Understanding Street-Level Bureaucracy

Peter Hupe, Michael Hill, Aurélien Buffat, Hupe, Peter, Hill, Michael, Peter Hupe, Michael Hill, Aurélien Buffat

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781447313274
• eBook ISBN: 9781447321415
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This wide-ranging edited volume provides a state of the art account of theory and research on modern street-level bureaucracy, gathering internationally acclaimed scholars to address the varying roles of public officials who fulfill their tasks while interacting with the public. These roles include the delivery of benefits and services, the regulation of social and economic behavior, and the expression and maintenance of public values.

Questions about the extent of discretionary autonomy and the feasibility of hierarchical control are discussed in depth, with suggestions made for the further development of research in this field. Hence the book fills an important gap in the literature on public policy delivery, making it a valuable text for students and researchers of public policy, public administration and public management.

Part One
Introduction

ONE

Introduction: defining and understanding street-level bureaucracy

Peter Hupe, Michael Hill and Aurélien Buffat

What is street-level bureaucracy?

The expression ‘street-level bureaucracy’ was coined, as far as we know, by Michael Lipsky. He introduced it in an article in 1971 and elaborated it in a book in 1980, which he further updated in 2010 (Lipsky, 2010). Most of the contributors to this volume make reference to the book, which is cited as the 2010 edition unless they have specifically quoted from the earlier one. In developing an identifiable view, Jeffrey Prottas (1979) and Richard Weatherly (1979) were collaborators. The introduction of the term obviously caught the imagination of many writers on public policy, including ourselves. Consequentially, here, we explore the ‘state of the art’ – which is the aim of this edited volume.

Two observations can be made head on. One is that the essential phenomena that Michael Lipsky asked attention to be paid to have been described in many ways other than in terms of ‘street-level bureaucracy’. For example, here, we may note references to the ‘point of entry’ (Hall, 1974) and the ‘public encounter’ (Goodsell, 1981). Hence, if we were to engage in a computerised literature search with ‘street-level bureaucracy’ as the key term, we would certainly seriously undercount.

A second, and closely related, observation regards the fact that Michael Lipsky’s contribution focuses particularly on certain aspects of street-level work and highlights particular problems associated with it. In so doing, he seems to be reluctant to apply his approach to all relevant public sector interfaces. In the new preface written for the 2010 edition of the book, he justifies the book as ‘a search for the place of the individual in those services I call street-level bureaucracies’ (Lipsky, 2010, p xi). Interactions with street-level bureaucracies are ‘places where citizens experience directly the government they have implicitly constructed’ (Lipsky, 2010, p xi).

Lipsky distinguishes two ways to understand the term ‘street-level bureaucrat’. The first one is to equate it with ‘the public services with which citizens typically interact. In this sense, all teachers, police officers, and social workers in public agencies are street-level bureaucrats without further qualification’ (Lipsky, 2010, p xvii). In the second definition – the one originally intended, Lipsky adds – street-level bureaucracy stands for ‘public service employment of a certain sort, performed under certain conditions.… Street-level bureaucrats interact with citizens in the course of the job and have discretion in exercising authority’ (Lipsky, 2010, p xvii). Both of these alternative definitions highlight aspects of street-level bureaucracy in ways that make it difficult to tie down the ‘state of the art’ in the face of the diversity of work that either uses his term or may be seen as concerned with closely related issues without using it.

Insights on bureaucracy and beyond

Early conceptualisations of bureaucracy

Perhaps the best examination of the use of the concept of bureaucracy in political science is provided by Albrow (1970). He shows the term to originate in late 18th-century French writing by De Gournay and De Grimm, who used it to describe a form of government, broadly, ‘rule by officials’, in a context that was clearly critical of the phenomenon. Since this was written in pre-democratic France, it is appropriate to ask: who, then, did represent the public interest?

A later English comment on bureaucracy calls it ‘the continental nuisance’, and goes on: ‘I can see no risk or possibility in England. Democracy is hot enough here’ (Thomas Carlyle, 1850, quoted by Albrow, 1970, p 21). Interestingly, however, the English novelist Charles Dickens clearly implies that it was already here in chapter 10 of his novel Little Dorrit (Dickens, 1857). In that chapter, called ‘Containing the whole science of government’, he describes the ‘Circumlocution Office’, saying ‘no public business could possibly be done at any time without [its] acquiescence’. Further appropriate quotes could be traded from a range of European 19th-century writers, including, notably, Balzac in France, without taking our understanding of the issues forward.

Indeed, we may see as separate questions issues about arrogation of power, whether from monarchs or parliaments (which is not our concern in this book), and issues about how bureaucracies treat people.

Bureaucracy as a mode of policy delivery

As far as the latter is concerned, the end of the 19th century saw the emergence of a view of bureaucracy as a ‘rational’ device to ensure the efficient and just delivery of public policy. That perspective is particularly embodied in Max Weber’s (1974) notion of bureaucracy as embedded in a ‘rational-legal’ mode of authority. For Weber, this is not necessarily a democratic mode of authority; it is the acceptance of the rule of law in the public policy process that is significant.

