2.

Positioning street-level bureaucracy research

Peter Hupe and Michael Hill

2.1 INTRODUCTION
How great expectations in Washington were dashed in Oakland or, why it’s amazing that federal
programs work at all, this being a saga of the Economic Development Administration as told by
two sympathetic observers who seek to build morals on a foundation of ruined hopes.

This quote is the subtitle – among the lengthiest ever – of Implementation, written by
Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky (1973). The length of this subtitle, however, is
not the reason that this book would become a classic in Public Administration. These
reasons are threefold. First, the book expressed explicit attention from a social sciences
point of view to what happens ‘after a bill became a law’ (Bardach 1977). Beyond the
high politics of Washington, governmental action on ‘lower’ public-administrative layers,
further downward within the stages of the policy process, was taken seriously. Second,
Implementation is very much a story of disappointment about the less-than-hoped-
for results in practice from the good intentions formulated on paper. Pressman and
Wildavsky’s case study focused on the realization of a federally funded employment policy
programme, seen as one among a vast range of public policies that have characterized the
welfare state. Third, the study can be seen as emblematic for the top-down view of policy
implementation, with the normative appeal inherent within it.
The history of the social sciences is one of ongoing differentiation and specialization.
The contemporary political sciences alone already have proliferated into an extensive
variety of academic disciplines and subdisciplines, scholarly themes and theoretical
approaches, under an ever-growing range of headings. Elsewhere we characterized imple-
mentation research as a subdiscipline of Political Science and Public Administration (Hill
and Hupe 2014). There are reasons to consider street-level bureaucracy research as a
scholarly theme of its own and as such situated on a crossing between the academic stud-
ies of public policy, public administration and public management. As far as we know,
no student anywhere in the world can, as yet, enrol in a full-fledged academic curriculum
labelled as ‘Street-Level Bureaucracy’. This being so, in this Research Handbook the latter
phenomenon is treated as part of the policy process and, within that, particularly related
to the ‘stage’ of policy implementation. This means that, certainly not in an exclusive way
but first and foremost, insights are relevant here as found on those topics in the parts of
the library of the social sciences concerned.
The exploration and characterization of such insights is the objective of this chapter.
Given the development of the study of government-in-action, what kinds of insights have
been gained and how can the state of knowledge be characterized? Between the introduc-
tion and the conclusion the chapter is organized into three sections. In the next section
two contrasting views of implementation are outlined as still prevailing – and therefore
now almost ‘classic’. Section 2.3 highlights aspects of the study of the policy process and

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 16  Research handbook on street-level bureaucracy

policy implementation as developed over the years. In Section 2.4 the focus then is more
particularly on insights gained in street-level bureaucracy research.

2.2 THE STUDY OF GOVERNMENT-IN-ACTION

Since the publication of the first edition of Implementation, the top-down view on
implementation represented in it has remained widely recognized. The nature of the
top-down perspective has been characterized as the thesis of incongruent implementation
(Hupe 2011a). The perspective implies a chronological order: intentions precede action.
It assumes a linear causality: goals determine instruments, instruments determine results.
And a hierarchy is inherently presumed: policy formation is more important than policy
implementation. Implementation is hence conceived as following instructions. It is treated
as a residual of policy intentions. It is necessary for goal achievement, but as such it is
presupposed. When things are perceived to go wrong with a policy, this failure will be
attributed to a lack of compliance by the implementers (for a full treatment see Hupe
2018).
The high normative appeal of the top-down view goes hand in hand with a limited
explanatory capacity. In academic critiques the limited explanatory power of the top-
down view of implementation has been identified. One would therefore expect that
the view may still be salient in the practice of public administration, but would have
lost its rele­vance in implementation research. Maybe surprisingly, the opposite is true:
the top-down view underlies a sustained number of implementation studies of policy
programmes, with a single case character (Sætren 2014). Moreover, in health and other
intervention-oriented sectors implementation science has become a topic (Nilsen, Stähl,
Roback and Cairney 2013). These developments may indicate traits of a circular evolu-
tion, making the top-down view of implementation anything but one to be written off (for
an elaboration see Hupe 2011a, 2011b, 2017a, 2017b, 2018; see also Hupe and Hill 2016).
In addition, in the 1970s, authors from various social sciences backgrounds expressed
an alternative view on implementation. They considered the latter primarily as concern-
ing a practice, rather than a residual matter of following instructions. One could think
of Michael Lipsky (1969), Richard Elmore (1979), Jeffrey Prottas (1979) and Richard
Weatherley (1979) in the USA, people like Michael Hill (1969), Susan Barrett and Colin
Fudge (1981) in the UK and Kenneth Hanf and Fritz Scharpf (1978) in Continental
Europe. They all shared the view that in implementation research attention should be
given to the dynamics of what happens on what in this Research Handbook is called
the ‘ground floor of government’. To that level, the policies initiated in the White
House, Whitehall or The Hague are devolved, requiring implementation in situations
­characterized by multiple demands and scarcity of resources.
One of the present authors has already shown earlier how discretion is inherent to all
parts of the policy process. Since then, he has continued to demonstrate how the study
of street-level bureaucracy, implementation research in the narrow sense and the study of
the overall policy process, are related and should be treated accordingly (Hill 1969, 1972,
1997; Hill and Varone 2017). Also, Peter May and Søren Winter (2012) have stayed active
in the field, witnessing as well as contributing to the steady development of street-level
bureaucracy as a scholarly theme of its own.

