Formal equal treatment strikes workers as unfair for complex individuals

Evidence

Still another source of sustained differences in the interests of street-level bureaucrats and managers is their continuous interaction with clients and the varying degrees of complexity in this interaction. Modem bureaucracies gain legitimacy by (often rhetorical) commitments to standards of fairness and equity. But street-level bureaucrats are constantly confronted with the apparent unfairness of treating people alike (just as they recognize the obvious inequities of unequal treatment). — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 208

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names the core dilemma driving Lipsky’s whole street-level bureaucracy program: treating like cases alike is itself experienced as injustice because clients are more than their categorical attributes.
• XREF: connects to: Formal equal right applied to unequal individuals necessarily produces inequality. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 416

Broader Connections

• Formal equal right applied to unequal individuals necessarily produces inequality. #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 416