Exploring Ethical Agency in Public Service

Extract

Discretion is often seen as a technical problem of poor policy implementation such as the absence of sufficiently precise instructions or the lack of effective monitoring and enforcement systems. Bernardo Zacka, in When the State meets the Street, wants to challenge this view and offer a more positive account of the role of frontline discretion. Much of his analysis of frontline discretion—its inevitability, wide extent, and role in oiling the wheels of government—draws extensively from the street-level bureaucracy literature. His primary interest in this book is normative—to set out how street-level bureaucrats ought to use their discretion. Although the book includes original empirical material, this is primarily used to illustrate his argument.

Bureaucrats have to make policy and fill in the gaps, ambiguities, and inconsistencies in the policy they have to implement. The distinction drawn in hierarchical accounts of policy implementation between politicians (making policy) and bureaucrats (executing policy) do not operate in reality. Public servants have extensive discretion to make and decide how policy is implemented. Their discretion is not simply technical; it is inherently political and moral. Bureaucrats decide how public resources and authority are used and affect the manner in which services are delivered to citizens.