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 Positioning street-level bureaucracy research  17

The top-down versus bottom-up controversy in implementation research was followed by

an obvious appeal to develop ‘synthesizing’ approaches (Sabatier 1986; Goggin, Bowman,
Lester and O’Toole 1990). Five approaches can be mentioned here, all sharing the goal
of explaining policy implementation results while having a more or less comprehensive
character. These are the Policy-Implementation Process Model developed by Donald
Van Meter and Carl Van Horn (1975), the Communications Model of Intergovernmental
Policy Implementation developed by Malcom Goggin, Ann Bowman, James Lester and
Laurence O’Toole Jr (1990), the Advocacy Coalition Framework developed by Paul
Sabatier, Hank Jenkins-Smith, Christopher Weible and others (for an overview see
Jenkins-Smith, Nohrstedt, Weible and Sabatier 2014), the Policy Regime Perspective
developed by Peter May and collaborators (May and Jochim 2013; May 2015) and the
Integrated Implementation Model developed by Søren Winter (2012a). A full treatment of
the specific content of each of these comprehensive theoretical approaches can be found
in other work by the present authors (see Hill and Hupe 2014; Hupe 2018).
The availability of these kinds of comprehensive theoretical approaches did lead to a
situation in which all these approaches are currently being applied. However, in terms of
theoretical development, the contemporary situation is characterized by the side-by-side
application of these approaches in implementation research, next to other, maybe less
comprehensive ones. Hence, the state of the field is characterized by co-existence rather
than by a hegemony of one grand implementation theory (for updated empirical evidence
see Sætren and Hupe 2018). The conclusion of this section therefore can be that, instead
of a fully linear development, the theoretical evolution of the field shows iterative and
cyclical elements. Between the thesis and the synthesis, the anti-thesis of bottom-up
approaches has been sustained and is very much alive.

2.3 ASPECTS OF COLLECTED THOUGHT

It is an impossible task to explore, with any claim to comprehensiveness, the substantive

insights gained in the study of the policy process, in implementation research and in
street-level bureaucracy research as well, within the framework of a chapter, let alone
one section. What does seem both relevant and feasible, however, is to address these
literatures, inasmuch as they are differentiated, with a particular question. In the context
of this Research Handbook, this question concerns what aspects of the thrust of thought
on the policy process, implementation and street-level bureaucracy, respectively, may
be identified which, if not acknowledged, may turn into pitfalls and traps when doing
research.
Those pitfalls and traps regarding street-level bureaucracy research are central in this
Research Handbook as a whole. Therefore, in the present section the focus is on the
literatures on, respectively, the policy process and policy implementation. The question
above is answered in a brief and self-constrained way, by adopting the norm of making a
selection of three aspects of thought identifiable in each of these two literatures.
The highlighted aspects as such may not be entirely new or surprising. Rather, they look
somewhat similar to the elements of O’Toole’s (1986) ‘top-down conventional wisdom’,
in the sense that those described below also present a range of ‘features to be aware of’.
The list is heavily influenced by earlier work of the authors. With its documenting and

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 18  Research handbook on street-level bureaucracy

signalling character the list forms a critical version of a catalogue of idées recues to be
kept in mind – to be adopted or avoided – when doing research on government-in-action.

