Street-Level Bureaucracy: The Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service

13. Support for Human Services: Notes for Reform and Reconstruction

CHAPTER 13 Support for Human Services: Notes for Reform and Reconstruction I have argued that the determinants of street-level practice are deeply rooted in the structure of the work. Further, I have pointed out that streetlevel bureaucracies do not stand alone, but they reflect the character of prevailing organizational relations in the society as a whole. In turn, as a primary instrument of contact between government and citizens, streetlevel bureaucracies reinforce the relationships between citizens-both clients and workers-and the state. These observations contribute to our understanding of the stability of the institutions and their unlikely responsiveness to significant reform activities. Nonetheless, it is important to address the potential for significant reform, however remote. To say that institutions are stable does not mean that they are inert, or that the possibility for movement is unavailable. Indeed, streetlevel bureaucracies continually confront proposals for change. Seeking efficiency , equity with flexibility, and appropriateness of intervention, from different per~ectives public officials, client-oriented interest groups, organized public employees, and policy analysts perpetually engage in activities to reform the public services. A theory of street-level bureaucracy should help clarify the stakes in and potential for reform perspectives. At any given level ofpublic support we seek at least three values from service bureaucracies. We seek services or benefits appropriate to our situation Support for Human Services or needs, equity tempered by flexibility in the distribution of public benefits , and respect as citizens receiving our due from government. Many ofthe criticisms of street-level bureaucracies focus on the extent to which people fail to receive appropriate, equitable, or respectful encounters. Taking these criticisms as points of departure, three major lines of analysis are discussed below. 1. Encouraging client autonomy and influence over policy. z. Improving current street-level practice. 3. Helping street-level bureaucrats become more effective proponents of change. There is a necessary and inevitable tension between the desire to have an impact in the short run, and the recognition that problems are not reducible to short-term incremental manipulations. Furthermore, significant changes in street-level bureaucracy are likely to be realized only in the context of social changes that support the relationships that must be forged. Short of such changes, these lines of analysis simply become points of dispute in an ongoing struggle over the relationship of citizens to the state. Directions for Greater Client Autonomy Proposals for greater client autonomy generally suffer from the fact that clients tend to remain relMively powerless. Clients accorded greater collective influence may not possess the bureaucratic skills necessary to operate in the policy arena, or they may inherit control over programs or facilities so bankrupt that they defy significant management improvements. Tenant management of underfunded and poorly maintained public housing, for example , may fail to improve service more for financial and structural reasons than for reasons ofclient capability. In this sense giving clients control over public facilities may contribute to social control, as tenants contest with other tenants over scarce jobs and project resources. Nonetheless, proposals to increase client autonomy must be vigorously studied for their potential contribution to changing street-level relationships . One approach to change in street-level bureaucracy is to eliminate public workers as buffers between government and citizens. A class of proposals utilizing such an approach is represented by plans to issue service vouchers to citizens. By providing clients with claims on public or private service agencies, sponsors ofvoucher proposals hope that agencies would be more responsive to client preferences in order to attract their patronage. 193 THE FUTURE Voucher proposals have gained sup:port because they promise to introduce consumer sovereignty into the production of social services. After considerable experimentation with educational vouchers the record suggests that it is extremely difficult to establish the conditions under which clients ofeducational services are fully informed about a wide variety ofeducational options. It is not so much the theory that is damaged by these experiences as it is the hope of creating the rudiments of competition on which the theory actively depends.1 On their face, voucher proposals are attractive because they evoke the model of a competitive market that develops products in response to consumer demand. Unfortunately, market models in service provision will not solve any problems so long as service providers monopolize the scarcely supplied skills ofsemi-professionals, dictate the conditions under which services will be supplied, or are allowed to limit information available to the service consumer...