management unit 5 assignment

10 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / March 2000

Peters, Pierre / MUTUAL EMPOWERMENT 11

Peters, Pierre / MUTUAL EMPOWERMENTADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / March 2000

Many contemporary reforms of the public sector advocate empowerment as a solution for many of the problems of governing. The difficulty arises when different groups—clients, lower-level officials, senior officials, and local communities—are all the subject of empowerment. Attempts to enhance the power of all these players in the policy process is argued to create the probability of political conflict, and this is demonstrated with a set of examples. Efforts at empowerment further may be the sources of substantial disillusionment and possible alienation when it becomes apparent that all groups cannot be empowered at once.

CITIZENS VERSUS THE

NEW PUBLIC MANAGER

The Problem of Mutual Empowerment

B. GUY PETERS

University of Pittsburgh/University of Strathclyde

JON PIERRE

University of Gothenburg

One of the powerful ideologies growing up throughout the public sector during the contemporary period of administrative reform (Aucoin, 1996) has been that of empowerment. In democratic societies, the term empowerment has positive connotations, appearing to promote more directly democratic forms for governing and opening organizations to the influences of its members. As with so many terms of this sort, empowerment is often used to mean exactly what each speaker or writer wants it to mean and in the process has become debased. Empowerment is used in any numberofwaysandisusedbothasadescriptionofwhathasbeenhappening in government and as an ideology for promoting even more change.

We will also be arguing that as appealing as the concept of empowerment is, if taken too literally it has the potential to undermine three important values in Western societies: representative government, accountable bureaucracy, and a strong and effective state. Some advocates of

ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 32 No. 1, March 2000 9-28 © 2000 Sage Publications, Inc.

9

empowerment recognize those potential problems. For example, Dilys

Hills (1994) writes that

the fostering of the civic-republican tradition of citizenship will itself provide,throughtherealopportunitiesprovidedbyimproveddemocraticinstitutions and processes, the necessary empowerment and motivation. The improved scale of and vitality of participation, it is hoped, will allow representative democracy to be challenged critically, not undermined. (p. 26)

A naive acceptance of the idea of empowerment without consideration of the negative side effects may generate more harm than good for society and especially for the governance of those societies.1 This article is therefore something of an unpacking of the concept and also something of a set of caveats about too easy acceptance of its virtue.

THE TARGETS OF EMPOWERMENT

We can distinguish at least three clear targets for grants of increased power. These three target groups may have slightly different interpretations of what the group against which they have been empowered is and what exactly they are empowered to do. All three are, however, meant to experience greater latitude for autonomous action and decisions.

Citizens and clients. Empowerment is most commonly discussed in reference to the clients of the public sector, or perhaps in reference to the public in general (see Sorenson, 1997). The idea is that government has becometooremote,toobureaucratic,andtoohierarchicaltobeacceptable in democratic regimes. The argument of the empowerment advocates is thatpeopleshouldbeempoweredtomakemoredecisionsabouttheirown lives,whetherthatpoweristobeexercisedasindividualsorasmembersof communities.2 Furthermore, it is argued that the state must cease acting in loco parentis for perfectly competent adult citizens.3 This power relationship between citizens and government is especially evident in social serviceagenciesinwhichthetypicalroleoftheserviceworkeristocontrolas well as to benefit the client (Handler, 1996).

Programs for citizen involvement stress the need to make government more accessible to the public and to grant citizens, and clients, greater influence over policy.4 In particular, this view of government argues that representative (“aggregative”) institutions are inadequate to involve the publicandthereforeintegrativeinstitutionspermittingdirectparticipation and influence are needed. As one definition describing the program of empowerment for citizens and clients in Denmark (see also Hoff, 1993) expresses the point,

Empowerment means transforming individuals into citizens; that is increasing the ability of each individual to internalize a holistic perspective on societal governance. . . . The keyword in designing democratic institutions which serve the integrative aspects of empowerment is participation. (Sorenson, 1997, p. 557)

Similarly, Britain, Burns, Hambleton, and Hoggett (1994) describe empowerment and high quality democracy as “lying in the existence of an informed, organized and confident citizenry engaged within the public spherewherenovoicesareexcluded”(pp.269-270).Theseideashavebeen spreading beyond their usual locales in the industrialized democracies to become part of reform efforts in other countries, where “civic empowerment” of those with “little previous experience with participation” is stressed (Abers, 1998, pp. 511-512). The empowerment of citizens also has become part of the agenda for some international organizations seeking more fundamental change in less developed countries (Timberg, 1995).

