Street-level bureaucrats: implementers and makers of public policies

Abstract

The relation between policy implementation, organization and bureaucracy is relevant because it illuminates the face of a crucial problem: why the policies have success or fail. The analyses of this relation indicate that the discretion of the street-level bureaucrats is a decisive factor in the delivery of the public goods and public services; therefore the action of these agents is important for the success of the policies. This article intends to discuss the discretion of the street-level bureaucrats in the application of the public policy and examines the presented arguments in the specialized literature: implementation, bureaucracy, organization. The conclusion indicates questions that are important to the control of the discretionary power of the public agents, underlining that this discretion is necessary condition to the application of the policies, but that it threat the accountability and the responsiveness.