Policy improvisation: How frontline workers cope with public service gaps in developing countries—The case of Mexico's Prospera program

Abstract

How do frontline workers behave when they are, from one day to the other, left without clients because the policy that organized their street-level interactions has been terminated? This is what happened in early 2019 to the staff of medical centers across Mexico after the sudden transformation of the longstanding social program Prospera. Interviews with frontline workers show that they respond to this "policy void" by developing strategies of informal talks, community outreach, and the investment of personal resources to recover their clients. The findings presented here are relevant for understanding how frontline workers cope with public service gaps in developing countries. The notion of "policy improvisation" as a coping mechanism-frontline workers developing informal policy activities when being left without proper implementation instructions and capacity-is used here to signal the broader phenomenon of human resource neglect and implementation gaps in Latin American public administration.

“Nobody wants to be a dead hero”: Coping with precarity at the frontlines of the Brazilian and Mexican pandemic response

“…Coping is usually conceptualized as either client‐ or organization‐focused (Maynard‐Moody & Musheno, 2000; Tummers et al., 2015). Our findings, however, contribute to the idea explored by Lotta and Marques (2020), Campos and Peeters (2021), and Spink et al. (2021), that coping by street‐level bureaucrats working under conditions of persistent precarity and vulnerability may also be primarily focused on personal and job survival.…”

Street-level bureaucracy in weak state institutions: a systematic review of the literature

“…Second, we develop an analytical framework for the institutional analysis of frontline work to advance theorizing on how specific institutional factors shape frontline agency in weak institutional settings. We also identify patterns in frontline agency: ‘informal privatization’ (Blundo, 2006), ‘policy improvisation’ (Campos and Peeters, 2022), and ‘alienative commitment’ (Usman et al, 2021). A preliminary content analysis indicates that the variation in frontline agency patterns can be understood as responses by street-level bureaucrats to the implementation and enforcement gaps caused by institutional factors, such as resource shortage, social inequality, and precarious professionalization.…”

“…Alternatively, frontline workers may move towards citizens by using their discretion to deliver services under adverse conditions. Through ‘policy improvisation’ (Campos and Peeters, 2022) or ‘policy repair’ (Masood and Nisar, 2021), frontline workers may mitigate and partially compensate for institutional weakness.…”

“Don’t Tell Them What You Told Me”: Negotiating Paperwork in Mexico City

“…Trimbur (2020) theorizes that “context is always performative, co-constructed by participants and part of practice” (p. 259). Policy improvisation such as this is useful when dealing with a lack of clear implementation guidelines (Campos & Peeters, 2022). By offering Estela guidance, the receptionist gave her a situated response for participating in her upcoming interaction with the official.…”

“…Practitioner-focused studies show how public servants' discrete decision-making can facilitate, impede, or draw out citizens' procedures (Lipsky, 2010;Gofen, 2014;Hupe, 2019;Hassan et al, 2021). Other work centers on how citizens respond to these administrative burdens (Campos & Peeters, 2022;Masood & Nisar, 2021;Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2000). Researchers are also interested in the discretionary decisions "street-level bureaucrats" make (employees who come in direct contact with the public) and how they determine the outcome of an applicant's case (Lipsky, 2010, xi).…”