The Myth of Rational Problem-Solving

In textbooks and handbooks on the policy process the stages heuristic functions, in all
sorts of variants, as the standard frame (see, for instance, Knoepfel, Larrue, Varone and
Hill 2007; Anderson 2010; Wu, Ramesh, Howlett and Fritzen 2010; Birkland 2011; Hill
and Varone 2017; Colebatch and Hoppe 2018). This is remarkable, because the critique of
the stages ‘model’ has been substantial and widely adopted. The ‘model’ provides a way of
structuring various aspects of the analysis of government-in-action. This being so, it turns
out to be an analytical framework or meta-theoretical heuristic, rather than a causal model
(Hupe 2011b). The staged picture of the policy process refers to a chronological as well as
a logical order thought of as universal. Policy implementation is supposed to follow policy
formation. Means are chosen while ends are given. Administration takes care of those
means, after politics has spoken. While some of these books see analysis in terms of stages
as only necessary as an organizing principle, ‘imposing some order on the research process’
(John 1998: 36) or teaching, this cannot avoid implying a certain logic for the process.
Since Lasswell (1951) coined the term ‘policy orientation’, public policy as such is seen
as strongly connected with the modern state and its institutions. In the policy orientation
knowledge from the social sciences can and should be used to improve society via public
policies as forms of social engineering. Howlett and Ramesh (2003) show how the separate
stages in the policy cycle each refer to a part of applied problem-solving. Agenda-setting
then corresponds with problem-recognition; policy formulation with the proposal of a
solution; decision-making with the choice of a specific solution; policy implementation
with putting the chosen solution into effect; and policy evaluation with monitoring results.
Policymaking thus means problem-processing. Stone (2012) speaks of a policy process as
a production process. Public policy is the result of what happens on an assembly line; for
a more extensive treatment see Hupe (2011b).
Although ‘speaking truth to power’ (Wildavsky 1979; Wildavsky and Peters 2018) is
still seen as a relevant norm for researchers to adopt, the relationship between knowledge
and the policy process is anything but a linear one. Talking about policy politics, Brodkin
(1990: 116) states: ‘Ultimately, policies can be no more resolute and precise than the
political processes that produce them.’ Hupe and Hill (2014: 36) add a warning to that
observation:

For the ‘delivery capacity’ of government . . . there are limits to the degree to which problems in
society can be managed, let alone ‘solved’. These limits exist to the extent that problem-solving
is ‘troubled by features of political processes’. Besides, there are limits to the possibilities of
problem-solving as such. It is false to assume that governance innovation can enhance the
problem-solving capacity of the modern state in such a way that any problem can be solved. In
fact, a technocratic ideal is lurking here.

Instead of being marked by an orientation of rational problem-solving, the practice

of the policy process primarily concerns ‘policy work’ as attempts at governing via
coordinated collective action on various scales (Colebatch 2006). The problem-solving
paradigm to which the stages heuristic is connected can be characterized as a rationalistic

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 Positioning street-level bureaucracy research  19

myth. Rationalistic, because the identification of relationships between causes and conse-
quences, costs and benefits, indeed is concerned, but more than means/ends relationships
are at stake. A myth, because it presents a picture of a situation perhaps desirable to
believe in but not explaining the situation as it is.

The Control Trap

As a second aspect of the thought embodied in studies on the policy process the ‘control
trap’ can be identified (for a specification see Hill and Hupe 2003). The ‘control trap’
points to a specific implication of the stages heuristic: the inducement of quick judge-
ments on implementation failures and policy fiascos. The stages discourse implies a nor-
mative hierarchy. To what extent empirically observed action can be judged as legitimate
is regarded as a normative matter. This being so, researchers may be more or less keen
on exercising ‘power by proxy’ by way of giving advice to policymakers. For example,
when seeking to do contract research, researchers may not always sufficiently reflect on
the methodological consequences of a normative top-down bias. The implicit adoption
of a view from the top may lead to confusing the normative and the empirical, treating
observations of the latter as deviances from the standard implied by the former. Instead,
an open observation of what happens is to be distinguished from a judgement on the
legitimacy of what is observed. There may be, for instance, a necessity for public servants
and other practitioners to interpret ambiguous legislation.

The Appeal of Reification

The ongoing differentiation mentioned above lies behind the fact that research attention
to each ‘stage’ in the policy process has tended to evolve into scholarly themes of their
own. As far as labour division and academic development are concerned, this is clearly
of value. Among other things, it means that implementation has grown into an academic
subdiscipline. In substantive terms, however, the reification of each separate stage has
shadow sides. This is the case if the localization of the point where policy formation
activities end and implementation activities begin in a policy process is presumed rather
than investigated. On normative grounds, the separation between the stages then is taken
for granted, instead of empirically observing that policymaking in fact goes on in the
subsequent stages; and of researching how. When policymaking is seen as continuous and
cyclical – indeed, as a policy process – then the question is how to appropriately deal with
the fact that in empirical reality there may be distinctive public-administrative layers, but
there are no neat, a priori, divisions between different types of activities. To locate those
divisions, empirical observations are needed.

