Safety management class

PSM 451/ PAD 581

Maynard/Moody, Ch. 1-2

Dealing with Faces Expectation of law abidance: demand that street-level workers apply laws, rules, and administrative procedures to people’s behavior Prevalence of cultural abidance: workers’ subjective judgment of who people are, their perceived identities and moral character, often based on superficial social markers (race/ethnic, gender, religious garb/practices etc.) Tension between law and cultural abidance affect street level workers’ decision-making Street-level workers’ belief/value system often come into conflict with organizational rules and policies on the administration of public services

Discretionary Decision-making

State-agent narrative: democratic state built on law and predictable procedures that treat like cases the same Deviations allowed only if law adapted to circumstances in manner consistent with policy Structure of public administration designed to circumscribe discretion in order to insure equal treatment as much as possible Most egregious instances of cultural abidance draw media/scholarly scrutiny

E.g. racial profiling seen as eroding legitimacy and authority of governance in general and law enforcement in particular

Discretionary Decision-making

State-agent narrative: democratic state built on law and predictable procedures that treat like cases the same Deviations allowed only if law adapted to circumstances in manner consistent with policy Structure of public administration designed to circumscribe discretion in order to insure equal treatment as much as possible Most egregious instances of cultural abidance draw media/scholarly scrutiny

E.g. racial profiling seen as eroding legitimacy and authority of governance in general and law enforcement in particular

Citizen-agent narrative

Citizen-agent narrative: focuses on worker’s judgments about identities and moral character of clients and their behavior during encounters Street-level workers take risk to provide unauthorized, extraordinary assistance, or to administer services by the book, or to withhold or provide services in an abusive manner Street-level cultural judgments are inevitably part of governing the modern state

“every application of a law involves further elaboration of that law” H. George Frederickson Accountability and control are fundamental to traditional view of administrative state

State-agent narrative

Concerned with law abidance of citizens and workers Identifying of worthy and unworthy colleagues and citizens e.g. police solidarity Workers unsure of how to act when views of worthiness, fairness, and appropriate actions and laws, rules, and policies don’t coincide

Politics & Administration

Role of street-level workers in administering public policy raises classic question of their influence in shaping policy and in essence governing

Many scholars reject separation between politics and administration Implementation theory: gap between political intentions and implementation represents policy failures Principal-agent theory: emphasizes hierarchy and accountability to democratic & bureaucratic control

Conforming to rules, procedures defined as working Deviating from rules seen as sabotage, shirking

State-agent narrative

Pattern of local case-by-case discretionary judgments by street-level workers equivalent to making policy Predictability and consistency seen as law-like qualities Street-level workers actualize public policy thus in a sense are policymakers Worker uses discretion to their benefit

To make work easier, safer, more rewarding sometimes at expense of quality of service

New workers often idealistic, often encounter burnout

Exceptionalism

Used by workers to provide extraordinary services or cut a break to select cases determined by worker’s discretion Workers formulate processes that allow them to efficiently dispense services to public Can result in favoritism, stereotyping, and routinizing Bureaucratic control commonly sought to curtail discretion that is contrary to the rule of law

Citizen-agent narrative

Less emphasis on predictability and consistency of workers decision-making under this frame Variation in handling of similar cases makes it difficult to call actions policy Workers stories tend to focus on citizen not the rules

When rules and judgments conflict work seen as judging people and acting on judgments rather than fitting rules to circumstances Workers first make judgment about citizen-client then consider policy to enact or rationalize judgments