Street-Level Bureaucracy¶
Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. Sage.
Cited by¶
6 citations across 6 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Decoupling Point
- In government services, standardised eligibility frameworks decouple from case-specific adjudication.
This source30th Anniversary Expanded Edition. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010 (orig. 1980). Analyzes the essential tension between prespecified standardized rules (uniform eligibility frameworks) and frontline case-by-case discretion (case-specific adjudication) in public services — the government-services decoupling point the marker invokes.
- In government services, standardised eligibility frameworks decouple from case-specific adjudication.
- Discretion
- Public administration: Michael Lipsky's (1980) "street-level bureaucrats"—police officers, social workers, teachers, clinicians at the front line—convert abstract policy into concrete action through on-the-spot judgment the rulebook cannot fully specify, so that their accumulated discretionary decisions effectively become the policy as citizens experience it.
This sourceFrontline public-service workers convert abstract policy into concrete action through on-the-spot discretionary judgment, so their accumulated decisions effectively become the policy as citizens experience it.
- Public administration: Michael Lipsky's (1980) "street-level bureaucrats"—police officers, social workers, teachers, clinicians at the front line—convert abstract policy into concrete action through on-the-spot judgment the rulebook cannot fully specify, so that their accumulated discretionary decisions effectively become the policy as citizens experience it.
- Formal vs. Informal Structures
- The identification of dysfunctional patterns in the informal structure (control bypass, power concentration, exclusionary network dynamics, opacity)
This sourceArgues that frontline public-service workers exercise wide discretion that effectively bypasses formal policy control, so their accumulated low-visibility decisions become the policy as experienced; supports the control-bypass and opacity elements of the dysfunctional-informal-pattern signature.
- The identification of dysfunctional patterns in the informal structure (control bypass, power concentration, exclusionary network dynamics, opacity)
- Procedure-Work Mismatch
- In public administration, case-handling procedures confront how caseworkers actually triage — "street-level bureaucracy" is the social-science name for the gap as institutionally constitutive of policy.
This sourceEstablishes the gap between formal case-handling procedure and how front-line workers actually triage as constitutive of policy.
- In public administration, case-handling procedures confront how caseworkers actually triage — "street-level bureaucracy" is the social-science name for the gap as institutionally constitutive of policy.
Mechanisms¶
- Institutional Barrier Review
- Intake Filter
- Its failure modes are the temptations of a gate with discretion over who gets served. Creaming — selecting the easy, cheap cases
This sourceDescribes creaming as selecting easy cases while shedding harder cases.
- Its failure modes are the temptations of a gate with discretion over who gets served. Creaming — selecting the easy, cheap cases
Verification¶
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