Accountability In Street-Level Bureaucracy

Accountability in the world of street-level bureaucracy is a hard task to achieve. Public managers are pressured to improve accountability with their workers. This improvement, however, can lead to budget cuts, which goes along with personal cuts for the workers. In the book, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Public Services, author Michael Lipsky (1980) gives an extended reason for the cuts that occur to public workers, “If public workers cannot demonstrate accountability, all the more reason to slash their numbers,”(p. 159). According to Lipsky (1980), accountability is the link or relationship between bureaucracy and democracy. Along with this definition, Lipsky (1980) introduces two aspect of accountability in street- level bureaucracy.

Lipsky (1980) explains this difficulty by stating, “since the services delivered by schools, police departments, or legal services offices are fundamentally consist of the actions of teachers, police officers, and lawyers, these agencies are constrained from controlling workers too much, particularly in challenging their performance, for fear of generating opposition to management policies and diminishing accountability even further,” (p. 163). Lipsky (1980) statement shows that the public managers are walking on a thin line. They want to enforce accountability, yet they do not want to upset their workers. Also, the goals expected of the street-level bureaucrats are sometimes ambiguous and have multiple objectives, which means that achieving accountability can be

Yet, when those citizens receive services and benefits, they are been shamed and embarrassed by other citizens who do not need the services. Even some politicians blame those poor citizens. This shows that there is some contradiction in the American society. When the poor are been blamed for their conditions, it creates stigmatization in the society. Lipsky (1980) discusses the consequences of stigmatization, “stigma leads to a general reluctance to join deviant group in the society on the one hand, and on the other hand provides subtle justification for patterns of practice that result in inadequate service provision,” (p. 182). Based on Lipsky (1980) statement, it shows that accountability is tied to this problem of stigmatization because the street-level bureaucrats are accountable to provide services to the citizens. However, when the citizens are viewed as deviants then the distribution of services is affected and discretion is highly increased. As a result, it shows that the clients are powerless, especially the poor clients. Yet, Lipsky (1980) reinforces the need for the clients to have some autonomy. Lipsky (1980) presents an approach to increase clients’ autonomy, “ one approach to change in street-level bureaucracy is to eliminate public workers as buffers between government and citizens,”(p.193). By using this approach, Lipsky (1980)