Client inability to withdraw lowers the cost ceiling of each encounter

Evidence

That clients are nonvoluntary has significant implications not only for the direction of public services as a whole but also for the quality of interactions between street-level bureaucrats and clients. Primarily, this is because nonvoluntary clients cannot avoid or withdraw from encounters with workers. Where both parties are free to continue the interaction or leave it, participants will set limits to the costs they will accept before ending the relationship. If the encounter is instrumental, that is, if each participant wants something from the other, they will continue to pursue their objectives within the relationship so long as they value the objectives more than the cost of seeking them. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 431

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Individual withdrawal from acceleration carries prohibitive obsolescence costs — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 282

Broader Connections

• Individual withdrawal from acceleration carries prohibitive obsolescence costs #expands (0.75) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 282