Street level bureaucracy and the dilemmas of private entities in public spaces: Case of GPRTU

Abstract

Lipsky's notion of "street-level bureaucrats" refers to public sector actors who provide service and sanction the public due to their ability to wield discretionary power. Hence are autonomous from government. Discretionary power enables them to shape public policy in pursuit of private agendas by inter alia creating artificial shortages. Given that they a pose threat to government's efforts, government sometimes moves to curtail their power of discretion and autonomy. Street-level bureaucrats are rational and activate mechanisms to escape government control. This study examines the coping mechanisms of the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) after government implementation of a petroleum price deregulation policy. This paper raises questions and sets the stage for the next part by highlighting the notions of the prisoner's dilemma, collective action, tragedy of commons and organizational choice. These are refracted through the transactional model of coping strategies of entities.

Coping Mechanism for Street-Level Bureaucrats in the Implementation of Policies for Handling Coronavirus Disease 19 (Covid-19) in Gorontalo City

“…However, on the other hand, street-level bureaucrats face a dilemma, where they feel that the available resources are unable to meet the needs of requests made to them. Based on this condition, street-level bureaucrats made a number of agreements to overcome existing deficiencies by using various tricks or methods, which Lipsky called "coping", namely a form of maneuvering or diversion carried out by the apparatus in providing services to citizens to hide weaknesses or limited resources, such as trying to reduce demand for their services by limiting access to information about services, delaying service delivery, letting clients wait, making access to services difficult, and imposing various other psychological costs on clients (Boahen, 2016;Hohmann, 2016). Tummers & Rocco (2014), noted that coping is an important response to the problems of street-level bureaucrats, when the field of public administration does not have a comprehensive treatment classification.…”