One way in which this version of empowerment has been expressed is “consumerizing” the public sector, although even here there are a multiplicity of meanings as became apparent when examining Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States (Hood, Peters, & Wollmann, 1996). Governments are said to need to treat the public more as customers than as clients and to learn how to listen to what people want, as well as to makedecisionsaboutwhattheywillget.Forexample,atthemoreextreme end of the spectrum of involvement, citizens, in their role as parents and residents as well as citizens, have been given the opportunity to manage schools and housing estates, rather than leaving that to public managers (Birchall, Pollitt, & Putman, 1995; Hess, 1994). At a less extreme level of citizen empowerment, there are a variety of devices that permit citizens to participate in open hearings, in more dialogical and deliberative settings for decision, in coproduction, and at a minimum to have their complaints about government taken more seriously than in the past (Roberts, 1997; Tritter, 1994). All of these devices are designed to grant the citizen a more direct and meaningful role in making and implementing public policy; in other words, they are directed at empowering citizens.

Government employees. The second group to be granted increased power through empowerment are employees of public organizations, especially workers at lower echelons within these organizations. This is really an old idea, going back to the human relations approach to management and the assumption that employees would work harder and better if they were provided more opportunities for involvement in their organizations.Involvementandempowermentthereforehasthepotentialtobemanipulative, but once the genie of empowerment is let out of the bottle it may be difficult to contain. In more recent times, empowerment often has been intended less as manipulation and more as a genuine means of improving the working lives of employees and has been found in private as well as public-sector management (Kernaghan, 1992).

The idea of empowerment has been adopted as one component of the contemporary reforms of management in and out of the public sector. At its simplest, empowerment has been manifested in the “quality movement,” with quality circles and similar mechanisms being one way to give groups of workers greater control over their organizations and their jobs (Bouckaert & Pollitt, 1993; Swiss, 1992). For example, speaking more abouttheprivatethanthepublicsector,VogtandMurrell(1990)arguethat “quality teams, whether they are part of the formal organizational structure or temporary, are at the heart of empowerment” (p. 96).

Empowerment has also been central to reforms in the public sector in North America. Programs such as PS 2000 in Canada (Tellier, 1990) and the Gore Report in the United States (Peters & Savoie, 1996) have placed the idea of empowering employees at the core of the change process. For example, the PS 2000 program in Canada argued that

empowerment asks employees to assume responsibility for change and to be accountable for their actions within an environment which accepts a degree of risk-taking and acknowledges intent as well as results. (Tellier,

1990, p. 52)

This emphasis on involving employees in their organizations continues with the most recent round of public-sector reform in Canada, La Releve, and its attempts to renew the vitality of public service (Privy Council Office, 1997).

Even some aspects of the managerial reforms in New Zealand, Australia,andtheUnitedKingdomhavesoughttogivemanagersgreaterautonomy tomakedecisions,eveniflowerechelonworkersmaynotbeempoweredinthe process (Ranson & Stewart, 1994, pp. 242-268). Also, the project of renouveau in the French state under Michel Rocard stressed the need to enhance “participation and experimentation” by public managers and to remove barriers to their exercising power (see Bezes, 1999; de Closets, 1989). Scandinavian public management has traditionally been more participatory than that of most other countries, but even there some reforms have been in the direction of enhanced involvement for public employees (Gustafsson, 1987). In all these various guises, empowerment simply means permitting employees to make more decisions on their own, without reference to superiors or to formal rules, with the assumption that these employees know best their local conditions and the needs of their clients.

Speaking of Canada, as well as of his own government in Australia, John Hart (1998) argues that empowerment is perhaps the most basic of the reforms of government in the past several decades. He argues that

empowerment is much more than delegation. In the words of the Public Service 2000 task force report, it “encourages managers, supervisors and employees to try new ways of achieving goals, motivating them to be creative and innovative in improving the service they deliver. Empowerment asks employees to assume responsibility for change and to be accountable for their actions within an environment which accepts a degree of risktakingandacknowledgesintentaswellasresults.”...Empowerment,more than any other of the doctrinal components of New Public Management, reaches deep into the managerial psychology. (p. 289)

Inallthesecases,empowermentisameansof“breakingthroughbureaucracy” (Barzelay, 1992) and permitting the public employees to have greater influence over their working lives.

