Street-level bureaucracies manufacture client categories that people then internalize
Evidence
People come tQ street-level bureaucracies as unique individuals with different life experiences, personalities, and current circumstances. In their encounters with bureaucracies they are transformed into clients, identifiably located in a very small number of categories, treated as if, and treating themselves as if, they fit standardized definitions of units consigned to specific bureaucratic slots. The processing of people into clients, assigning them to categories for treatment by bureaucrats, and treating them in terms of those categories, is a social process. Client characteristics do not exist outside of the process that gives rise to them. An important part of this process is the way people learn to treat themselves as if they were categorical entities. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 455
Categorization
- XREF: Directly supports the reading hypothesis: bureaucratic categorization precedes and produces the client identity rather than reflecting pre-existing traits — the mechanism by which frontline discretion routinizes categories on the client side. — connects to: Street-level bureaucracies blend coercive and normative compliance into one mode — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 350; People-processing bureaucracies affect clients through the interaction itself, unlike other bureaucracies — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 627; Clients internalize administrative labels and conform to them — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 836 (+5 more)
- DEFINE: Defines the social process by which people become ‘clients’ — categorical processing made self-fulfilling.
Broader Connections
- Clients internalize administrative labels and conform to them
#corroborates(1.00) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 836 - Categorization imperatives force workers to treat clients as attribute bundles, not whole persons
#expands(0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 574 - People-processing bureaucracies affect clients through the interaction itself, unlike other bureaucracies
#expands(0.80) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 627