Bridging the Gap: How Modern Street-Level Bureaucrats shape Administrative Burden and Citizen-State Interactions

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

People experience government through their personal interactions with public programs and policies. Stigmatizing interactions, for example, may negatively impact future interactions and program take-up. Recent work underscores how administrative burdens shape citizen-state interactions by imposing learning, compliance, and psychological costs (Herd & Moynihan, 2019). While some burdens are experienced by clients directly, street-level bureaucrats often act as “ultimate policy makers” by administering benefits or mediating citizen-state interactions (Lipsky, 1980). Administrative burden research has focused on ‘burden tolerance’ to understand street-level bureaucrats’ behavior and perceptions to support people who are experiencing difficulty in citizen-state interactions. While we now have some understanding of the factors that shape burden tolerance, such as political ideology (Bell et al., 2021), personality (Aarøe et al., 2021), and the deservingness of clients (Baekgaard et al., 2021), there is still limited research on the effects of institutional and managerial factors. Additionally, we are uncertain about how street-level bureaucrats actually behave in practice to alleviate the burdens of clients, and how clients respond to these efforts.  

This panel examines how street-level bureaucrats address administrative burdens in various contexts. The first paper examines bureaucrats’ attitudes toward burdens experienced by clients. It focuses on the interactions between compassion and discretion to gain a nuanced understanding of the individual and organizational factors that shape attitudes. The second paper is based on semi-structured interviews with 21 public library staff in Wisconsin. This study reveals that staff make decisions about helping patrons with social services based on their perceptions of patrons’ needs, which are largely reflective of community-level factors and relationships. The third paper explores the different strategies used by family resource centers (FRCs) to facilitate families’ access to resources. It reveals how FRC staff act as intermediaries between families and the safety net; staff often reduce the burden of identifying and accessing resources by supporting families through the application process, directing them to local resource providers, and/or giving families resources directly. The fourth paper explores public perceptions of value trade-offs in reducing burden in the context of recycling policy. Leveraging an experiment with a 3×2×2 design, this study demonstrates how the structures of policy design and implementation, specifically, who bears the burden (the state, street-level bureaucrats, or the public), affect individuals’ perceptions of government performance, trust, and their willingness to coproduce.  

This panel contributes both theoretically and practically to the administrative burden scholarship by deepening our understanding of the roles of street-level bureaucrats. It also employs diverse research methods to further our understanding of how modern street-level bureaucrats influence citizen-state interactions in a variety of policy spaces. The papers end with recommendations for evidence-based policies and practices to reduce administrative burden and improve individuals’ and families’ access to essential resources, services, and public infrastructure. This panel also contributes to APPAM’s 2025 conference theme by centering the importance of collaborative connections between street-level bureaucrats and policymakers. Together, these papers highlight the need for bridging the perspectives of policy implementers with those of policy designers in order to support effective and equitable policy.

Policy Area

• Public and Nonprofit Management and Finance

Secondary Policy Area

• Politics, Media, and the Policy Process

Chair

• George A Krause, University of Georgia

Discussants

• Kess Ballentine, Wayne State University

• Carolyn Barnes, The University of Chicago

Organizer

• Anna Walther, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Individual Presentations

• Burden Tolerance: How Compassion and Discretion Shape Bureaucrats’ Attitudes - Presenting Author: Jaeyeong Nam, Kyung Hee University; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Elizabeth Bell, The University of Texas at Austin

• Somebody has to be the Front Line”: Discretion among Public Library Staff Assisting with Social Services - Presenting Author: Emma Flanagan, Wisconsin Department of Health Services

• Expert intermediaries: Family Resource Center staff approaches to resource navigation for low-income families - Presenting Author: Anna Walther, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Transferring Burden? An Experiment of People’s Perception of Administrative Burden - Presenting Author: Sarah Chung, University of Miami; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Xiaoyang Xu