Serving Citizens: How Comparable Are Polish and Russian “Street-Level” Bureaucrats?

Abstract

An experimental survey on bureaucratic responsiveness in the social welfare arena in Poland and Russia shows that both countries’ social welfare workers are capable of performing in a manner deemed helpful to local Polish and Russian citizens—a key component of effective governance. Such findings are surprising given an absence of reforms to create Weberian bureaucracies out of both countries’ social welfare agencies, differences in Polish and Russian overall governance, and variations in civil society legacies. The findings suggest that Weberian features, designed to keep outside interests at bay, may not necessarily be essential for local government to be perceived as being responsive and may not be relevant for certain sectors, such as social welfare, where opportunities for corruption are more limited. Because “customer service” is important for an effective state, citizen perceptions of local bureaucrats’ responsiveness need to be recognized as critical components of on-the-ground governance.

Do visiting monks give better sermons? “Street‐level bureaucrats from higher‐up” in targeted poverty alleviation in China

“…The street-level bureaucracy from higher-up has important implications for improving the performance of street-level governance and service delivery. As shown in this article, even if a country lacks a specialized Weberian bureaucracy, a modern western democratic system, and an accountability system, it can still effectively use its traditional system and resources to build street-level governance capacity at the face-to-face level as well as to achieve the sinking of the state, the supply of services, and the acquisition of political trust and legitimacy (Berenson, 2010;Cingolani et al, 2015). It is also possible that management-by-enabling-which is an improvement from "throwing money at problems"-can create conditions that facilitate quality and responsiveness in policy delivery (Brodkin, 2011a(Brodkin, , 2011bMaynard-Moody et al, 1990;Piore, 2011).…”

“…The SLBs had professional identities and were embedded in complex accountability structures (Hupe & Hill, 2007). Other countries' welfare delivery systems look quite different, and some may not have mature and professional bureaucracies and accountability structures (Berenson, 2010). In those systems, are there different types of SLBs?…”

In transitional periods how does bureaucracy work steadily?

“…Thus, it seems to be more difficult if there is a need for a coordination between governmental and non-governmental actors regards policy-making process. If new governments insist on achieving the transitional periods’ goals, they will need first to get the bureaucrats involved, cooperate with them, motivate and trust them so that they can get all the required information (Berenson, 2010, pp. 578-582, Rice, 1992, pp.…”

“…Another solution was the partial sale of organization’s shares, and ownership transfer to the organization’ employees, subscribing the privatized organization shares to the stock exchange (Poznański, 1996, pp. 216-217, Berenson, 2010, pp. 578–605).…”

The Power of Empty Promises

“…Controlled interaction with officials and government agencies is a popular research strategy in comparative politics (Berenson, 2010; Distelhorst & Hou, 2014; Malesky, Schuler, & Tran, 2012; Chen, Pan, & Xu, 2016, Putnam, 1994), but there are important ethical considerations to such research (McClendon, 2012), especially in developing countries where local governments may be resource-constrained. To ensure that disclosure requests would not distract local officials from other important duties, request materials were codesigned with the Chinese research organization.…”