Subnational government. The third target for empowerment is subnational governments. The argument is that central governments have, through grants and intergovernmental regulations, tended to homogenize policy and stifle creativity in these lower echelons of government. In this arena, empowerment may be discussed as “decentralization” or “devolution” of powers. The 1980s and 1990s have been remarkable in the way in which previously highly centralized regimes such as France and Spain have begun to devolve power to lower levels of government (Loughlin & Mazey, 1995). Although the nation-state remains the principal actor in Europe, the increasing importance of “Europe of the Regions” points to this form of empowerment (Le Gales & Lesquesne, 1998).

The fundamental idea is, however, the same and decentralization simply empowers decision makers of local or regional governments to make decisions that better match their own needs and capabilities, perhaps within a broad, national framework. For example, speaking primarily in thecontextoftheUnitedKingdom,FosterandPlowden(1996)arguethat

local services are better delivered if the local communities served are involved in the provision and production process through empowerment. Community policemen are more effective in maintaining law and order, because they are able to involve more members of the community. . . . Finally, empowerment may revitalize democracy by motivating more people to care enough about their local community to vote or even stand for election. (p. 129)

Oneillustrationofthismovementisthecontemporarydebateoverwelfare reform in the United States, with the national plan for policy change returning much greater power and responsibility to the individual states (Beaumont, 1996; Hills, 1998). The older welfare system already was becoming a patchwork of state waivers, but the emerging system more explicitly grants powers to the states, for good or for ill. There is also an indwelling assumption that this form of empowerment will, in the long run, also empower the former recipients of welfare benefits. Indeed, some of the political rhetoric discusses the requirement for work in the programs as a form of empowerment.

ASSESSING EMPOWERMENT

Although a powerful idea from a strictly political perspective, the empowermentoftheseseveralgroupsinsocietyraisesanumberofrelated political and administrative issues. The most obvious and most important considerationisaccountability.Empoweringclientsandworkersinpublic organizations may appear democratic, but in some ways it is profoundly antidemocratic. Empowerment appears to create the problem of ensuring thatpoliciesaremadeanddeliveredinaccordancewiththepublicinterest, defined rather broadly, and in accordance with the intentions of legitimate decision makers.5 Allowing clients excessive power over decisions affecting them risks unnecessary spending of public money and the familiar problem of “capture” of regulators by the regulated interests (Wood & Waterman, 1995). One of the standard prescriptions for making environmental and economic regulation in the United State more effective is to permit regulators more personal discretion, but with that discretion also maycomesomeerosionofthepolicygoalsselectedbytheir“principals.”6

Similarly, empowering lower echelon workers to make more decisions on their own authority presents risks of spending public money unwisely and unfairness to clients based on who their caseworker might be. In addition to ensuring a sympathetic hearing for their clients, government organizations also have responsibilities to the public as a whole (in their role as taxpayers if nothing else), as well as to other clients who deserve equal treatment. Furthermore, advocates of empowerment assume that clients will get a better deal if there is greater latitude for lower echelon workers;theyappeartoforgetsomeoftheextremelynegativeexperiences of lower status citizens with discretion exercised by public organizations such as the police (Geller & Toch, 1996).7 Governing always implies balancing competing values, and that requirement becomes extremely clear whenoneconsidersthepotentialeffectsofempowermentongovernment.

There is often a good deal of naivete, or hypocrisy, in the debate over empowerment, especially the empowerment of subnational governments. It is not clear how decisions made by public officials in a state capital, or even a city hall, are any less bureaucratic and intrusive than are similar regulationsmadeinWashingtonorStockholm.8Thecontentoftheregulations made may be different in the different states and localities, but that does not imply that they will be superior. This skepticism over devolution isespeciallyrelevantgiventhattherootcausesofsomeofthepolicyproblems being devolved, for example, poverty, reside more at the national or international levels than at state and local levels. Devolution of power to local communities may be good politics, but it is less apparent that it is necessarily good public policy.

