State Agent or Citizen Agent: Two Narratives of Discretion

In street-level work discretion is inevitable. Scholars have articulated a dominant view or narrative that addresses the role of discretion in the administrative state. This state-agent narrative acknowledges inevitability of discretion and emphasizes that self-interest guides street-level choices: street-level workers use their discretion to make their work easier, safer, and more rewarding. In addition the dominant narrative describes street-level workers as policy makers, yet it worries about the threat that street-level discretion poses to democratic governance. Street-level workers, themselves, tell a different story, a counternarrative of the worker acting as a citizen agent. These two narratives are not wholly inconsistent but they differ in emphasis and meaning. The description of the street-level counter-narrative is based on extensive fieldwork in two states and five agencies. Rather than discretionary state agents who act in response to rules, procedures, and law, street-level workers describe themselves as citizen agents who act in response to individuals and circumstances. They do not describe what they do as contributing to policy making or even as implementing policy. Moreover, street-level workers do not describe their decisions and actions as based on their views of the correctness of the rules, wisdom of the policy, or accountability to any hierarchical authority or democratic principle. They base their decisions on their judgment of the worth of the individual citizen client. Street-level workers discount the importance of self-interest and will often make their work harder, more unpleasant, more dangerous, and less officially successful in order to respond to the needs of individuals. They describe themselves as decision makers, but they base their decisions on normative choices, not in response to rules, procedures, or policies. These normative choices are defined in terms of relationships to citizens, clients, coworkers, and the system. By substituting their pragmatic judgments for the unrealistic views of those with formal and legitimate authority, street-level workers are, in their view, acting responsibly.