At the same time, policy delivery at the local level was shifting from traditional forms, based on delegation of implementation to local elites (as in the UK Poor Law), to emergent democratic government. The most interesting discussion of these issues comes from the US, in Woodrow Wilson’s (1887) famous article ‘The study of administration’. There, his concern was to find a middle way between the democratic model for service delivery developed in the US – the Jacksonian spoils system (a form of clientelism) – and what he saw as the German model of efficient administration. Wilson (1887, p 20) argues:

The ideal for us is a civil service cultured and self-sufficient enough to act with sense and vigour, and yet so intimately connected with popular thought, by means of elections and constant public counsel, as to find arbitrariness and class spirit quite out of the question.

In Wilson’s work, we see the two issues about bureaucracy running side by side: bureaucracy as an overall mode of governance and as an approach to policy delivery. In his delineation of the characteristics of bureaucracy, Weber spells out the notion of rationality. From the early 20th century on, this notion would be seen as a dominant principle for the organisation of activities in a complex society. In this respect, then, a version of the bureaucratic ideal was carried forward by mass production industry, with a particular emphasis on a detailed and highly regulated division of labour, embodied in Frederic Taylor’s (1911) recommendations for the Ford motor company. Much later, this led to consideration of the extent to which this version of bureaucracy is applicable to public policy delivery (see Pollitt, 1990). This generated the debate so central to this book about the extent to which policy delivery can or should be bureaucratised.

Aspects of the modern debate about bureaucratisation have echoed the ‘Circumlocution Office’ view of bureaucracy. Merton (1957) argues that bureaucrats are likely to show particular attachment to rules that protect the internal system of social relationships, enhance their status by enabling them to take on the status of the organisation and protect them from conflict with clients by emphasising impersonality. Because of their function in providing security, rules of this kind are particularly likely to be transformed into absolutes. Policy goals are then distorted as means are treated as ends. However, questions need to be posed about the inevitability of this process of distortion. In any case, other things are going on within a bureaucratic organisation. For Gouldner (1954), games are played around rules in bureaucratic organisations; it is not self-evident that subordinates will simply internalise the expectations of their superiors.

The bureaucratic model of policy delivery has been vehemently defended by Charles Goodsell (1983). Goodsell’s (1983) book includes some cogent observations on formal modes of organisation and on rules, quoting Michael Hill (1976) on the importance of fair and predictable services for the public. Goodsell’s (1983) book is primarily a defence of public administration in general, in which both rule-bound and discretionary behaviour will be in evidence. There is a need to recognise the importance of the formal organisation of public services in 20th- and 21st-century life. Perrow (1972, p 5) puts this in almost determinist terms: ‘Without this form of social technology, the industrialized countries of the West could not have reached the heights of extravagance, wealth and pollution that they currently enjoy.’

Bureaucratisation or professionalisation

‘In the literature concerned with formulation, bureaucratisation may almost be treated as a variable. Even within mass production industry, models that are less formal than Taylor’s have been developed. This brings us, then, to the balance between bureaucratisation and professionalisation. Alongside analyses that stress the bureaucratisation of everyone, we find explorations of the development of professionalisation (for a critical evaluation of this trend, see Wilensky, 1964). Hence, then, one of the key issues for this volume is the extent to which formalisation of policy delivery and the elimination of discretion have actually occurred. Seeing street-level bureaucrats as in roles with both bureaucratic and professional characteristics, it is appropriate to raise some issues about the development of professional roles in public policy delivery. To do this, we need to recognise the transformation of public policy that has occurred since the term ‘bureaucracy’ was developed. To what extent were there street-level bureaucrats at the beginning of the 19th century? The answer is that they existed in a number of special situations in which a need for a public role to solve collective action problems had been recognised: flood control, fire prevention, some rudimentary policing and so on. The 19th century saw extensions of these roles, particularly in the face of needs to solve public health problems.

Going back to Dickens, perhaps his most famous street-level bureaucrat was the Poor Law official aghast that Oliver Twist should ask for more. The 1834 Poor Law Reform had made him a public official inasmuch as there was increased state funding and supervision of local services. Publicly provided education, health care, social care and social benefits were initially rare, but grew in importance through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The gradual process of change did two things: it brought into the public sector kinds of workers who already expected a large extent of autonomy (as in the case of doctors); and it created tasks that seemed to need to involve a high degree of discretion (as in the case of child protection work). Many of the issues about street-level discretion have been set in a context in which there are varied and contested claims about the extent to which the actors are professionals rather than bureaucrats. Such issues belong very much to the late 20th century – the era when Lipsky coined the expression ‘street-level bureaucracy’.

