Concept and Lipsky's argument
Lipsky (1980) defined street-level bureaucrats as public workers who interact directly with citizens and exercise substantial discretion. Every day they decide who receives welfare benefits, whom to cite or arrest, and which students receive more attention. Because laws and regulations cannot anticipate every situation and work with people requires judgment, discretion is unavoidable. Lipsky argued that these decisions accumulate into de facto policy and therefore called street-level bureaucrats policymakers. This contrasts with the traditional model of bureaucracy, which assumes that policies set at the top are implemented as written.
Working conditions and coping
Lipsky noted that street-level bureaucrats work with chronically inadequate resources, demand for services that grows to meet supply, ambiguous and conflicting goals, and performance that is hard to measure. Under these conditions they develop coping mechanisms to manage their work, such as rationing services by lengthening waiting times, handling easier cases first (creaming), and processing citizens through routinized categories. Such coping makes the work possible but can lower service quality and create inequality. Tummers and colleagues (2015) systematically classified frontline coping behaviors as moving toward, moving away from and moving against clients.
Discretion, accountability and digitalization
Maynard-Moody and Musheno (2000) reported that frontline workers describe themselves not only as state agents following rules but as citizen agents acting on moral judgments about who citizens are. Hupe and Hill (2007) argued that they are accountable in multiple directions: to superiors, professional peers and citizens. Tummers and Bekkers (2014) reported that discretion increases workers' willingness to implement policy and enables services more meaningful to clients. Bovens and Zouridis (2002), meanwhile, argued that as information technology automates judgment, discretion shifts from the street level to system designers. Brodkin (2012) noted that performance management under new public management has reshaped frontline discretion and behavior.
FAQ
- What is street-level bureaucracy in simple terms?
- It is the idea that the on-the-spot judgments of public workers who deal directly with citizens, such as police officers, teachers and social workers, add up to the policy people actually experience. Because laws cannot cover every situation, their discretion matters.
- Is frontline discretion good or bad?
- It cuts both ways. Discretion allows services tailored to individual circumstances, but with scarce resources it can lead workers to handle only easy cases or treat citizens unequally.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26
References
- Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. The original book — frontline workers as de facto policymakers.
- Maynard-Moody, S., & Musheno, M. (2000). State agent or citizen agent: Two narratives of discretion. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10(2), 329–358. Workers as 'citizen agents' using moral judgments — another face of discretion.
- Bovens, M., & Zouridis, S. (2002). From street-level to system-level bureaucracies: How information and communication technology is transforming administrative discretion and constitutional control. Public Administration Review, 62(2), 174–184. ICT shifts discretion from frontline to system designers — the digital era.
- Hupe, P., & Hill, M. (2007). Street-level bureaucracy and public accountability. Public Administration, 85(2), 279–299. Multiple accountabilities of frontline workers.
- Brodkin, E. Z. (2012). Reflections on street-level bureaucracy: Past, present, and future. Public Administration Review, 72(6), 940–949. Three decades after Lipsky — including the new public management era.
- Tummers, L., & Bekkers, V. (2014). Policy implementation, street-level bureaucracy, and the importance of discretion. Public Management Review, 16(4), 527–547. Discretion increases willingness to implement — it isn't only a problem.
- Tummers, L. L. G., Bekkers, V., Vink, E., & Musheno, M. (2015). Coping during public service delivery: A conceptualization and systematic review of the literature. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 25(4), 1099–1126. A systematic review classifying frontline coping behaviors.