Another problem that empowerment raises is coordination. If organizations,theiremployees,andsubnationalgovernmentsareallempowered to make policy decisions relatively autonomously, then it will be increasinglydifficulttoproduceanycoherenceinpublic-sectordecisionmaking. It can be argued that coordination in government is often overvalued (Bendor, 1985; Landau, 1969) but, in an era of scarce financial resources and citizen grumbling about inefficiency, creating any more incoherence within the public sector is probably not desirable. Therefore, the creation of more public organizations through programs such as Next Steps and then empowering their employees to make more autonomous decisions raisessignificantquestionsaboutthestyleofgovernancethatisbeingsupplied (Peters, 1996).

THE VIEW FROM THE STREET

The decentralization, deconcentration, and devolution of authority fromthestatetolocalgovernmentsdescribedabovecomesaliveprimarily in the exchange between the public bureaucracy and its clients at the local level of government. However, these reforms per se do not change the exchange between the state and civil society; they merely authorize or enable local governments to organize the exchange according to their preferences rather than those of central government. Put differently, although these reforms are vertical by nature (Gurr & King, 1987; King & Pierre,1990),they,bythemselves,donotalterthehorizontaldimensionof public-private interaction at the local level.

Thegreaterautonomyaccordedlocalgovernmenthasprobablyrevitalized and politicized the local debate among politicians, managers, and professional bureaucrats on how to organize the interface between local bureaucracy and its citizens. The decentralized and less regulated system of government offers better opportunities for professional norms to guide the exchange between street-level bureaucrats and their clients than did theprevioussystem(Ashford,1990).Increasingbureaucraticdiscretionis alsoanintegralcomponentofthenewmanagerialism,displacingdecision makingfrompoliticianstothebureaucracyandfromhighertolowerechelons of the bureaucracy (Zifcak, 1994).

We can find examples of empowerment in most advanced Western democracies. In Germany, the concept of Bürgernähe (closeness to citizens) has become a catchword for much recent administrative reform (Derlien, 1995a, 1995b). In the Scandinavian countries, so-called thirdsectorinitiativesaimatbringingvoluntaryassociationsintotheprocessof public service production and delivery, thus creating a new interface between the state and civil society. In the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand (among other places), the new managerialism is manifested in new public management that aims both at making the public bureaucracy more customer-oriented and at strengthening the position of citizens relative to the public sector (Hood, Peters, & Wollmann, 1996).

These changes at the institutional level have had repercussions on the intraorganizationallevel,particularlytheface-to-faceinteractionbetween the public bureaucrats and their clients. Bureaucrats have gained greater discretion and autonomy but at the same time also face greater financial responsibilities. More important, however, the recent managerial reforms have highlighted the organizational dilemma between control over some aspects of the behavior of lower echelon employees on one hand and the need for discretion at these same levels on the other. How can supervisors provide simultaneously for greater discretion and for enhanced financial controls, greater controls over fraud, waste, and abuse, and higher quality standards? Furthermore, how can they provide for all those positive outcomes in an era in which the public service itself is becoming deinstitutionalized and populated by larger numbers of noncareer employees who lack a public service ethos?

There are several factors underscoring the importance of discretion in this type of bureaucracy. First, the meeting between a client and a professional public employee is to a significant extent a matter of balancing the personalintegrityoftheclientagainstthebureaucracy’sneedforinformation in order to be able to make correct decisions on which services to offer. Citizens are legally entitled to have their exchange with a public bureaucracy conducted in strict confidence. For instance, to show that he is qualified for certain types of public financial support, the client must present information about his life situation that is highly personal by nature. It is vital to the client that this information is not made available to persons other than those directly involved in handling the matter.

Second,discretionisalsoimportantforthebureaucracyasanorganization. Delivering social services in an efficient and effective manner presupposesthattheservicesareadaptedtoindividualneeds.Relyingstrictly on routinized decision making makes the service ill-attuned to individual needs and hence less likely to attain its objectives. The real difficulty arises in determining just how attuned to individual needs the service should be and therefore just what the boundaries of acceptable discretion are. There are numerous stories about regulatory creep in which the gradual accretion of decisions creates a common law about what an individual bureaucrat can or cannot do (see Handler, 1996). Over time, this accumulation of individual decisions may create patterns of implementing policy that vary markedly from legislative intent for the program.

Finally, in addition to the bureaucratic rules about how public services should be provided to citizens, there also exist elaborate professional norms about how the bureaucrat should conduct his or her job. Independence from detailed rules, and from control from senior levels of the bureaucracy, is necessary for the bureaucrat to be able to exercise his or her professional judgment. To be sure, without substantial discretion already the bureaucracy would not need to hire skilled and professional staff because handling virtually all matters in the organization would be guided by standardized rules. That Weberian ideal of the bureaucracy is almostneverachieved,however,andadministrativejobsretainsubstantial discretion.

