Public agencies knowingly accept the demand-rationing implications of their actions

Evidence

Provisions of this memo have been described at some length not because they are themselves remarkable but because they illustrate awareness at the agency planning level of the implications of rationing to limit client demand. It is naive to accept the rhetoric of public officials that their actions have the incidental effect of limiting or discouraging client demands. Rather, the opposite assumption is more useful analytically and more accurate empirically; namely, that public employees and higher officials are aware of the implications of actions taken that effectively increase or decrease client demand. They may deny such intentions publicly, of course, since their jobs require obeisance to norms of public service. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 767

Categorization

• XREF: Central to the reader’s hypothesis: discretion does not passively codify cultural stereotypes — planners consciously know their acts reduce demand. Adds deliberate intent as a driver alongside routinized discretion. — connects to: It is dysfunctional for most street-level bureaucracies to become more responsive — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 745