Do consistent government policies lead to greater meaningfulness and legitimacy on the front line?
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| Author | Nadine van Engen,Lars Tummers,Bram Steijn |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12570 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Do consistent government policies lead to greater
meaningfulness and legitimacy on the front line?
Nadine van Engen
1
| Bram Steijn
1
| Lars Tummers
2
1
Department of Public Administration,
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
2
Department of Public Administration and
Organizational Science (USBO), University of
Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Correspondence
Nadine van Engen, Department of Public
Administration, Erasmus University Rotterdam,
Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, Rotterdam, The
Netherlands, 3000 DR.
Email: vanengen@essb.eur.nl
Funding information
Lars Tummers acknowledges funding through
NWO grant VENI-451-14-004.
The copyright line for this article was changed
on February 01, 2019 after original online
publication.
We investigate the impact of policy consistency on frontline
workers’perceptions of policy meaningfulness and legitimacy. The
results from an experiment involving 779 teachers indicate that
policy consistency does have a positive effect on legitimacy and to
a lesser extent on meaningfulness. However, the extent depends
on policy content and the degree of autonomy. Overall, our find-
ings emphasize the potential positive impact of policy consistency.
Although this, to some extent, conflicts with the nature of political
decision- and policy-making (i.e., democratically elected govern-
ments have been mandated to change policy), our study suggests
that policy consistency could be a valuable strategy for govern-
ments to strengthen successful policy implementation. This adds a
new perspective to the continuing debate within policy implemen-
tation and street-level bureaucracy research on how to account for
the complex, messy and sometimes contradictory implementation
of public policies.
1|INTRODUCTION
Teachers, nurses and police officers working on the front line of publicservice delivery are often confronted with new
policy programmes that usually resultin them having to implement new rules and regulations. This could influence the
way in which they perform their tasks, with established practices being challenged. For the successful implementation
of these policies, policy-makers are dependent on the willingness of these frontline workers (the term ‘street-level
bureaucrats’is used interchangeably; e.g., Meyers et al. 1998) to cooperate (Lipsky 1980; Sabatier and Mazmanian
1980; Hill and Hupe 2009; Tummers et al. 2009; Brodkin 2012; Gofen 2014; Van Engen et al. 2016). These frontline
workers need to tailor the new policies to theirclients’needs (Sommer Harrits and stergaard Møller 2014), deal with
conflicting demands from different policies (Tummers et al. 2015) and have discretion in doing so (Lipsky 1980).
Research hasshown that their actual behaviour during policyimplementation doesnot necessarily align with thepolicy-
Received: 14 November 2016 Revised: 5 September 2018 Accepted: 16 October 2018
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12570
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2018 The Author. Public Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Public Administration. 2019;97:97–115. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm 97
makers’ambitions (Maynard-Moody and Musheno 2003; May and Winter 2009). In effect, frontline workers have the
ability to createmajor difficulties for governments democratically mandatedto introduce new policies.
Being continuously confronted with the consequences of political decisions that result in new policy measures—
ones that are not necessarily coherent with previous policies—can be challenging for frontline workers. Often, they
need to adapt to a new perspective or mind-set (e.g., the introduction of performance management systems in pro-
fessional organizations; Kerpershoek et al. 2016), cope with budget cuts (Kiefer et al. 2015), all while having to deal
with multiple accountabilities at the same time (Hupe and Hill 2007). Research indicates that this is particularly the
case when a large number of new policies are introduced (Huy 2001), when there are conflicting political signals
(May and Winter 2009) and when incompatible goals are set (Boerzel and Van Huellen 2014).
It is therefore important to understand how frontline workers, as well as other stakeholders, perceive and experi-
ence government policies over time. In this article, we focus on the effects of policy consistency. In other words, we
study how the continuity of policies over time influences frontline workers. Many, and perhaps rather capricious,
inconsistent changes might generate resistance among these workers, which might influence not only the efficiency
and effectiveness of the policies involved but also their legitimacy.
Although the street-level bureaucracy literature recognizes the important role of frontline workers in determin-
ing the effectiveness and legitimacy of public policy implementation (Lipsky 1980; Freidson 2001; Bekkers
et al. 2007), public administration and management research still tends to marginalize the perspectives and experi-
ences of those who enact the policy in practice (O’Toole 2004; DeLeon and DeLeon 2002; Barrett 2004; Saetren
2005; Werts and Brewer 2015). In particular, the micro-level (psychological) underpinnings of this (Grimmelikhuijsen
et al. 2017) have not been well researched although there have been recent notable exceptions (Andersen and
Jakobsen 2017; Raaphorst 2018; Thomann et al. 2018). This inattention is surprising given that policy implementa-
tion is sometimes complex and contradictory, and remains one of the main challenges facing civil servants worldwide
(O’Toole 2004; Moulton and Sandfort 2017). This matter therefore deserves the attention of public administration
and management scholars.
Putting policy into practice is not easy: it requires the investment of scarce funds and time, and not only of the
organizations involved but also on a personal level. Frontline workers’‘investment decisions’are constrained, includ-
ing by budgets, laws, policies, managers, social and professional norms and past experiences (e.g., Lipsky 1980; Ewalt
and Jennings 2004; Ackroyd et al. 2007; Hupe and Hill 2007; May and Winter 2009; O’Sullivan 2010; Van Engen
et al. 2016). Consequently, when frontline workers have to decide whether to put effort into implementing a new
policy, the government’s past performance in maintaining policies could be an important consideration (see White
et al. 2013). This suggests that governments should not regard frontline workers as ‘neutral’implementers since they
bring with them a history of experienced government policy changes and, hence, ideas about the contribution of poli-
cies to a greater purpose and their added value (‘meaningfulness’) and how justified and appropriate these govern-
ment policies are (‘legitimacy’).
Our premise is that policy consistency has a positive influence on how frontline workers perceive the policy pro-
grammes they are required to implement and, vice versa, that policy inconsistency has a negative influence. How-
ever, little empirical research has investigated this, and this study aims to fill this gap. Our main research question is
formulated as: What is the effect of policy consistency on how frontline workers perceive the meaningfulness and
legitimacy of the policies they are required to implement? Given the apparent importance that frontline workers
attach to autonomy (Lipsky 1980; Maynard-Moody and Musheno 2003), we also investigate if, and then how, this
effect is moderated by experienced autonomy.
This article is structured as follows. The next section offers some theoretical background and introduces our
assumptions. Next, we outline the method adopted and describe the experimental design and the results of the
experiment. The final section then presents the discussion and conclusions, focusing particularly on the theoretical
implications for public administration and public policy scholars, practical implications, and future lines of research.
98 VAN ENGEN ET AL.
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