Looking Once Again at Human Service Bureaucracy

Race, Bureaucratic Discretion, and the Implementation of Welfare Reform

“…In addition to the impact of race, bureaucratic decisions may be influenced by professional values. While many scholars fear bureaucratic discretion because of the potential loss in equity in policy implemen-tation (Handler 1986;Lipsky 1980), others argue that bureaucrats follow professional norms in using their discretion and that they value equity (Goodsell 1981). According to the professional norms hypothesis, the likelihood of sanctions should correlate with the likelihood that a client will violate the rules.…”

Legislative-Executive Relations and Legislative Oversight

“…How do executives respond? Frequently, Goodsell (1981) observes, case inequities derive from laws that "compress" the official's room to exercise judgment.…”

On the front lines of welfare delivery: Are workers implementing policy reforms?

“…Studies of local welfare offices conducted in the 1970s revealed the importance of local agency structures and staff discretion for the integrity of welfare services. Street-level bureaucrats were observed to cope with chronically limited resources and unlimited client demands by rationing services, being discriminate in the provision of services to more cooperative clients, and rationalizing program objectives [Goodsell, 1981;Lipsky, 1980;Pesso, 1978].…”

“…In this case, workers might adopt a particularistic style of interaction by exercising their discretion and control over the information and advice they give each client (see Table 2). This describes the personalized but sometimes arbitrary treatment of welfare claims that has been noted in highly localized welfare delivery [Goodsell, 1981;Pesso, 1978], and it suggests another source of potential distortion in the implementation process. If workers increase the personalization of their transactions without systematically informing clients about program rules, services, opportunities, and the like, they may introduce multiple personal and professional biases into the enforcement of rules and allocation of scarce resources.…”