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When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency
When the State Meets the Street probes the complex moral lives of street-level bureaucrats: the frontline social and welfare workers, police officers, and educators who represent government's human face to ordinary citizens. Too often dismissed as soulless operators, these workers wield a significant margin of discretion and make decisions that profoundly affect people's lives. Combining insights from political theory with his own ethnographic fieldwork as a receptionist in an urban antipoverty agency, Bernardo Zacka shows us firsthand the predicament in which these public servants are entangled.
Public policy consists of rules and regulations, but its implementation depends on how street-level bureaucrats interpret them and exercise discretionary judgment. These workers are expected to act as sensible moral agents in a working environment that is notoriously challenging and that conspires against them. Confronted by the pressures of everyday work, they often and unknowingly settle for one of several reductive conceptions of their responsibilities, each by itself pathological in the face of a complex, messy reality. Zacka examines the factors that contribute to this erosion of moral sensibility and what it takes to remain a balanced moral agent in such difficult conditions.
Zacka's revisionary portrait reveals bureaucratic life as more fluid and ethically fraught than most citizens realize. It invites us to approach the political theory of the democratic state from the bottom-up, thinking not just about what policies the state should adopt but also about how it ought to interact with citizens when implementing these policies.
Public policy consists of rules and regulations, but its implementation depends on how street-level bureaucrats interpret them and exercise discretionary judgment. These workers are expected to act as sensible moral agents in a working environment that is notoriously challenging and that conspires against them. Confronted by the pressures of everyday work, they often and unknowingly settle for one of several reductive conceptions of their responsibilities, each by itself pathological in the face of a complex, messy reality. Zacka examines the factors that contribute to this erosion of moral sensibility and what it takes to remain a balanced moral agent in such difficult conditions.
Zacka's revisionary portrait reveals bureaucratic life as more fluid and ethically fraught than most citizens realize. It invites us to approach the political theory of the democratic state from the bottom-up, thinking not just about what policies the state should adopt but also about how it ought to interact with citizens when implementing these policies.
337 pages, Hardcover
Published September 18, 2017
15 people are currently reading
212 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 20, 2019
Probably a good book for those citing some theory for gov papers, but not an captivating or particularly fun read for before bed, ended up skimming for main theory and points.
Intro
• Street-level bureaucrats are required to take decisions that are highly consequential for ordinary citizens
• Environments that force them to perform under drastic limitation in resources and staff and incompatible objectives, unrealistic targets, arcane rules, and emotional encounters
• Moral disposition = how they tend to perceive and interpret situations and how their mral sentiments are mobilized
o Indifference, enforcement, and caregiving
• Public policy just is the sum total of actions taken by street-level bureaucrats. As scholars in th field of implementaitons studies have long argued, we cannot know what the state does y sampling looking at the text of the law because policies undergo important transformations in the process of implementation
• Quesitons of implementation cannot be settled at high level of generatlity and call for contextual judgment. We can sometimes encode answers to such questions in rules and procedures, but there is a limit to how much we can do so in advance of being conftonted with specific cases and situations, lest we blindingly prejudge them.
• Besides the empirical inaccuracies that plague the “morally inert” view of policy implementaitons, one can also argue that strict division of labor it envisions between politics and administration is undesirable
• Often work alone and are hard to monitor, given independence and discretion
Street-level discretion:
• Real discretion is wider and noararower than formal discretion
• Rules and procedures exclude many alternatives, but leave open a range of options bounded discretion
• Discretion is valuable
• “rational systems” model
o organizations are instruments designed to implement a set of goals that have been outlined, they are rational as they seek to attain these goals efficienctyl
o Hierarchy, discipline and control, fixed jurisdictional boundries, impersonal rules and procedures
o Down hierarchy, factual component is prioritized rather than value in judgment
o Technical discretion
• Discretion desirable
o Legislators lack expertise and information required to develop rules of conduct
o Vagueness in laws is necessary for bills to pass often
1) Ambiguous goals
2) Conflicting goals and values
3) Limited resources
4) Fuzzy boundaries
♣ Think SSA
5) Uncertainty
6) Soft evidence
7) Unpredictabliltiy
8) Entangled ends
9) Information Asymmetry and moral hazard
Three Pathologies
• Troubling because incite people to transgress boundaries of their role and become overly reductive
• Moral disposition defineid by 1) Hermeneutic grid (way of perceiving), 2) affective attunement, and 3) normative sensibility (way of weighing factors)
• Modes of appraisal are short-term and reolve around single cases, moral dispositions are situation-independent
1) Indifferent
o Withdrawal
o Eliminates decision fatigue