Presupposed Practice

In studies of a varying nature, the word implementation is used to denote a wide-ranging

residual (Hupe and Hill 2016). Such a treatment of implementation – as something that
comes next and is presupposed – can also be found in implementation studies labelled
as such. Several years after the top-down/bottom-up controversy seemingly had been
resolved, the picture is still a mixed one. In contemporary overviews of the field, it has

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been evidenced that the number of implementation studies steadily continues (Sætren
2005, 2014; Hill and Hupe 2014; Hupe 2014, 2017a, 2017b, 2018; Hupe and Sætren 2014;
Sætren and Hupe 2018). Those studies often have the character of a single case study, in
the sense that the implementation of a particular public policy or programme is central.
When the outputs or outcomes of such a policy are being compared with its inputs in the
form of stated objectives, actually an evaluation of goal achievement is made, as Winter
(2012a, 2012b) points out. In such a context, the operations inside the implementation
part of the policy process, to a large extent, remain invisible to the researcher.
There is a problem here about the widespread use of the term implementation, which
we have explored elsewhere, particularly in the first chapter of our Implementing Public
Policy (Hill and Hupe 2014). Recourse to a dictionary to define the term, as Pressman and
Wildavsky do in the preface to the first edition of their influential text (1973: xxi), leads to
an approach to the analysis of the relationship between policy and implementation with
two features. It implies a clear distinction between the two sorts of activities and it leads
to the view that what is done at the implementation stage is a function of an explicit and
unambiguous policy.
To some extent, this approach may be welcomed, on purely practical grounds, as
enabling decisions about which part of the policy process is to be given explicit atten-
tion. However, a very broad approach, as exemplified in Marsh and Rhodes’s (1982)
Implementing Thatcherite Policies, may confuse. That edited book is actually about the
processes occurring – much of them within the ranks of the Conservative Party – as
efforts were made to translate a new ideological stance into policies. Although fitting
with a loose, popular definition of ‘implementation’, that is a long way from the scholarly
concerns of most implementation studies. A similar issue may be posed by journalistic
interest in US President Trump’s ‘implementation’ difficulties, as a businessman with
no political experience and tenuous links to his ostensible Republican colleagues, when
negotiating his way through the complex politics of the relationship between Presidential
power and Congress. From the point of view of academic analysis, similar problems are
posed about the so-called implementation of European Union policies where, depending
on the issue (see Bulmer and Padgett 2004; Holzinger and Knill 2005), these range from
mandates to loose recommendations. Some authors consider it better to handle this topic
under the heading of ‘inter-governmental relations’ (Jordan 2001).

An Empirical Bias

There is another issue related to the standard approach to the policy/implementation

nexus. It concerns the extent to which the policy involved can be understood as an imple-
mendum formulated explicitly and unambiguously enough to act upon (see discussion in
Hill and Varone 2017: 15–20). Winter (2012a) argues, to good effect, that the dependent
variables used in implementation studies should be outputs or outcomes and not policy
goals. That avoids the problem of identifying with top-down formulations of policy goals
and stepping into the accompanying ‘control trap’ identified above. However, it still
leaves aside the problem about how to model those formulations (inasmuch as they are
an influence upon implementation) even as independent variables.
One of the most influential approaches to modelling implementation processes is that
of Van Meter and Van Horn (1975), mentioned above. They locate a dependent variable

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 Positioning street-level bureaucracy research  21

(performance) at the right-hand side of their diagram and policy at the left-hand side. Of
course, even the locations of these two may be seen to represent a stages-based top-down
bias (here is an example of the difficulty of escaping this problem when modelling the
policy process). Nevertheless, they qualify what they mean by policy with two points:
standards and objectives; and resources. That allows for the possibility that policy may be
a variable, complex and ambiguous input into the implementation process. This has much
in common with a later formulation of the same issue by Matland (1995), identifying
‘ambiguity’ and ‘conflict’ as influences upon implementation.
Do not these efforts to distinguish variables still leave us with a linear model, as
criticized in bottom-up critiques of the top-down model of implementation: policy
input > implementation > performance? It is the Advocacy Coalition Framework which
attempts to get us out of this problem. In the flow diagram in which it is represented, in
the box on the far right-hand side, headed ‘policy subsystem’, the terms after the arrows
are ‘Strategies’ ‡ ‘Decisions by government authorities’ ‡ ‘Institutional rules’ ‡ ‘Policy
outputs’ ‡ ‘Policy impacts’ (Jenkins-Smith et al. 2014: 194).
As a specific consequence of the aspects mentioned here – in particular the appeal of
reification of approaching implementation as a separate stage, combined with an opaque
view of where implementation activities actually take place – in implementation studies
those activities are automatically treated as connected with a specific spot. When, for
instance, the legitimate formation of a particular policy has taken place on the layer of
the ministry concerned, the subsequent implementation of that policy is seen as conse-
quentially taking place in local offices or in local government. Whether, however, what
is actually occurring on that latter layer is implementation or rather policy co-formation
(‘formation’ conceived as formulation plus decision-making) poses an empirical question
about the extent to which the so-called ‘implementers’ have a legitimate right to adapt
the original policy-as-written. Strengthened by the other aspects mentioned above, the
stages heuristic induces research in which what actors do (activities as focus) and where
they do it (layer as locus) are, a priori, supposed to be coinciding, instead of independent.
In such instances, the methodological ‘fallacy of the wrong layer’ can be observed (Hill
and Hupe 2003).