Astheknowledgeablereaderhasalreadyobserved,thisdilemmabetween organizationalcontrolandprofessionaldiscretionisdirectlyrelatedtothe conceptofstreetlevelbureaucracydescribedbyLipsky(1980)andothers. Street-level bureaucracies are public-sector organizations whose services are delivered through direct communication between the bureaucrat and theclient,somethingthatclearlysetsthemapartfromothergroupsofpublic employees (Piven & Cloward, 1977). Typical street-level public services include the police, teachers, social workers, and health workers, and also some regulatory employees. The defining characteristic of streetlevel bureaucrats is that they daily “grant access to government programs andprovideserviceswithinthem”(Lipsky,1980,p.3).Also,asaresultof their direct and immediate contact with their clients, street-level bureaucratsareespeciallyinclinedto“puttheclientfirst”andtosidepsychologically with the client against the formal norms of bureaucracy.

Street-level bureaucracies frequently witness coalitions evolving between clients and bureaucrats. Obviously, it is not a coalition held together by similar interests (at least not in the short term9) but rather by theprofessionalnormsofthebureaucratthatinducehimorhertogiveprimary consideration to the needs of the clients and not to organizational rules about restrictive use of the bureaucracy’s financial resources, standardization of the handling of these matters, or even long-term objectives stated by managers of the bureaucracy. Although the client gets better service and perhaps more benefits from this bargain, the professional receiveslargelythepsychicsatisfactionofhavingdonethejobinaprofessional manner. This coalitional behavior, however, depends on bureaucrats having professional norms, coming from social work, law, or some other profession; in some senses, the true Weberian might attach primacy to the interests of the organization.

Some might argue that this conflict between a client orientation and professional norms on one hand and responsiveness to organizational management and objectives on the other is a false dichotomy. It is often in theinterestsofthebureaucracytodeliverservicesadaptedasmuchaspossible to each individual’s needs. Also, street-level bureaucrats are controlled by higher echelons of the bureaucracy, by formal rules, and also—and arguably more important—by the special organizational culture of a public bureaucracy (Morgan, 1997). However, what does appear to make street-level bureaucracies special is the joint effect of lower level discretion and professionalism. Discretion gives the bureaucrat the maneuvering space needed to be able to conduct this work according to professional norms and standards, rather than organizational rules and procedures. Unlike the latter, professional norms look unilaterally at which measures and modi operandi are in the best interest of the clients and pay minimal attention to budgetary consequences of this exchange with clients.

As public bureaucracies in most Western democracies have had to cut back significantly on expenditures, and as a market-based approach to public services has quickly gained ground in the public sector, the result has been an increasing opposition to the organization from street-level bureaucrats. This opposition has in many areas of public service been fueled by the rapidly growing problems facing most bureaucracies in social welfare services. One source of opposition is supervisors of the street-level bureaucrats. Middle managers of the public bureaucracy are the ones most directly responsible for conveying organizational goals to the lower level employees.10 Thus, in the eyes of the street-level bureaucrats, the supervisors come to epitomize bureaucratic hierarchy, something which is in obvious conflict with the self-image of the professional street-level bureaucrat.

Another target for opposition for the street-level bureaucrats is organizational rules. These rules express organizational objectives and modi operandi. Also, the delegation of authority from higher to lower levels of the bureaucracy is often accompanied by a delegation of financial responsibility. For a professional street-level bureaucrat, these are ideas that do not rhyme well with professional ideals. For instance, a social worker caring about the bottom line is hardly compatible with identifying with the client. Although the intraorganizational delegation of financial responsibility increases cost awareness at the street level and places economic decision making at the operative level of the organization, it may also create confusion, frustration, and paralysis among street-level bureaucrats.

Interestingly, the long-term outcome of this situation may well be a deprofessionalizationofthestreet-levelbureaucracy.Thestreet-levelpersonnel will—consistent with their professional training and ideals— maintain a client-oriented approach to their tasks. In times of budgetary cutbacks, they may also develop an “us-versus-them” coalition with their clients and disregard policies and objectives formulated by higher echelons of the bureaucracy. Although this stance will fulfill one of the canons of professionalism, putting the interest of the client first, it will tend to undermine the position of these employees within the organization and lessentherespectinwhichtheirprofessionisheldbyimportantsocialand political actors. Nurses’strikes in the United Kingdom, for example, have come to be regarded by many as economically self-serving, rather than as attempts to defend standards of care for the nurses’ patients.

