approaches, the possibilities for discretionary autonomy, and directions for further research in the field.

When the objectives of public policy programmes have been formulated and decided upon, implementation seems just a matter of following instructions. However, it is underway to the realization of those objectives that public policies get their final substance and form. Crucial is what happens in and around the encounter between public officials and individual citizens at the street level of government bureaucracy. This Research Handbook addresses the state of the art while providing a systematic exploration of the theoretical and methodological issues apparent in the study of street-level bureaucracy and how to deal with them.

First published in 1980, Street-Level Bureaucracy received critical acclaim for its insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs. Three decades later, the need to bolster the availability and effectiveness of healthcare, social services, education, and law enforcement is as urgent as ever. In this thirtieth anniversary expanded edition, Michael Lipsky revisits the territory he mapped out in the first edition to reflect on significant policy developments over the last several decades. Despite the difficulties of managing these front-line workers, he shows how street-level bureaucracies can be and regularly are brought into line with public purposes. Street-level bureaucrats—from teachers and police officers to social workers and legal-aid lawyers—interact directly with the public and so represent the frontlines of government policy. In Street-Level Bureaucracy, Lipsky argues that these relatively low-level public service employees labor under huge caseloads, ambiguous agency goals, and inadequate resources. When combined with substantial discretionary authority and the requirement to interpret policy on a case-by-case basis, the difference between government policy in theory and policy in practice can be substantial and troubling. The core dilemma of street-level bureaucrats is that they are supposed to help people or make decisions about them on the basis of individual cases, yet the structure of their jobs makes this impossible. Instead, they are forced to adopt practices such as rationing resources, screening applicants for qualities their organizations favor, “rubberstamping” applications, and routinizing client interactions by imposing the uniformities of mass processing on situations requiring human responsiveness. Occasionally, such strategies work out in favor of the client. But the cumulative effect of street-level decisions made on the basis of routines and simplifications about clients can reroute the intended direction of policy, undermining citizens’ expectations of evenhanded treatment. This seminal, award-winning study tells a cautionary tale of how decisions made by overburdened workers translate into ad-hoc policy adaptations that impact peoples’ lives and life opportunities. Lipsky maintains, however, that these problems are not insurmountable. Over the years, public managers have developed ways to bring street-level performance more in line with agency goals. This expanded edition of Street-Level Bureaucracy underscores that, despite its challenging nature, street-level work can be made to conform to higher expectations of public service.

Street level discretion -- Three pathologies: the indifferent, the enforcer, and the caregiver -- A gymnastics of the self: coping with the everyday pressures of street-level work -- When the rules run out: informal taxonomies and peer-level accountability -- Impossible situations: on the breakdown of moral integrity at the frontlines of public service

Whether on a patrol beat, in social service offices, or in public school classrooms, street-level workers continually confront rules in relation to their own beliefs about the people they encounter. Cops, Teachers, Counselors is the first major study of street-level bureaucracy to rely on storytelling. Steven Maynard-Moody and Michael Musheno collect the stories told by these workers in order to analyze the ways that they ascribe identities to the people they encounter and use these identities to account for their own decisions and actions. The authors show us how the world of street-level work is defined by the competing tensions of law abidance and cultural abidance in a unique study that finally allows cops, teachers, and counselors to voice their own views of their work. Steven Maynard-Moody is Director of the Policy Research Institute and Professor of Public Administration at the University of Kansas. Michael Musheno is Professor of Justice and Policy Studies at Lycoming College and Professor Emeritus of Justice Studies, Arizona State University.