26 2: Th eories of Political Control of Bureaucracy
Indeed, the training and education of these professionals put a much greater em-
phasis on how to serve client needs than on how to respond to political principals
or policy directives. It is oft en true that these bureaucrats see themselves as pro-
fessionals providing a direct service and ordinarily do not see themselves, at least
primarily, as public offi cials or public servants (Gruber 1987). Th ese bureaucrats
greatly value autonomy and the widest possible range of discretion in responding
to client needs (Lipsky 1980; Gruber 1987). Th ey “work for their clients” more
than they “work for the mayor, the city council, the school board, or the county
commission.” It could be said, then, that these bureaucrats are “captured” by their
clients, although there are those who would caution us against confl ating “cap-
ture” with client responsiveness in these situations (Meier 1997).
Client responsiveness theory is essentially traditional public administration
theory emphasizing agency eff ectiveness and the instrumental values of effi ciency,
economy, and equity (Frederickson 1997b). To what extent does this theory have
an empirical warrant?
First, the seminal research on client responsiveness theory was done by Mi-
chael Lipsky in his classic Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual
in Public Services (1980). Its fi ndings are now a part of the public administration
intellectual furniture:
- Resources are chronically inadequate.
- Th e demand for services tends to increase to meet the supply.
- Goal expectations for agencies tend to be ambiguous, vague, or
confl icting. - Performance oriented toward goal achievement tends to be diffi cult, if
not impossible, to measure. - Clients are typically nonvoluntary; partly as a result, clients for the
most part do not serve as a primary bureaucratic reference group. - Street-level bureaucrats usually have at least some latitude or discretion
in providing their services. - Under conditions of scarce resources and high demand, bureaucrats
ration services. - To bring greater predictability to the resource stream, street-level bu-
reaucrats husband such worker resources as time and energy. - Th ey control clients by the maintenance of distance, autonomy, exper-
tise, and symbols, thereby reducing the consequences of uncertainty. - Street-level bureaucrats are oft en alienated from their work and exhibit
forms of psychic withdrawal. - Street-level bureaucrats tend to be middle class and to ration their ser-
vices based on middle-class values, such as work, thrift , and the like.
Lipsky’s fi ndings seem to indicate that street-level bureaucrats are not so much
captured by their clients as they are faced with daunting social tasks and limited