EFFECTS OF STREET – LEVEL BUREAUCRATS PARADOX OPERATION AND EVALUATION OF PUBLIC POLICIES
Keywords:
Street-level Bureaucracy, Evaluation of Public Policies, Iimplementation, DiscretionAbstract
The evaluation of public policies, as a process that involves assessing the desired but also unintended effects, largely depends on the previous implementation.
The complexity of the implementation makes it difficult to evaluate the effects, as it is the case with public policies in which enforcement involves street level bureaucracy. The characteristics of street level bureaucracy deriving from the discretion they have in making decisions make their work paradoxical in many ways. These paradoxes are reflected in their accountability to citizens, although this responsibility has not been given to them in the electoral process. Then, in the need for street level bureaucracy to be controlled by higher state authorities with the simultaneous imperative of the freedom of their action. Finally, it is paradoxical to expect street level bureaucrats to be committed to goals that need to be modified to fulfill the "real" interests of citizens.
The above set of paradoxical circumstances in the implementation of public policies by street level bureaucrats makes it difficult to analyze the effects later. Solutions to implementation dilemmas are, in the literature, offered through the application of two basic models: ascending and descending. After a long period of confrontation, it can be said that there is nothing that implies the exclusion of one of these two models. On the contrary, everything indicates that both models can be applied in certain circumstances in appropriate way.
Evaluation of public policies is primarily conditioned by their implementation. Supporters of the downward model stand on the view that this approach is more appropriate for the consideration of the effects of public policies. However, the upward approach involves looking at a wider picture by rejecting prescriptive public policy objectives as an evaluation standard. By insisting on a structured, descending model in which senior authorities make decisions about public policies implemented through public administration, insights are missing about everything that happens, precisely within the discretionary space of street level bureaucrats. In terms of evaluation, while remaining in the prescriptive framework, the only thing that can be concluded in these circumstances is the absence of expected outcomes. On the other hand, the achievement of wider goals, as suggested by the upward model, can be seen on the basis of the work of street level bureaucrats above all as achieving certain social values. However, specific problems that can be grouped into specific public policies remain clouded in dynamic interaction. By the nature of this model, there is a series of data that can be used as indicators of the need for adjustment of the activities, while the results can be considered as a construct of improving society in a timeline.
Overall, it can be concluded that the evaluation of public policies that contain street level bureaucracy does not provide a significant amount of information that can be used without conducting complex social research. The more use of these results as a substitute for systematic evaluation and evaluation research can not reliably contribute to the improvement of public policies but can lead to wrong conclusions.
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