o Failures to recognize that role itself demands individual judgment
o Indifference is not neutral
2) Enforcer
o Not generous because understand they msut distribute the public’s resources
o Resist pull of moral sentiments and take duties of state seriously
o Time intensive
o Care about fairness
3) Caregiver
o Attentive to particularities of individual clinets’ circumstances and try to be responsive
o Rewards clients for showing despair
o Can morph into paternalism
o Resource intensive
o An ethic of ultimate ends
A Gymnastics of Self:
• Reductive dispositions are done to reduce the salience of moral conflict
• Must develop gynmantsitcs of self practices to mitigate heir exposures to dissonance and reduce cognitive distortions
• “Perosnal atumony”
• “Cultiation of virtue”
o recognize the morally salient features of a situation and respond appropriately
• Exercises:
o Abstinence and endurance
o Concentration
o Imagination
o Self-exmaniation
o Perspective change
o Recollection
• Exercise groups calibration and modulation
o Self-examiniation one must know ones inclinations and biases, is often comparative and feedback is helpful
o Calibration regulate extent of their involvement with clients
o Modulation recollection and moral imagination, keep in mind a repertoire of ‘war stories’
Intro
• Street-level bureaucrats are required to take decisions that are highly consequential for ordinary citizens
• Environments that force them to perform under drastic limitation in resources and staff and incompatible objectives, unrealistic targets, arcane rules, and emotional encounters
• Moral disposition = how they tend to perceive and interpret situations and how their mral sentiments are mobilized
o Indifference, enforcement, and caregiving
• Public policy just is the sum total of actions taken by street-level bureaucrats. As scholars in th field of implementaitons studies have long argued, we cannot know what the state does y sampling looking at the text of the law because policies undergo important transformations in the process of implementation
• Quesitons of implementation cannot be settled at high level of generatlity and call for contextual judgment. We can sometimes encode answers to such questions in rules and procedures, but there is a limit to how much we can do so in advance of being conftonted with specific cases and situations, lest we blindingly prejudge them.
• Besides the empirical inaccuracies that plague the “morally inert” view of policy implementaitons, one can also argue that strict division of labor it envisions between politics and administration is undesirable
• Often work alone and are hard to monitor, given independence and discretion
Street-level discretion:
• Real discretion is wider and noararower than formal discretion
• Rules and procedures exclude many alternatives, but leave open a range of options bounded discretion
• Discretion is valuable
• “rational systems” model
o organizations are instruments designed to implement a set of goals that have been outlined, they are rational as they seek to attain these goals efficienctyl
o Hierarchy, discipline and control, fixed jurisdictional boundries, impersonal rules and procedures
o Down hierarchy, factual component is prioritized rather than value in judgment
o Technical discretion
• Discretion desirable
o Legislators lack expertise and information required to develop rules of conduct
o Vagueness in laws is necessary for bills to pass often
1) Ambiguous goals
2) Conflicting goals and values
3) Limited resources
4) Fuzzy boundaries
♣ Think SSA
5) Uncertainty
6) Soft evidence
7) Unpredictabliltiy
8) Entangled ends
9) Information Asymmetry and moral hazard
Three Pathologies
• Troubling because incite people to transgress boundaries of their role and become overly reductive
• Moral disposition defineid by 1) Hermeneutic grid (way of perceiving), 2) affective attunement, and 3) normative sensibility (way of weighing factors)
• Modes of appraisal are short-term and reolve around single cases, moral dispositions are situation-independent
1) Indifferent
o Withdrawal
o Eliminates decision fatigue
o Failures to recognize that role itself demands individual judgment
o Indifference is not neutral
2) Enforcer
o Not generous because understand they msut distribute the public’s resources
o Resist pull of moral sentiments and take duties of state seriously
o Time intensive
o Care about fairness
3) Caregiver
o Attentive to particularities of individual clinets’ circumstances and try to be responsive
o Rewards clients for showing despair
o Can morph into paternalism
o Resource intensive
o An ethic of ultimate ends
A Gymnastics of Self:
• Reductive dispositions are done to reduce the salience of moral conflict
• Must develop gynmantsitcs of self practices to mitigate heir exposures to dissonance and reduce cognitive distortions
• “Perosnal atumony”
• “Cultiation of virtue”
o recognize the morally salient features of a situation and respond appropriately
• Exercises:
o Abstinence and endurance
o Concentration
o Imagination
o Self-exmaniation
o Perspective change
o Recollection
• Exercise groups calibration and modulation
o Self-examiniation one must know ones inclinations and biases, is often comparative and feedback is helpful
o Calibration regulate extent of their involvement with clients
o Modulation recollection and moral imagination, keep in mind a repertoire of ‘war stories’
November 16, 2020
"When the State Meets the Street" is Bernardo Zacka’s contribution to bottom-up literature on political theory. Combining ethnographic fieldwork, sociology, psychology, and some philosophy into political science, Zacka explores how street-level bureaucrats respond to the policies, mandates, and duties given to them by the state. In doing so, he hopes to explore the dynamics behind policy implementation and shed some light on what top-down, mainstream political theory often treats as a black box.