Looking at these developments at an organizational level, we should askwhatlikelyconsequencestheywillhaveforthebureaucracy’scapability to deliver services in an efficient and coordinated way. The Lipsky model of the street-level bureaucracy is a functional model. It accommodates both the needs of clients and formal rules and also acknowledges professional values as important organizational resources. That said, the street-levelmodelofapublicbureaucracyalsoislargelyunabletooperate according to clear policy goals or to make intelligent and rational decisions (particularly as soon as more than one organizational level is involved in the decision). The model does not have a clearly defined mechanism for conflict resolution and, hence, may fail when conflict is encountered.

Thus, paradoxically, the street-level bureaucracy model is—partly by design, partly de facto—both functional and anarchic. It is anarchic by design because of the nature of the task and work situations facing streetlevelbureaucrats.Ononehand,toomuchorganizationalcontrolovertheir actions would result in a rigid and inefficient implementation of standardizedrules.Ontheotherhand,providingthestreet-levelbureaucratsextensive discretion jeopardizes equal treatment of similar cases and with that the fundamental value of equity. At an organizational level, such discretion may also drive up expenditures and reduce organizational coordination and control.

Professional norms play a key role in filling the void of organizational control at the street level. Because the senior levels of the bureaucracy cannotproduceguidelines—whatSimon(1960)calls“programmeddecisionmaking”—forhowthestreet-levelbureaucratshouldhandlethemyriad of different situations she or he faces in daily work, those managers must rely on a developed and skillful professional sense of judgment on the part of the bureaucrat. Without that professional socialization, the upper echelon management and their political masters would probably be unwilling to offer even the somewhat limited latitude to these employees that traditionally has been given.

The major dilemma, however, is that a significant part of these professional norms leads the bureaucrat to identify more with the client than the bureaucracy. The street-level bureaucrat typically argues that each different client is in some ways unique, hence decision making cannot be programmed or routinized. For the professional street-level bureaucrat, professional norms are much more apt to guide his or her exchange with his or her clients than are norms formulated by bureaucratic managers. Intraorganizational norms are, by definition, characterized by organizational politics, budgetary restrictions, senior control over lower echelons of the bureaucracy, and organizational objectives such as efficiency and political responsiveness. Many of these objectives run counter to the professional ideals embraced by professional groups such as social workers, teachers, and medical doctors.

One interesting counterpoise to the impact of the “old” professions on service delivery at the street level is the development of the public service itself as a profession. This development is being slowed somewhat by fiscal pressures reducing public employment, as well as by the ideology of the new public management that argues that public management is not really different from private management. Even with those contrary pressures, there is a sense that public managers have adopted a more professional posture, with distinctive training, codes of conduct, and professional organizations. Although the leaked for best practice for the old professions is the client, the leaked for public managers is often the public as a whole, in both their citizen and taxpayer roles.

STREET-LEVEL BUREAUCRACY WRIT LARGE:

THE EMERGING POLITICS OF EMPOWERMENT

Tothispoint,wehavebeendescribingstreet-levelbureaucracyasithas evolved over decades of implementing social and economic programs. Street-level bureaucracy has been a fact of public life, and in some policy areas such as economic regulation (Bardach & Kagan, 1982) there have been calls for enhanced discretion for implementers. The contemporary politicsofempowerment,however,tendnotonlytoacceptdefactodiscretion at the bottom of organizations but to laud it and attempt to expand it. The empowerment movement argues that organizations will work better11 if their lower echelons are given more discretion. The argument is advanced simultaneously that clients and citizens should also be given greater control over their own lives and that government bureaucracies should make fewer decisions for clients, whether the clients are welfare recipients or middle-class taxpayers. For example, advocates (Vogt & Murrell, 1990) of empowerment argue that there is no zero-sum game and that empowerment is

an interactive process based on a synergistic, not zero-sum, assumption about power; that is, the process of empowerment enlarges the power in the situation as opposed to merely redistributing it. (pp. 8-9)

The ability to advance these arguments and these forms of empowerment simultaneously appears to depend on an assumption that the perspectives and desires of the two groups are similar. We have already noted that the street-level model has in it sources of conflict, and those appear exacerbated by mutual empowerment. Thus, mutual empowerment is premised on the older professional model in which client interests will come first in the minds of service providers. That premise may be correct, but it appears that changes in the nature of the public sector will make it increasingly less viable. First, empowerment is being pressed at the same time that fiscal stringency is increasingly a consideration in making and implementing policy. Thus, even if employee and client agree on what should be done on behalf of the client they may not have the money to pay for it. Given limited resources, employees may compete among themselves for resources and generate intraorganizational conflicts.

