Social ideology of responsive service and cynicism about red tape jointly shape client expectations

Evidence

Third, street-level bureaucrats convey to clients what their proper level of expectations of the bureaucracy should be. This is complicated because at one level the society generally teaches that citizens have a right to equal treatment and responsive services. The ideology of public service urges people to seek safety, health care, education, and other objectives from public agencies. Diffuse public awareness that bureaucracies are characterized by red tape, inefficiency, corruption, and bungling helps to deBate expectations, but it does not do so entirely, since individuals can still hope for and seek out responsive treatment. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 486

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Client deference is a pervasive precondition of frontline service delivery — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 269; Sustained agency contact teaches poor clients they are undeserving; Poor clients’ agency involvement is nonvoluntary when no real alternatives exist (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Clients and workers inhabit structurally incompatible frames of individual need versus aggregate processing #complicates (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 459
• Social codes produce differential trust expectations across relationship types #expands (0.72) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 266
• Frontline work structure, not worker prejudice, creates receptivity to stereotypes #corroborates (0.72) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 844