Zacka’s main argument is centered on the discretionary powers of street-level bureaucrats. Because policies are naturally ambiguous, street-level bureaucrats are often tasked with interpreting and implementing state policies according to their personal discretion which are influenced by the context, practical experience, and individual styles of work. These work patterns are influenced by a bureaucrat’s moral disposition and role conception, i.e. how they understand their job, and such dispositions tend to be narrowed down due to the pressures of bureaucratic work (e.g. lack of resources, conflicting demands, etc.). In order to enable them to exercise their discretionary powers well, Zacka argues that street-level bureaucrats must maintain flexible work dispositions responsive to the practical needs of the field. He then suggests three ways for this to be achieved individually, collectively, and institutionally.
The book’s biggest contribution is its exploration of the dynamics of policy implementation. Readers expecting to find detailed directives on how to solve bureaucratic malaise or ineffective implementation will be disappointed as the book disregards such notions as much as the bureaucrats it studies. The book, however, does help readers to become more aware of the nuances behind a policy’s impact on the field. By introducing the general dynamics of street-level bureaucracy, readers and policy-makers are encouraged to imagine how well-intentioned policies in theory can be turn out differently in practice. In doing so, policy-making may become more informed on the human aspects of bureaucratic implementation, and hopefully this may enable the hand of the state to be more effective and helpful for the masses.
Zacka’s work, however, does have its limitations. As previously mentioned, the detailed implications of Zacka’s findings is not explored well, but in addition to that, the book assumes that bureaucrats care about the state or their jobs. While it insists that narrow dispositions are much worse than more familiar problems such as corruption, rule-breaking, and abuse; the book’s arguments may not translate very well as an explanation, let alone solution, behind these situations. Perhaps this aspect is outside the scope of the book, but this matter may also reflect the fact that Zacka’s work is based on bureaucracies in Western states. Zacka himself acknowledges that ethnography is a study on “human experiments on living,” so perhaps his next project could be an exploration of street-level bureaucracy and the dynamics of implementation in other countries and regions around the world.
Nevertheless, "When the State Meets the Street" is a good read for those interested in policy implementation. It provides a critical perspective on top-down political theories, and it can be a surprisingly insightful contribution on how to deal with the conflicting demands of life in the frontlines, both for bureaucrats and non-bureaucrats alike.
Zacka’s main argument is centered on the discretionary powers of street-level bureaucrats. Because policies are naturally ambiguous, street-level bureaucrats are often tasked with interpreting and implementing state policies according to their personal discretion which are influenced by the context, practical experience, and individual styles of work. These work patterns are influenced by a bureaucrat’s moral disposition and role conception, i.e. how they understand their job, and such dispositions tend to be narrowed down due to the pressures of bureaucratic work (e.g. lack of resources, conflicting demands, etc.). In order to enable them to exercise their discretionary powers well, Zacka argues that street-level bureaucrats must maintain flexible work dispositions responsive to the practical needs of the field. He then suggests three ways for this to be achieved individually, collectively, and institutionally.
The book’s biggest contribution is its exploration of the dynamics of policy implementation. Readers expecting to find detailed directives on how to solve bureaucratic malaise or ineffective implementation will be disappointed as the book disregards such notions as much as the bureaucrats it studies. The book, however, does help readers to become more aware of the nuances behind a policy’s impact on the field. By introducing the general dynamics of street-level bureaucracy, readers and policy-makers are encouraged to imagine how well-intentioned policies in theory can be turn out differently in practice. In doing so, policy-making may become more informed on the human aspects of bureaucratic implementation, and hopefully this may enable the hand of the state to be more effective and helpful for the masses.
Zacka’s work, however, does have its limitations. As previously mentioned, the detailed implications of Zacka’s findings is not explored well, but in addition to that, the book assumes that bureaucrats care about the state or their jobs. While it insists that narrow dispositions are much worse than more familiar problems such as corruption, rule-breaking, and abuse; the book’s arguments may not translate very well as an explanation, let alone solution, behind these situations. Perhaps this aspect is outside the scope of the book, but this matter may also reflect the fact that Zacka’s work is based on bureaucracies in Western states. Zacka himself acknowledges that ethnography is a study on “human experiments on living,” so perhaps his next project could be an exploration of street-level bureaucracy and the dynamics of implementation in other countries and regions around the world.
