Street-level democracy: How immigration bureaucrats manage public opposition

It is commonly argued that immigration policies in advanced democracies are consistently more liberal than the restrictionist preferences of publics. This study challenges this view by examining the opinion–policy relationship at the stage of policy implementation, rather than legislative choice. Bureaucrats, in fact, regularly encounter local publics who are opposed to the strict enforcement of migration control measures. These pressures, it is argued, reflect a shift in public attention between the stages of policy design and policy implementation, from the benefits of restriction to the harsh costs of control. As implementation makes these costs visible, public opinion threatens the capacity of bureaucrats to implement restrictionist legislative mandates. This essay specifies the conditions under which bureaucrats' enforcement strategies can enhance their capacity to produce policy outcomes that are more restrictionist than public preferences. Drawing on extensive interview data, the study empirically tests this argument by examining the implementation of deportation policy in Germany.