Article Summary - Street-Level Bureaucracy: The Critical Role of Street-Level Bureaucrats

Article: Street-Level Bureaucracy: The Critical Role of Street-Level Bureaucrats

Author: Michael Lipsky

Date of Article: 1980

Article Summary

Street-Level Bureaucracy: The Critical Role of Street-Level Bureaucrats?examines the role of front-line public employees in the bureaucracy. Street-level bureaucrats are those individuals who interact directly with citizens. There are many street-level bureaucrats in public service agencies such as welfare offices. In fact, it seems that the poorer people are, the more street-level bureaucrats affect them.

Since street-level bureaucrats have such a great deal of interaction with the public, they are often the focus of public controversy. Their decisions appear to be very personal, as they are directed toward people and their attitudes are obvious. Because of this personalization of bureaucracy, street-level bureaucrats also provide hope for citizens to receive fair and effective treatment, as citizens believe they can reason with these individuals, even if the rest of the bureaucracy is out of reach. In reality, street-level bureaucrats are limited to how responsive they may be. Protocol restricts their abilities to treat things on a case-by-case basis.

Key Points

Street-level bureaucrats cause a great deal of public controversy due to debates over their scope and function and the impact they have on people's lives.
Street-level bureaucrats, such as police officers, teachers, and health workers are familiar to the people they serve, but not necessarily as accountable as people would like them to be.
Street-level bureaucracies directly affect people and change their lives. This provides people with hope that these bureaucrats will help them on an individual basis.
Street-level bureaucrats provide a visible, accessible, and blamable, collective target.

Relevance

The relevance of this article is that it assists readers in determining how the public perceives street-level bureaucrats both individually and collectively. These bureaucrats are considered to be individually responsible for their decisions, but as part of the bureaucracy they are only able to do so much. Understanding the public's view of street-level bureaucrats can help these bureaucrats adopt more of a service culture in their work, as they are often seen as the face of the public service agency where they are employed. The article also provides good insight into the scope and substance of public services where street-level bureaucrats are frequently employed. This information is important for anyone working at any level of the bureaucracy as it reminds us of the face the public sees as being the bureaucracy. This helps us to make sure we are either enabling street-level bureaucrats to put their best face forward, or if we are street-level bureaucrats, to know how the public perceives us.