Top-down policy changes easily while practice-level change resists because it is survival-rooted.

Evidence

This is one of the reasons it is easier to change articulated policy from the top than to change practice from below. Policy articulated from the top is not rooted in defense mechanisms developed to cope with the job, while the policy that emerges from practice is rooted in survival. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1354

Categorization

• XREF: Directly bears on the reader’s speed-differential hypothesis: practice (stereotype-routinized) changes slower than articulated culture/policy because practice is survival-rooted. — connects to: The same society that roots bureaucratic stasis also generates countervailing change tendencies. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 1365; Policies persist even when their original justifications change — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2585
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source

Broader Connections

• Policies persist even when their original justifications change #expands (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2585