The Paradox of Under-Conceptualization

In 1986 O’Toole made an inventory of the factors highlighted in implementation studies

to that date. He observed hundreds of different variables (O’Toole 1986). The state of
the field led Goggin (1986) to identify the issue of ‘too many variables, too few cases’.
Comprehensive theoretical approaches seek to structure the multitude of factors influ-
encing policy implementation. In fact, what is primarily specified in such approaches is
the range of potentially explanatory variables. As indicated in the previous paragraphs,
implementation activities and their results, as the dependent variables of the research
concerned, remain labelled in largely general terms.
An alternative approach to this problem has been adopted by Matland (1995: 146) who
argued: ‘A literature with three hundred critical variables . . . needs structure.’ However,
how can it be given structure unless there are assumptions that the implementation task
is predetermined? The top-down view of implementation takes its cue from Woodrow
Wilson’s (1887) distinction between politics and administration. Then ‘structure’ is ­provided

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by the assumption that there are no questions to be considered about the determinants
of policy. A policy document is guiding: all actors in the policy processes know what
they are supposed to do and how they are expected to act. Implementation is conceived
as a matter of following instructions. Once the possibility is introduced that policy needs
to be determined, even if only in part, during the implementation process and perhaps
that, furthermore, there will be interaction between the originators of the policy and its
implementers – then the systematic study of implementation becomes more difficult.
There may be a choice to be made between, on one hand, conducting a multi-faceted
study in qualitative ways and, on the other hand, the careful quantitative testing of
hypotheses operationalizing a limited range of variables. Clearly, the extent to which these
issues are a concern depends upon expectations about the ‘scientific’ aspirations of such
research. Sætren’s (2014) second survey report on implementation research notes a shift
in recent work towards more deductive hypothesis testing. This being so, in a context in
which there is a lack of consensus there are still many studies to which this observation
does not apply. Sætren notes Winter’s (2012b: 265) view that diversity is ‘more a strength
than a weakness’ and his plea for ‘developing and testing partial theories and hypotheses’.
What we may speculate – although this is a topic that Sætren does not address – is that
maybe the studies where the strongest efforts are made to integrate the study of imple-
mentation into a broad understanding of the policy process are likely to be those – often
of a case study nature – where hypothesis testing is least in evidence.

2.4 THE STREET LEVEL CONCEPTUALIZED

Ongoing Diversification

Since Michael Lipsky (1980 [2010]) coined the term street-level bureaucracy, substantial
progress has been evident in the identification of aspects of work at the street level of gov-
ernment bureaucracy relevant to policy performance; for overviews see Maynard-Moody
and Portillo (2010), Brodkin (2012), Meyers and Nielsen (2012), Smith (2012), Gilson
(2015) and Hupe, Hill and Buffat (2015a). At the street level of public administration, in
an authoritative way discretion is being exercised. Given that position, at the bottom of a
legitimate hierarchy, it can be no surprise that several conceptualizations with a more or
less straightforward juridical connotation are being used for framing ‘what happens’ there.
Prominent among those conceptualizations are ‘law enforcement’, ‘rule application’ and
‘compliance’. In other disciplines than law, similar phenomena get attention, although
under different headings, as will be addressed in Chapter 26 of this Research Handbook
(see also Hupe 2013).
However, in the study of street-level bureaucracy located under this very umbrella, too,
a strong, empirical, social sciences orientation can be observed. One of the consequences
of that fact is that more than only the traditional juridical labels have been developed
and adopted in the analysis of what public servants on the ‘lower’ layers of government
bureaucracy do; as will be elaborated in Chapter 4 of this Research Handbook. Apart
from ‘exercising discretion’, the concept of ‘street-level decision-making’ or ‘frontline
decision-making’ (Zang and Musheno 2017) is used. In addition, a scholarly emphasis
on ­‘regulatory enforcement styles’ (May and Winter 2012) and ‘interaction styles’ (Van

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 Positioning street-level bureaucracy research  23

