Street-level workers effectively make the policies they are charged with implementing

Evidence

Street-level bureaucrats are major recipients of public expenditures and represent a significant portion of public activity at the local level. Citizens directly experience government through them, and their actions are the policies provided by government in important respects. I start by summarizing the importance of street-level bureaucrats in current political life and explain the sense in which these low-level workers may be understood to “make” the policies they are otherwise charged with implementing (part I). — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 59

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the central concept that frontline workers’ actions constitute actual policy delivery.
• XREF: connects to: Frontline workers’ coping routines become the actual public policy — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 31; Street-level workers hold individual and collective control over their working rules — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1378; Street-level routines themselves constitute the delivered policy — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 626 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Street-level routines themselves constitute the delivered policy #expands (0.95) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 626
• Street-level workers hold individual and collective control over their working rules #expands (0.90) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1378
• Street-level work is decision making under uncertainty where workers define their own satisfactory standards #expands (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 612
• Street-level bureaucrats are frontline workers exercising substantial job discretion #expands (0.85)
• Street-level bureaucracies measure what is measurable, and workers then conform behavior to those measures #qualifies (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 402