Frontline workers’ coping routines become the actual public policy

Evidence

I argue that the decisions of street-level bureaucrats, the routines they establish, and the devices they invent to cope with uncertainties and work pressures, effectively become the public policies they carry out. I argue that public policy is not best understood as made in legislatures or top-floor suites of high-ranking administrators, because in important ways it is actually made in the crowded offices and daily encounters of street-level workers. I point out that policy conflict is not only expressed as the contention of interest groups but is also located in the struggles between individual workers and citizens who challenge or submit to client-processing. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 31

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the core definition of street-level bureaucracy and its central claim that policy is made on the ground, not at the top.
• XREF: connects to: The routines of frontline workers function as the real policy of the agency. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 787; Street-level workers effectively make the policies they are charged with implementing — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 59; Work-control needs turn frontline workers into defenders of the status quo. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1329 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• The routines of frontline workers function as the real policy of the agency. #corroborates (1.00) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 787
• Frontline routine is itself organizational policy, so private redefinitions become policy. #corroborates (1.00) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1067
• Street-level workers effectively make the policies they are charged with implementing #corroborates (0.95) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 59
• Policy implementation analysis must start from frontline working conditions, not top-down authority flows #expands (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 231
• Street-level bureaucrats are frontline workers exercising substantial job discretion #qualifies (0.85)
• Practice rooted in survival coping resists change more than top-down policy does #expands (0.80) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1354
• Work-control needs turn frontline workers into defenders of the status quo. #expands (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1329
• Frontline workers can accept managerial authority while rejecting its policy goals #expands (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 181
• Worker stress-control routines signal how far agency goals are achievable #expands (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 635