Parys 2016) can be observed. ‘Coping’ or ‘coping behaviour’ (Baviskar and Winter 2017)
is a special case. While Lipsky (1980 [2010]) put ‘coping strategies’ forward as a central
element in his theoretical approach, recently several scholars have developed the concept
further as an umbrella-like term to indicate what happens within street-level bureaucra-
cies overall (see, for instance, Kelly 1994; Brodkin 1997; Gofen 2014; Møller 2016). In
a literature review, Tummers, Bekkers, Vink and Musheno (2015: 1100) define ‘coping’
during public service delivery as ‘behavioral efforts street-level bureaucrats employ when
interacting with clients, in order to master, tolerate, or reduce external and internal
demands and conflicts they face on an everyday basis’ (see also Tummers 2017).
Apart from the variety of conceptualizations with which ‘what happens’ is being
approached, in street-level bureaucracy research also the further specification of person-
bound characteristics goes on. An example is the concept of ‘policy alienation’ (Tummers,
Bekkers and Steijn 2009; Tummers 2013; see also Tummers and Bekkers 2014). The latter
concept refers to the impact of the views of street-level bureaucrats about the public
policy concerned. Raaphorst (2017) focuses on the ‘uncertainty’ tax inspectors experience
when making decisions in their interaction with individual entrepreneurs. Zacka (2017)
addresses the ‘dispositions’ of street-level bureaucrats as ‘moral agents’ in their own right,
forced to act in often ‘impossible situations’.
Recently, the value of examining the various ways in which a particular public task is
being undertaken in different contexts has been acknowledged (Hupe and Buffat 2014).
In current work on street-level bureaucracy the future of research is seen as enhancing
generalization through ‘contextualized comparison’ (Hupe, Hill and Buffat 2015b: 326).
Within this array of conceptualizations and insights developed over the years some
lines can be drawn.

Object, Scope and Generalization

‘[P]ublic policy is not best understood as made in legislatures or top-floor suites of high-
ranking administrators, because in important ways it is actually made in the crowded
offices and daily encounters of street-level workers’ (Lipsky 1980: xii). Even before his
book was published, Lipsky (1978) spoke of ‘standing the study of public policy imple-
mentation on its head’. By this, somewhat provocative, reversal of the stages picture of the
policy process Lipsky put street-level bureaucracy on the scholarly agenda. For a number
of reasons, the ‘discovery’ of what happened in that ‘lower’ segment of government was
a milestone. First, it suggested that policy implementation is a part of the policy process
which is empirically at least as important as policy formation. Second, implementation
researchers will not know much about what implementation actually means unless they
focus explicitly on the street level. Third, from the viewpoint of a principal, discretion
may be a matter of choice, for agents, however, it is an inherent characteristic of their
action. Hence, it is worthwhile exploring how the street level has been addressed in the
literature concerned – especially the ways in which the particular character of street-level
bureaucracy as a field of inquiry is addressed seem relevant (Empirical object), as well
as the delineation of that field (Scope). Perhaps the most contested aspect of thought
concerns the identification of ‘what explains what’, especially in the light of the results of
policy processes (Generalization).

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Empirical object
‘What actually happens when public policies are enacted’ is the most general descrip-
tion Lipsky (2010: 213) gives of the empirical object of street-level bureaucracy
research. In the course of his book, Lipsky circumscribes the object of his analysis in
various ways. The organizations central to the book are considered as ‘public service
organizations’ (2010: xvii) engaged in ‘front-line public service delivery’ (xii). Within
those ­organizations, Lipsky is interested in interactions with street-level bureaucracies
as ‘places where citizens experience directly the government they have implicitly con-
structed’ and in ‘citizen encounters with street-level bureaucracies’ (xi). Lipsky (2010)
opens the preface to the updated version of his book by stating that his book is ‘a search
for the place of the individual in those services I call street-level bureaucracies’ (xi).
Subsequently those individuals are addressed as ‘public workers’ (xi) and ‘front-line
workers’ (xvii). The work is being done in ‘occupations’ (xii) and ‘callings’ in ‘public
service’ (xiii). It can be observed that even the adjective ‘public’ has multiple meanings.
Certainly public or quasi-public tasks may be contracted out to, and performed by,
private organizations.
This variety of terms, concepts and definitions is mirrored in the theoretical-empirical
work on the scholarly theme developed since the first edition of Lipsky’s monograph. The
qualification ‘front line’ seems to be used as frequently as ‘street level’. While both indicate
a physical locus (not the rear but the front; respectively, not ‘the top-floor suites’ but ‘the
ground floor’), the ‘front line’ also invites the heroic association of the warfare metaphor.
In the context of policy networks, the term ‘boundary spanners’ is used as referring to
actors working ‘at the edges’ and sometimes also ‘at the bottom’ of public organizations
(Williams 2002).
Probably with the aim of broadening the research perspective, some researchers make
a plea for using the term ‘street-level organizations’ (for example, Brodkin 2011, amongst
others). Lipsky (2010: 219) observes in a chapter added to his book in the later edition that
the nominal replacement of ‘bureaucracy’ by the more neutral and general ‘organizations’
may also be inspired by a wish to protect the people working there from the general ‘anti-
government perspective’. It should be noted that the vertical dimension, the legitimate
representation of the authority of the state, may get lost here. Instead, some authors
underline this vertical dimension by using the term ‘public professionals’ (Tummers et al.
2009) or ‘professionals in public service’ (Hupe 2010).
The diversity of terms as indicated may be valued as far as using synonyms in texts
enhances the attractiveness of the latter. The point is that it may become difficult to
distinguish between what concerns ‘real’ variation in empirical reality and what is merely
variation in the discourse used. Certainly, when comparative research is aimed at (see
Chapters 16 to 18 of this Research Handbook) it seems necessary to specify terms and to
apply them consistently.

