Assessing Determinants of Bureaucratic Discretion: An Experiment in Street-Level Decision Making

Policymaking by Other Means

“…Such tools have been used in welfare programs as a deliberate means of social control and disciplining of the poor, especially minorities (Soss, Fording, and Schram, 2011), and a central theme of street-level bureaucracy research is how the characteristics of claimants shape the decisions of bureaucrats. For example, Scott (1997) uses an experimental design to show that the level of organizational control and client characteristics matter to bureaucratic use of discretion in assigning benefits.…”

Structure and Discretion: Missing Links in Representative Bureaucracy

“…An excellent review by Scott (1997) finds that discretion varies with organizational factors, characteristics of the decisionmaker, and aspects of the decision (such as type of clientele). This study will focus on the organizational element in discretion.…”

“…Some organizations rely heavily on socialization (Kaufman 1960), others stress a common educational background or training (Mintzberg's 1979 professional bureaucracy), and others rely strongly on the supervision and hierarchy. Scott (1997) links rules, "red tape," and procedures to the extent of discretion. Mintzberg, in particular has paid a great deal of attention to control and suggests that methods of control vary greatly across different types of organizations.…”

“…Because functions and occupational mixes 2 Scott (1997,49), for example, shows that individuals trained as MPAs different from those trained in social work in their willingness to exercise discretion in regard to welfare recipients. 5 likely affect spans of control and how closely they generate discretion (Mintzberg 1979;Scott 1997), 2 only with a set of similar organizations employing the same types of person to perform the same task can we be sure that wider spans of control necessarily translate into greater discretion at the lower levels of the organization. An ideal data set would also have measures of representation, measures of some output that could reflect discretionary decisions, and measures of organizational structure.…”

'a woman's place' : exploring the leadership journeys of women in government using interpretative phenomenological analysis

“…Michael Lipsky (1980) coined the phrase "street-level bureaucrat" to describe the discretionary power used by front-line public employees to determine how they apply rules and distribute resources. Since then, scholars of public administration have acknowledged discretion is crucial to the operation of public organizations and point out that discretionary use of power has been established as essential within the American political system (Brudney et al, 2000;Kennedy, 2013;Meier & Bohte, 2001;Scott, 1997;Selden et al, 1998;Sowa & Selden, 2003).…”