Street-Level Bureaucrats in a Catch-All Bureaucracy

Abstract

Since 2015 Dutch street-level bureaucrats have ample discretionary space to determine how to help clients. Simultaneously, resources were reduced. According to Zacka SLBs should avoid three pathological positions: indifference, caregiving, and enforcing. At the individual level SLBs supposedly accomplish that by a gymnastics of the self. We observed SLBs. They avoided the pathological positions by (1) reframing the reigning policy for clients (enforcing caringly) and (2) managing clients’ self-image, bolstering their confidence, or tempering their expectations (caring forcefully). SLBs practice a gymnastics of the client alongside a gymnastics of the self. SLBs thus make the reigning policy palatable for clients.

Client Participation and Conditionality: Navigating Conflicting Normative Demands in Employment Services

“…(b) They can develop hybridized forms of professionalism—where they willingly adopt and integrate different principles somewhat equally into their work practices (Kurunmäki, 2004; Olakivi & Niska, 2017). (c) Or they can let one logic dominate the others, what is sometimes referred to as “assimilation” (Breit et al, 2018; Skelcher & Smith, 2015, p. 8; Trappenburg et al, 2022 use “commodification” to describe similar processes). These studies, despite their obvious contributions to the field, have rarely told us much about such coping strategies from a perspective concerned with morality: What important normative demands do frontline workers actually strive to actualize as they cope with such tensions?…”

“…Second, a growing number of recent studies have defined “pathological” behavior at the front line primarily as resulting from the prioritization of a single normative demand “at the expense of others” (e.g., Trappenburg et al, 2022), for instance, by prioritizing “efficiency” but completely neglecting the “needs” of clients’ (Brodkin, 2011). However, we find that certain combinations of normative demands can easily become pathological as well.…”

“…Recent empirical research has documented that frontline workers—for instance, because of “hybrid” forms of governance (Christensen & Lægreid, 2011; Fossestøl et al, 2015; Sønderskov et al, 2022; Tuurnas, 2015)—are sometimes faced with incompatible demands (Van Gestel et al, 2019) and have to live up to quite different standards of accountability (Van der Tier et al, 2021). Some scholars describe frontline workers as “moral mediators” between the moral economies of the state and actual subjectivities of clients (Pors & Schou, 2020), and numerous studies have identified different strategies pursued by public officials to overcome tensions (Breit et al, 2018; Thomas & Davies, 2005; Trappenburg et al, 2022), which might be perceived as mere threats toward their professional identity (Langley et al, 2012; Shams, 2021). To implement ideas of coproduction, frontline workers must combine certain roles when approaching citizens (Vanleene et al, 2020)—as friends, leaders, representatives, and mediators—and establish the norms of emotional closeness between the informal and personalized and formal and depersonalized (Mortensen & Needham, 2022).…”

How Street-Level Bureaucrats Collaborate for Policy Entrepreneurship: Insights From Anti-Poverty Policy Implementation in China

“…Classic SLB literature provides valuable insights into the working context and policy discretion of SLBs and how these impact policy outcomes during implementation (Trappenburg et al, 2022; Visser & Kruyen, 2021). Frontline officials enjoy substantive discretion in interpreting and applying policies, thereby becoming de facto policy-makers in their routine work (Brodkin, 2008; Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2000).…”

Children, COVID, and confusion: How frontline workers cope with the challenges of vaccine mandates

“…As a result, SLBs often act against their professional moral identity in favour of implementing the new policy (Zacka, 2017). This would be an example of moving against clients through rigid rule following (Trappenburg et al., 2022). Hence, ‘impossible situations’ will assist our conceptualisation of exogenous policy pressures, as we can assume that exogenous policy pressures may create impossible scenarios for SLBs.…”