Scope
Some authors are drawing a smaller circle around ‘street-level bureaucracy’ than others.
Maynard-Moody and Portillo (2010: 261) speak of research on street-level bureaucracy
as having become ‘a vital and generative scholarly confluence and influence at the
intersection of public administration, social welfare, criminal justice, socio-legal studies,
and public policy’.

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Continuing, they identify ‘changing perceptions among continuities of thought’ that

are the result of the ‘stretching of the definition of street-level bureaucracy’ (261). Court
clerks, tax auditors, building inspectors, emergency-call operators and public guardians
can be seen as front-line workers, they acknowledge, in the sense that these employees
use discretion, basing their judgements on direct contacts with citizens. ‘Nevertheless,’
Maynard-Moody and Portillo (263) add, ‘we emphasize that researchers need to be
­careful not to assume that all frontline workers are street-level bureaucrats’.
A priori distinguishing between ‘meaningful’ levels of discretion, as suggested by
Maynard-Moody and Portillo, does not seem obvious. Also, when the metaphor of the
street is taken literally as referring to contact between citizen and state, the nature of that
contact can vary. As pointed out in Chapter 1, the contact can take place face-to-face at
the office desk, but also via telephone, the internet and – more and more important – social
media. In the case of certain tasks, hence, perhaps the front line gets an online character
(as Christopher Hood once suggested in a conversation; cf. Bovens and Zouridis 2002;
Wenger and Wilkins 2009). In a local social assistance department it may be, for instance,
that the contact official having an intake interview for a social benefit application and the
public servant making the decision on that application is not the same person. Then it
is up to the researcher to justify who he or she in this case would like to consider as ‘the
street-level bureaucrat’ involved. Probably both, but in any case, the answer will depend
on the specification of what needs explanation.
Of course one can assume that the medical consultant and the nurse both working in an
NHS hospital have a different ‘discretion’, in the dual sense of the distinction one of the
present authors made earlier (Hupe 2013). The discretion as used may, to some extent, vary
from person to person. The nature of the authority to make judgements and decisions,
discretion as granted, will vary as well. The varying degree of institutionalization of the
respective professions of the doctor and the nurse may have something to do with this.
After all, two kinds of occupations are involved here, distinguishable, respectively, as a
full profession and a semi-profession (Etzioni 1969).
At the same time, the medical consultant and the nurse have several features in common.
First, they are working in contact with individual citizens, who are in the role of patients.
Second, in very many situations they are doing this either in a state health service or in a
framework in which there are state policies and the state has funding and/or regulatory
roles. Third, they have a particular occupation, for which they have had a formal education
and have been trained in a sustained way. Because of these joint characteristics the doctor
and the nurse may be addressed under the common heading of ‘street-level bureaucrats’.
By implication, ‘a) they have inherent discretion, b) function as policy co-makers, and c)
show a certain craftsmanship in fulfilling their tasks’ (Hupe et al. 2015a: 16).
The aspect of scope is differentiated by Wilson (1989). He uses a distinction based upon
the extent to which outcomes may be identified (and evaluated) in respect of the activities
of different workers and uses this to label varying kinds of organizations. It is clear that
the soldier literally at the front line in wartime and the teacher in the classroom do quite
different work. The work of the soldier is that of a craft organization, with ‘activities hard
to observe’ but with ‘outcomes relatively easy to evaluate’ (1989: 165). In the classroom,
part of a coping agency, both activities and their results are difficult to observe (despite
standardized tests ‘that do not clearly differentiate between what the teacher has imparted
and what the student has acquired otherwise’, 168). The perspective of street-level

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bureaucracy then makes a case for a comparative look at the work of the soldier and that
of the teacher, however different.

