Bureaucrats stage pre-meetings to pre-empt the influence of affected parties.

Evidence

Another way in which street-level bureaucrats conserve resources is to create the conditions for making decisions as free as possible from the implicit pressures of affected parties. … It is reasonable to infer that the teams met without the parents in order to present the parents with a united front and to avoid having to make a decision on the spur of the moment in the presence of outsiders. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 933

Categorization

• XREF: Directly on-point for the reader’s hypothesis: the disposition of a case is settled in an informal chamber before the formal participatory ritual occurs.
• SEED: ‘The pre-meeting’ as a genre: how participatory mandates (IEPs, 504s, hearings) get absorbed into administrative discretion — an essay tracing the ritual of participation against the reality of pre-decision.