Nevertheless, "When the State Meets the Street" is a good read for those interested in policy implementation. It provides a critical perspective on top-down political theories, and it can be a surprisingly insightful contribution on how to deal with the conflicting demands of life in the frontlines, both for bureaucrats and non-bureaucrats alike.
November 27, 2022
This book is an important contribution to the study of street-level bureaucracy and Zacka creates a compelling account of the moral frameworks that frontline workers draw on to make decisions about interpreting policy and using discretion. I do have sone reservations with viewing this as a normative theory that I’m having trouble articulating. The contexts that require discretion themselves (limited resources, time etc) are so non-normative that discretion seems more like a normative bandaid than a fully-fledged *should*. I would have liked to see much more use of the extensive fieldwork he did, however, which seemed limited to anecdotes rather than fully engaged with (but I am an empiricist and not a theorist). I also wanted much more development of the argument that the context in which bureaucrats work shapes their use of discretion - it is intuitive, for sure, but I would have loved a framework of how different contextual factors might affect decision making. Perhaps that’s a task for a comparative scholar to take up.
November 11, 2024
zacka knows what’s up
February 4, 2025
one of the most enjoyable political theory course readings i’ve been assigned. zacka somehow made bureaucracy interesting to read and think about!
December 30, 2022
Brilliant book. It describes the predicament of street level bureaucrats, the people at the counter in your tax or community office. The face of government. These people have to deal with ambiguous laws, lack of resources and clients who may or may not be in big trouble.
What makes life harder for bureaucrats than for commercial helpdesk people, or sales reps, is that apart of being efficient, they also need to be respectful, responsive and reasonable. And rightly so, because this is what citizens are entitled to. A company can pick its customers, the government can't.
Zacka has studied how street level bureaucrats (SLBs) deal with this, by joining a welfare office for 8 months as an intern. The big risk is that SLBs become indifferent, caregiving or punishing, enforcing people. He calls these moral dispositions - SLBs are moral agents, not cogs in a big wheel that mechanically and impersonally execute the law - and they should be able to choose the disposition that best matches their current case. And their office, and managerial environment, should allow this.
This is a pretty lame summary of a book that is both rich (in detail and nuance) and, as I said, brilliant. Brilliant because it turns political theory upside down, starting not from abstract principles, but from actual decisions that bureaucrats have to make when people show up in their offices. In that sense this book is making the case for policy implementation - my line of work - which is the hard part of government. And the crucial one.
Very enlightening and very well read (Zacka even refers to scholastic philosophy to make a point). It is also very densely written. Every paragraph contains a thought you need to consider very carefully. It has taken me a year (in which I admittedly read 40 more books) to work through properly.
What makes life harder for bureaucrats than for commercial helpdesk people, or sales reps, is that apart of being efficient, they also need to be respectful, responsive and reasonable. And rightly so, because this is what citizens are entitled to. A company can pick its customers, the government can't.
Zacka has studied how street level bureaucrats (SLBs) deal with this, by joining a welfare office for 8 months as an intern. The big risk is that SLBs become indifferent, caregiving or punishing, enforcing people. He calls these moral dispositions - SLBs are moral agents, not cogs in a big wheel that mechanically and impersonally execute the law - and they should be able to choose the disposition that best matches their current case. And their office, and managerial environment, should allow this.
This is a pretty lame summary of a book that is both rich (in detail and nuance) and, as I said, brilliant. Brilliant because it turns political theory upside down, starting not from abstract principles, but from actual decisions that bureaucrats have to make when people show up in their offices. In that sense this book is making the case for policy implementation - my line of work - which is the hard part of government. And the crucial one.
Very enlightening and very well read (Zacka even refers to scholastic philosophy to make a point). It is also very densely written. Every paragraph contains a thought you need to consider very carefully. It has taken me a year (in which I admittedly read 40 more books) to work through properly.
May 28, 2019
A dry, scholastic argument of why Governments should employ Zacka to increase their control in the name of "XXX with a human face". Most, probably all cases would be solved by just making the public servant one of the many actors, and let them be paid according to the results.
June 19, 2019
Shows that the supposedly technical work of bureaucracy is suffused with moral decisions. Essential read for policy-makers and policy innovators, especially as many of the frontline tasks that the book describes are now being automated.
July 27, 2019
An interesting sequel to Lipsky. The discussion of moral agency is great.
August 6, 2019
Refreshing book on policy implementation. Recommended for any person interested in bureaucracy, the state (from a sociological and anthropological perspective) and public policies.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews