Screening staff exercise real discretion without the formal authority to do so.

Evidence

The role of screener would not be cause for comment if screeners performed their jobs as they are defined in theory-that is, making decisions involving minimal discretion. However, in important respects screeners often come to function as street-level bureaucrats, exercising discretion in important areas of people’s lives, although without the authority to do so. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 947

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows the definitional gap: discretion in practice migrates below the formal decision-making role.
• XREF: Central to the reader’s thesis — practice outruns the stated division of responsibility, echoing Hypotheses 3, 12, and 13.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘the discretion no one authorized’ — how low-level gatekeepers become de facto policymakers, and why no cultural narrative keeps up with that shift.