Goal ambiguity and informal discretion in the implementation of public policies: the case of Spanish immigration policy
| Author | Joëlle Bastien |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020852309351472 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Goal ambiguity and informal discretion in the implementation
of public policies: the case of Spanish immigration policy
Joëlle Bastien
Abstract
Policy formation does not come to an end when a bill becomes a law. Street-
level bureaucrats also play a role in shaping public policies through their daily use
of discretion. Through a comparative analysis of the work done by street-level
bureaucrats in two different organizations in charge of implementing the Spanish
immigration policy, we examined the relation between goal ambiguity and the
use of informal discretion using a qualitative method relying on Lipsky’s theoreti-
cal framework. Based on the data obtained through five in-depth interviews with
street-level bureaucrats in each of the two selected organizations, we confirm the
link between goal ambiguity and the use of informal discretion. Besides, our obser-
vations also tend to associate a low level of informal discretion to a high level of
engagement toward public service values such as impartiality and fairness.
Points for practitioners
This article offers a practical methodology to identify goal ambiguity and informal
discretion in an organization. It provides tools for assessing their level and moni-
toring their evolution within an organization, which often constitute mandatory
steps when working on initiatives related to the reinforcement of common goals
in an organization (e.g. service improvement in terms of fairness and impartiality,
achieving consistency in the implementation stage of a policy, managing a ‘change
agenda’, etc.). It will be of particular interest to practitioners who are in charge of
Joëlle Bastien received an MA in Political Science from Laval University in 2007. Her master’s thesis
dealt with the use of informal discretion in the implementation of Spanish immigration policy. She also
received a BA in International Studies from Montreal University in 2004. For the purposes of her BA
studies, she carried out one year of undergraduate studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
The conclusions of her Master’s thesis were presented at the Institut québécois des hautes études
internationales (IQHEI) in February 2007 as part of the Cercle Europe Conferences. Her main fields of
interest include migration studies, public administration, and European studies.
© The authors, 2009. Reprints and Permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
Vol 75(4):665–685 [DOI:10.1177/0020852309351472]
666 International Review of Administrative Sciences 75(4)
monitoring difficult-to-measure outputs linked to the quality of the process at the
implementation stage.
Keywords: asylum, discretion, ethics, European Union, goal ambiguity,
implementation, inspection, Spain
Introduction
Implementation studies seem to have suffered a lack of popularity in the last decade.
In Susan M. Barrett’s opinion, this has something to do with the ‘belief that the
“reforms” in the public services associated with the New Public Management had
addressed the key problems of “implementation failure”’ (Barrett, 2004: 258). This
belief is of course questionable considering that the so-called ‘reforms’ addressed
only some problems, the ones that the New Public Management (NPM) considered
the most important, and potentially worsened other problems that were not consid-
ered to be critical. The case of bureaucratic discretion is an example of an element
that was relatively ignored by the NPM and that was not sufficiently assessed as a
phenomenon potentially harmful to the efficient implementation of public policies.
This may be due to the fact that post-bureaucratic organizations tend to be results
oriented rather than process oriented (Kernaghan, 2000: 93) and are tempted to put
aside ethical considerations concerning the ‘means’ in most evaluation processes. The
level of informal discretion used by the street-level bureaucrats at the delivery stage
can, however, be considered a result on its own. Indeed, it reflects the level of quality
of service delivery in terms of fairness and impartiality, a criterion that is linked to what
was referred to as the theta values by Susan Strange (Hood, 1991: 11), or as ethical
and democratic values by Kernaghan (2000: 95), and that is inherent in the public
administration in most of the democracies.
