Where client control is critical, workers make it a precondition of interaction.

Evidence

When control of clients is problematic yet critical to task performance or personal safety, interactions between citizens and street-level bureaucrats are dominated by control routines. Some street-level bureaucrats cannot depend on the setting, or on a set interview process, to control clients. These workers will develop routines to make client control a precondition of the interaction. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 891

Categorization

• DEFINE: Operationalizes the mechanism by which discretion hardens into routine: control becomes a gatekeeping precondition rather than a goal of the encounter.
• XREF: connects to: Setting control is so central to client management that policing’s exception proves the rule — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 874; Frontline workers control clients by structuring interactions before behavior emerges — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 465

Broader Connections

• Frontline workers control clients by structuring interactions before behavior emerges #expands (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 465