Generalization
‘Contextualized comparison’ enlarges the possibility of making statements with a certain
degree of generalization (Hupe et al. 2015b: 326). As captured in the lengthy subtitle of
Pressman and Wildavsky’s (1973) classic work on implementation, it is a long way from
intentions expressed in Washington to interactions at the street level of Oakland. Along
the ‘vertical dimension of public administration’ there is a range of layers, loci and actors.
This makes discretion relevant in multiple ways: both as an empirical fact, observable
in a variety of action spots and as necessary for the fulfilment of public tasks – but the
question is how. In research, establishing the nature and degree of discretion, conceived as
authority granted to make judgements and decisions, concerns the examination of empir­
ical questions. The same goes for the ways this discretionary authority is being exercised.
Concerning the question of who in policy processes are ‘discretionary actors’, Evans
(2010), for instance, argues that managers supervising the work of street-level bureaucrats,
too, exercise discretion. This point is elaborated in Chapter 12 of this Research Handbook.
In research on the ways in which street-level bureaucrats are doing their work as related
to other actors in the particular context at hand, its causes as well its consequences,
especially for the results of policy processes, the ultimate question then is about (causal)
relationships. What explains what?

2.5 CONCLUSION

The ongoing differentiation and specialization in the social sciences was the point of
departure for this chapter. The argument unfolded has made clear that this state of
scholarly development can be assessed in a dual way. On one hand, that development has
provided substantial knowledge and a range of theoretical insights about empirical real-
ity. On the other hand, progress was secured mainly within a variety of, relatively small,
territories. Often there has been little exchange of views across the demarcation lines of
separate scholarly communities, let alone disciplines. This has turned the meaning of the
term ‘accumulation of knowledge’ into a relative one.
In the study of the policy process the stages heuristic still has an important position.
It is used as a didactic device and has been widely adopted to structure textbooks and
handbooks on the subject. The heuristic is prevalent in the usual way where there is a top-
down emphasis not only at the ministries but also in many studies of implementation. The
most significant justification in research for treating implementation as a separate stage
(The appeal of reification) and adopting an authoritative stance towards official decision-
makers (The control trap) can be found in the sustained normative attraction of looking at
a policy process as a range of subsequent steps needed to reach a desired result on behalf of
the common good (The myth of rational problem-solving). While the link with democratic
accountability is obvious and beyond dispute, the question is what can be explained and
what not, when the policy process is approached as such a succession of stages.
The literature on policy implementation provides more concrete material, particularly
when concerned with goal achievement in the cases of separate policies or programmes.

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 Positioning street-level bureaucracy research  27

At the same time, it is striking that, in this literature too, the street level remains at a
distance (Presupposed practice). The loci of implementation activities are often more
assumed than empirically actually investigated (An empirical bias). While more attention
has been given in implementation research to potentially explanatory factors, there has
been less focus on a specification of what precisely needs to be explained (The paradox of
under-conceptualization).
The practice of implementation does have a central position in street-level bureaucracy
research. In a top-down view, implementation is treated as something that comes next,
while blaming the street level in the case of a perceived implementation failure is a stand-
ard reaction. When the policy goals have not been achieved, that is because something
in their implementation went wrong. In street-level bureaucracy research, however, a
mirror view can be observed: the public official working there while fulfilling often dif-
ficult tasks is put centrally. A full-fledged theory via which street-level bureaucracy in its
context can be researched in a comparative way – across organizations, professions and
national borders – has not been developed yet. Following up on the seminal work done by
Michael Lipsky and his colleagues, a range of conceptualizations and theoretical insights
have been presented. In contemporary street-level bureaucracy studies individuals tend
to be treated as isolated research objects. The focus is on the particularist traits of their
personalities and features of their behaviour. This attention can be deemed appropriate,
as long as the work of these individuals remains being seen as embedded in the pat-
terned influences emanating from, and exercised towards, the institutional and cultural
­environment around that work.
Divisions of labour within scholarship are necessary and therefore inevitable. This
chapter has explored aspects of collected thought developed in the study of government-
in-action. A distinction was made between, first, the overall study of the policy process,
with its need to divide attention, which leads scholars to use the stages heuristic for prac­
tical reasons even when they are unhappy about it; second, the study of implementation,
which is in many respects a development of attention to one (or some) of those stages;
and, third, the study of street-level bureaucracy, developed because of dissatisfaction with
simplistic and taken-for-granted assumptions about the behaviour of those who actually
deliver policy.
An analogy with the use of maps of different scales is perhaps appropriate, providing
views of the terrain with varying amounts of precision. Except that one can go for a
journey without too much need to worry about its wider context. However, in order to
understand what happens on the ground floor of government and to explain variation in
its results, the alternative views need each other to make sense of the whole.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This chapter was written for the occasion. This being so, much of what is presented here
is based on, sometimes literally re-used, insights gained over the years and expressed
in various earlier publications of the present authors. Some of those publications were
written jointly (for instance, Hill and Hupe 2014; Hupe and Hill 2016), others individually
(for instance, Hupe 2017a, 2017b, 2018).

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