There are several ways to conceive the use of discretion in the implementation
process. Implementation studies usually conceive discretion as distorting govern-
ment authority which is considered to be a problem in a democracy, whereas from
the public administration point of view focusing on the way organizations operate,
discretion is rather perceived as a solution to limit red tape. If Weber’s bureaucracy
has been widely criticized for the excess of red tape it generates, the NPM was also
criticized for not considering impartiality of service as a goal in itself that may require
limiting the level of discretion performed by the civil servants. From a more down to
earth point of view, it seems that at a certain level, augmenting discretion can gener-
ate implementation failures by diminishing the level of predictability of bureaucrats’
behaviour (Winter, 2002: 131–2), or even in some cases transform the inspections
into ‘regulatory rituals’ without sanctions nor reward (Gormley, 1995, cited in Meyers
and Vorsanger, 2003: 250). The literature also questions the belief that discretion
necessarily leads to the achievement of a better level of efficiency: Wintrobe (1982)
noted that an optimal level of discretion must exist beyond which augmenting discre-
tion could be associated with less efficiency; Walsh and Dewar (1987) emphasized
the fact that a large number of rules could mean positive or negative consequences
for an organization depending on circumstances; Thompson (cited in Bozeman and
Rainey, 1998: 168) supports the idea that only extreme situations can really cause a
Bastien Goal ambiguity and informal discretion in public policy implementation 667
problem. Once again, it seems that it is a question of balance and that the point of
equilibrium must be somewhere midway between Weber’s ideal and the NPM ideal.
As such, it is clear that discretion is necessary to avoid malfunctions in situations not
foreseen by the law and to ensure a responsive implementation of the law. There are
nevertheless good reasons to believe that discretion also needs to be contained for
ethical and pragmatic reasons.
There are few empirical studies that have tried to quantify the relations between
street-level discretion and elements of the structure of the organizations. Winter
(2002) did try to test Lipsky’s model to some extent and found some links between
the workers’ own preferences and attitudes on discretionary practices, but he did not
test the link between goal ambiguity and discretionary practices. Instead, Winter used
political control as an independent variable and found that politicians did not appear
to play a significant role in controlling the way street-level bureaucrats used their
discretion, which is consistent with findings from Brehm and Gates or Meyers, Glaser
and MacDonald (1999, 1998, cited in Winter 2002: 5), but inconsistent with other
studies attesting that ‘bureaucratic agencies have adapted their behaviour to changed
preferences and political signals from new political masters’ (Winter, 2002: 6). One
of the conclusions of Keiser and Soss (1998) is that both resources and bureaucratic
values have an influence on the way bureaucrats exercise their discretion as the com-
munication of clear goal priorities relies upon both. Besides, public administration
positively links goal ambiguity to red tape, which could suggest that the clearer the
goals are, the less red tape there is and thus, potentially, the more discretion is likely
to be observed (Chun and Rainey, 2004: 5–6). The apparent contradiction observed
may be linked to the fact that most of the studies about discretion have focused on
discretion at large without differentiating between formal and informal administrative
discretion, and have tended to conceive of discretion as opposed to red tape while
the relation between both is more complex.
Administrative discretion can be defined as ‘the degree of latitude or flexibility
exercised by public administrators when making decisions or conducting any agency
business’ (Warren, 2003: 35). Traditionally, the terms formal and informal are closely
linked to the concept of codification or rules: for Goodin (1986: 235), discretion is
formal if the ‘options as regards beneficiaries . . . are explicitly written into rules’ and
informal if ‘options . . . are merely implicit in the statement of rules’. This traditional
conception of formal and informal discretion is limited for two sets of reasons. First,
formal discretion is not always allowed by written rules, but can also be allowed
by non-written rules interiorized by the civil servants (Bozeman and Scott, 1996: 5);
and written rules are not always formal as old rules might be abandoned in practice
(Walsh and Dewar, 1987: 219). Second, and most importantly, discretion at large is
not limited to what is permitted explicitly or implicitly by law, but can also consist of
illegal actions. Here, we will adopt Kenneth C. Davis’s (1969, cited in Warren, 2003:
36) conception of discretion at large as including ‘all that is within the effective limits
on the officer’s power’. Formal...
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