Lipsky chose to use the term ‘bureaucrats’ while writing about people often called professionals or ‘semi-professionals’ (Etzioni, 1969). Freidson’s bureaucracy–professionalism contrast is therefore pertinent:

In contrast to the negative word ‘bureaucracy’ we have the word ‘profession’. This word is almost always positive in its connotation, and is frequently used to represent a superior alternative to bureaucracy. Unlike ‘bureaucracy’ which is disclaimed by every organisation concerned with its public relations, ‘profession’ is claimed by virtually every occupation seeking to improve its public image. When the two terms are brought together, the discussion is almost always at the expense of bureaucracy and to the advantage of profession. (Freidson, 1970a, pp 129–30)

Street-level bureaucracy and beyond

As far as street-level bureaucracy is concerned, this excursion into the discussion of bureaucracy and professionalism leaves us with two important issues. One is that emphasis on the street level represents one part of a long-standing concern about the location of power. Street-level bureaucrats are among various groups seen as arrogating power from where some people want to argue that it really belongs. Our stance in this book is to treat the questions about power as important for the study of street-level bureaucracy, in a context in which it is fundamental to recognise a wide spectrum of perspectives on the desirability and legitimacy of control.

The other issue is that this takes place in the context of many different kinds of tasks. To some extent, the latter may be arrayed along a continuum from routine activities to complex tasks implying high degrees of discretion (as with some professions), with a substantial range of tasks in-between. Our stance on this follows from the one we have taken on the first issue. As can be observed, some tasks are harder to control than others, while there are varying perspectives on the desirability of control. This being so, we do not think it helpful to try to draw too narrow lines around the empirical phenomena that may be addressed under the heading of street-level bureaucracy. In our view, what happens in the fulfilment of public tasks involving social interaction at the street level deserves research attention overall.

The essence of Lipsky’s approach

In the previous section, we argued that street-level bureaucracy is something larger than simply Lipsky’s original concerns. At the same time, his influence is such that a closer look at the issues he highlights is necessary.

What is entailed in Lipsky’s contribution to the scholarly agenda? His book consists of four parts. After the Introduction, these regard, respectively, conditions of work, patterns of practice and the future of street-level bureaucracy. The chapter titles in the first part set the tone. Under the headings ‘The critical role of street-level bureaucrats’ and ‘Street-level bureaucrats as policy makers’, Lipsky elaborates on conflict, discretion, ‘relative autonomy from organizational authority’ and ‘resources for resistance’. Conditions of work (in the second part) get attention under labels like ‘the problem of resources’, ‘goals and performance measures’, ‘the social construction of a client’ and ‘advocacy and alienation in street-level work’. Also, the chapter and section headings in ‘Patterns of practice’ (the third part) speak for themselves: ‘rationing services’ (eg ‘queuing’, ‘routines’), ‘controlling clients’, ‘husbanding resources’ and ‘the client-processing mentality’. In the headings in the fourth and final part of the book, terms can be found like ‘the assault on human services’, ‘accountability’, ‘directions for greater client autonomy’ and ‘the prospects and problems of professionalism’. In the expanded 30th anniversary edition, Lipsky added a new preface and a final (14th) chapter titled ‘On managing street-level bureaucracy’.

These headings indicate the range of key concepts central in Lipsky’s view. Giving them a closer look enables one to distil a few issues that Lipsky put on the research agenda. In our view, these issues regard theoretical, methodological, programmatic and political aspects of the study of government-in-action. We suggest the latter term to indicate the empirical object in a manner crossing disciplinary labels stemming from an academic labour division, institutionalised as it is.

The theoretical issue that Lipsky asked attention to be paid to regards how to understand multilayered policymaking. He grounded the assumption that street-level bureaucrats are policymakers in their own right, for example, teachers are ‘street ministers of education’ (Lipsky, 2010, p 12). With ‘relatively high degrees of discretion and relative autonomy from organizational authority’, street-level bureaucrats have considerable leeway in ‘determining the nature, amount, and quality of benefits and sanctions provided by their agencies’ (Lipsky, 2010, p 13). In fact, ‘their individual actions add up to agency behaviour’ (Lipsky, 2010, p 13): ‘[T]he decisions of street-level bureaucrats, the routines they establish, and the devices they invent to cope with uncertainties and work pressures effectively become the public policies they carry out’ (Lipsky, 2010, p xiii, emphasis in original).

Hence, Lipsky looks at the daily practice of governing in contact with citizens – what happens on the ground, as Hupe (2014) has formulated it. The theoretical implication for the study of the policy process is that knowing policy inputs (for instance, a budget assigned to hire more police) does not allow ‘reading off’ policy outputs (more police officers effectively in street service), let alone outcomes (less crime). It is obvious that this theoretical view must have methodological implications.

The methodological issue that street-level bureaucracy analysis addresses regards the necessity to open up the black box of what literally happens in implementation organisations. Doing research on how public policies are implemented may mean walking with ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Biographical notes
• Preface
• Part One: Introduction
• Part Two: Delivering services and benefits: street-level bureaucracy and the welfare state
• Part Three: Agents of the state: street-level bureaucracy and law enforcement
• Part Four: Embedded in society: street-level bureaucrats as public actors
• Part Five: The management of street-level bureaucrats
• Part Six: The promise of professionalism
• Part Seven: Conclusion
• References