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This conceptual article investigates the critical role of street-level bureaucrats (SLB) as potential "eliminators" of dysfunctional policies and drivers of digital change in the public sector. Working on the front lines of government, they have a distinctive viewpoint that allows them to challenge persistent ineffective policies. The present work introduces a framework that illustrates the roles SLBs could assume within the context of the ongoing digitalization reform of German public administration. It explores the conditions under which public servants are likely to be reflexive about existing practices—including reform practices—and can promote real innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on attentional resource allocation theory and transaction cost theory, this study links street-level bureaucrats' problem-solving organizational citizenship behaviors with perceived administrative burden. Based on 28 in-depth interviews and 657 survey responses from street-level bureaucrats involved in China's Targeted Poverty Alleviation Policy during 2019 and 2020, the study found positive relationships between problem-solving organizational citizenship behaviors, resource deficiency, bureaucratic control, and perceived administrative burden. Policymakers should be cautious when using control tools and avoid exploiting street-level bureaucrats' commitment and compassion for clients to ensure effectively policy implementation and reduce administrative burdens on dedicated public servants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When public administrators resolve disputes between citizens and other state officials, are they truly impartial? The question is imperative for evaluating resolutions made by street-level bureaucrats whom citizens often perceive as the face of public administration. This study examines the relationship between public accreditation and the tendency of street-level bureaucrats' resolutions to accept the state's arguments or the citizens' claims. Using quantitative analysis of administrative lower-court rulings in Israeli tax disputes, the findings link public accreditation to state favoritism in street-level resolutions. Such an outcome, if not accounted for, may jeopardize procedural fairness and erode public trust in government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizens with lower social status are underrepresented in participatory democratic innovations like citizens' initiatives. Much research focuses on the barriers to participation that these citizens experience. The current study concentrates on civil servants tasked with advising on what initiatives to support and how. Informed by research on the social construction of target groups and the use of social stereotypes by civil servants, our work scrutinizes how the social status of initiators plays a role in the assessments of citizens' initiatives. Grounded on vignette-based, in-depth interviews with civil servants, we conclude that social status does indeed play a role. Contrary to the conventional understanding, we find that: (1) high-status initiators are met with suspicion and low-status initiators with benevolence; and (2) high-status initiators are offered hands-off support, while those with a low status are provided with hands-on help to carry out their plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasing attention to street-level policy entrepreneurship, it remains unclear what strategies street-level bureaucrats employ during implementation or how their strategies impact policy outcomes. Using China's Targeted Poverty Alleviation campaign, we argue that street-level policy entrepreneurs construct collaborative arrangements with various local networks to devise innovative solutions. They collaborate with administrative leaders vertically or with citizens horizontally by adopting three strategies: defining mutual interests, building trust, and leveraging resources. Vertical collaboration contributes to effective policy outcomes and formal upward accountability, while horizontal collaboration improves public responsiveness. This study provides insights into collaborative behaviors of frontline bureaucrats that alleviate rural poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which types of clients increase or decrease the trust of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs)? Using interviews and focus groups with two groups of Israeli social service providers—teachers and social workers—and comparing them, —we develop a theoretical framework for determining the types of clients who evoke and reduce the trust of SLBs. Our findings indicate that there are seven types of clients who inspire or diminish this trust: —cooperative, honest, familiar, benevolent, aggressive, open, and manipulative. We discuss the significance of our findings for the implementation and outcome of public policy and suggest several avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevailing community policing theory identifies the purpose of community policing being to empower state policing not diminish it. This basis identifies a major misconception of those arguing for police defunding, as it fails to address the realities and limitations of street-level bureaucrats in exercising their authority. Misapplying emotional calls for restructuring into perceived democratic control of the bureaucracy. This article explores the inherent problems within community policing and serves to link these problems within a larger discussion of governance and policing, making an argument that the calls for defunding and community policing at best demonstrate misunderstanding and at worst represent a poorly articulated political ploy. In either case, understanding the larger role of how the state legitimates policing identifies an inherent disconnect between policy and implementation. Substantive change in policing must come from changes in the law that provide the staying power for reform to overcome bureaucratic retrenchment to change and in our view of governance, specifically in what should be enforced and the role of government in maintaining order, to ensure that these reflect the realities of policing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 is forcing alterations to administrative communication. Higher education institutions transitioning online during the pandemic offers a fertile ground to analyze what happens to organizational communication within administration when the mode is primarily remote. Using a content analysis of emails and participant interviews, this work finds that while administrators intend to communicate empathy, messages fall short of fostering connection with faculty due to failing to cultivate buyin through quality feedback channels. The takeaways of this study of remote communication is that despite its mode, communication must be two way, and the authenticity of organizational communication becomes more important under pressure-filled circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Street-level bureaucrats in social welfare programs often interact with program participants in coproductive environments where program objectives cannot be achieved without participant behavior change. In these environments, interactions are expected to help produce participant outcomes, a process that has been underexamined. This study investigates interactions and analyzes practices employed by street-level bureaucrats to encourage behavior change among program participants in two clinics in Arizona’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). The findings suggest that communicative practices related to encouraging self-efficacy and recognizing participant autonomy produce a mutually understood vision of a self-governing mother who is knowledgeable, disciplined, persistent, and a creative problem-solver. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do the incentives offered to street-level bureaucrats influence the value of equality in society? To investigate this question, we consider as a case study the incentives offered to tax officials in Israel that encourage them to intimidate ordinary citizens during tax audits and use uncertainty and asymmetry of information for their own benefit. We demonstrate that such practices lead to social injustice and an increase in gaps between income groups. We then offer suggestions at the individual and organizational level for ameliorating these problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]