Emergency categories function as a structural device that resolves street-level service dilemmas.

Evidence

The most common structural device for managing the consequences of routine is the emergency. Emergency practices, whatever their other functions, solve major service dilemmas for street-level bureaucracies. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1009

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘emergency’ as a technical coping category, not merely a description of urgency.
• XREF: Parallels the reader’s interest in how discretion categories operate as institutionalization mechanisms. — connects to: Street-level agencies pursue inherently conflicting, ambiguous goals — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 332; Emergency labels let frontline workers allocate resources by private conceptions of need. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1028

Broader Connections

• Street-level agencies pursue inherently conflicting, ambiguous goals #expands (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 332