The new public management also places pressures on employees to meet performance standards—benchmark or quality standards. Although some of these standards may be qualitative, others are quantitative so that the employee will encounter pressures not to serve each client as well as he or she might simply to meet the standards being imposed. Although employees may be empowered to meet these standards in any manner, theyfindmostfittingthattheyarestillbeingheldtoaccount,andconflicts overhowservicesarebeingdeliveredmayariseasreadilyasintraditional modes of service delivery. Indeed, the conflicts may be more destructive given that the employees cannot appeal to supervisors or rules to justify their actions to clients.

In addition, professional norms require doing what is in the client’s best interest, even if the client does not agree or does not recognize that self-interest. Any disagreements over what constitutes the best interest of the client can be solved relatively easily so long as the employee remains inanauthoritativeposition,butwithempowermentofclientsthatposition is somewhat diminished. Furthermore, empowerment of employees tends to diminish the role of supervisory personnel within the organization so that the employee has no source of reinforcement for decisions. Again, mutual empowerment may exacerbate conflicts between clients and workers, especially when clients may not be in a good position to judge their own interests, for example, the mentally ill. Most objective analysts of social services would argue that government should be about something more than just giving everyone what he or she wants, but in an age of empowerment it becomes difficult to make more discerning judgments.

CONCLUSION: THE PARADOXES OF EMPOWERMENT

We should not expect the mutual empowerment of workers and customers in contemporary public organizations to manifest itself in overt shouting matches or fistfights, at least not usually. What is more likely is a gradual erosion of the sense of efficacy that the changes may have created initially. That is, one of the purposes of mutual empowerment is to make workers feel better about their jobs and to make clients feel better about the services that they are being provided. Telling these groups that they have greater control is likely to have that effect. If, however, these individuals begin to confront others who are also empowered and have to bargain and fight for their rights, just as they had previously, then empowerment is likely to be alienating and disillusioning. Indeed, both clients and workers may perceive themselves being worse off after empowerment than before, simply because they will believe that they were deceived about the brave new world of empowerment that they were entering.

The above discussion advanced a number of potentially difficult questions for advocates of empowerment. The idea of extending meaningful influencetomoresegmentsofsocietyis,apriori,appealingondemocratic and humanistic grounds, but in practice presents problems that should cause the would-be empowerer to reconsider just how far empowerment should be extended and to whom. Hierarchical, bureaucratic systems of government have many well-known problems, but it also appears undeniable that their replacements also would. Indeed, extending empowerment may exacerbate rather than solve the difficulties identified in hierarchical governance.

In the first place, empowerment of all three candidates—clients, employees, and subnational governments—may centralize rather than decentralize governance. By empowering all the groups, government would, in practice, minimize the mechanisms for solving conflicts throughbureaucraticandregulativeaction.Giventhatitwouldbenaiveto assume that no conflicts would arise among mutually empowered groups, conflicts would be propelled upward in the political structures for resolution (Handler, 1996). Intermediate structures, whether in business firms, public organizations, or intergovernmental relations, render useful services in minimizing and resolving conflicts, and if those structures are removed or devalued through empowerment then decisions must go up to a level that can make a decision. Again, paradoxically a set of reforms intending to decentralize may in the end prove to be very centralizing.

In addition, empowering public-sector professionals along with the simultaneous empowerment of their clients may deprofessionalize those employees. Granting greater discretionary power to client contact employees removes their source of support against perceived unreasonable demands from clients. Likewise, the empowerment of the clients maygeneratemoreofthoseunreasonabledemands.Thismeansthatprofessionals will be under greater pressure to do what clients want and not necessarily what those professionals think should be done in their trained judgment. In the end, conflict avoidance and the search for support,12 may mean that the professionals become more the creatures of their clients.

Finally, clients will not necessarily be winners in the empowerment game. If clients are “reasonable” and bargain with professional service providers,theymayfindtheirlotimproved.If,however,serviceproviders are not adequately professionalized and attach primary importance to their own goals rather than to those of their clients, then those clients may not get what they want. This is especially true when service providers are required to conform to other parts of the new public management agenda and document their efficiency. Indeed, devaluing the professional public service as part of the new public management may mean that clients are less well off than under the former bureaucratic system. In the traditional bureaucratic system, rules and procedures protect clients from arbitrary and capricious action (Gormley, 1989; Thomas, 1998), whereas the empowered, entrepreneurial public servant may not be expected to recognize such constraints so completely.

Furthermore, if clients subscribe to the concept of empowerment and say that they are capable of solving their own problems, some people will bewillingtoagreewiththem.Inaneraofdownsizinggovernment,anideology of self-sufficiency, and communitarianism, clients of public programs may be expected to “get on their bikes” and support themselves. Even for groups of clients who might not be considered good candidates for self-sufficiency, for example, mothers with preschool children, the direction of public policy is forcing them to provide more for themselves and depend less on government. In short, empowerment can be a wonderfulwaytograntclientsmorecontrolovertheirlives,butitcanalso be a means of removing the supports for those lives.

Much of the above discussion is speculative, but it does point to the organizationalandpersonaldynamicsattheheartofthemovementtoward widespread empowerment as an ideology for managing in the public sector. Empowerment is a positive idea, and permitting individuals and governmentstocontrolmoreofthethingsthatmattertothemcannotbeeasily denigrated as an abstract idea about democracy. On the other hand, the concept of empowerment has potential consequences that are less desirable and less benign. Indeed, it has the capability to generate outcomes exactly the opposite of those intended. This article then should be seen as an admonition to the unwary to look carefully before they accept all the virtues of empowerment.

NOTES

1. Foragoodcritiqueofsuchafacileacceptanceofempowerment,seeSolas(1996).

2. Empowerment was also a theme of the 1960s. What distinguishes contemporaryeffortsisthattheyaremorepartofthepoliticalmainstreamratherthanthemanifestationofa counterculture.

3. The negative effects of deinstitutionalization on the mentally ill may represent amisapplication of this ideology.

4. The idea of citizen engagement has been especially important in recent Canadianreforms. For Germany, see Klein and Schmaltz-Bruns (1997).

5. Thisargumentissimilartothebottom-upversionofimplementationtheory,withitsargumentthatpolicyshouldbemadeinawaythatiseasiesttoimplementratherthaninaway that the “formators” desire (Linder & Peters, 1987).

6. This obviously is phrasing the relationship in the principal agent framework; seeHorn (1995).

7. This brings to the fore some of the schizophrenia associated with discretion inbureaucracy. We want high levels of discretion when it might help us but argue for tight controls when there is a chance of discretion being used against us.

8. Onecouldargue,infact,thattheregulationswillbemoreoppressivegiventhatfirmsor individuals will have to comply with a range of different and even conflicting requirements.

9. In the long term, however, these coalitions may help mobilize popular support forbureaucrats fighting cutbacks in their budgets. Professional bureaucrats frequently challenge local elected officials not directly but indirectly by mobilizing the constituency that will suffer from the cutbacks (Goldsmith, 1990; Laffin, 1986).

10. In some ways, these middle-level supervisors could be described as intraorganizational street-level bureaucrats because they relate via personal communication to those who are affected by decisions made higher up in the organization. At the same time, they are familiar with the complex work and professional ideals of the street-level bureaucrats and can easily identify and sympathize with their ideas.

11. The notion of “work better” is somewhat vague at times. Certainly, empowermentcan lead to lower costs and potentially to a more involved and contented workforce. On the other hand, it is not clear that these organizations will necessarily produce better objective decisions for the society as a whole.

12. The logic is not dissimilar to regulatory capture. If other sources of political andorganizational support are minimized, the employees will seek that support from the only group that still seems to care, their clients.

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B.GuyPetersisaMauriceFalkProfessorofAmericanGovernmentattheUniversity of Pittsburgh and professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde. He has published extensively on comparative public administration and public policy.

Jon Pierre is a professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.Hehaswrittenintheareasofcomparativeadministration,industrialpolicy,and Swedish local government.