Street-level bureaucracy in weak state institutions: a systematic review of the literature
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523221103196 |
| Author | Rik Peeters,Sergio A. Campos |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Street-level bureaucracy in
weak state institutions: a
systematic review of the
literature
Rik Peeters
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE),
Mexico City, Mexico
Sergio A. Campos
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE),
Aguascalientes, Mexico
Abstract
The study of street-level bureaucracy has been dominated by research from the Global
North. Mainstream conceptualizations are, therefore, based on observations from insti-
tutional contexts that may vary significantly from the working conditions of frontline
workers elsewhere. This article takes stock of the growing body of literature on
street-level bureaucracy in weak institutional contexts and brings together relevant
insights from comparative political science and public administration into a coherent
analytical framework. We identify four institutional factors that shape frontline working
conditions and three behavioral patterns in frontline worker agency. These patterns in
frontline agency –ranging from policy improvisation to informal privatization –can be
understood as an institutional waterbed effect caused by institutional deficiencies,
such as resource scarcity and accountability gaps: if the complexity of public service pro-
vision is not tackled at the institutional level, it is pushed towards the street-level where
frontline workers cope with it in highly diverse ways.
Points for practitioners
•Frontline workers in weak state institutions are commonly faced with highly precar-
ious working conditions.
•If the structural preconditions for policy implementation and rule enforcement are
unresolved, these complexities are pushed towards frontline workers that cope with
Corresponding author:
Rik Peeters, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Mexico City, Mexico.
Email: rik.peeters@cide.edu
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2023, Vol. 89(4) 977–995
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523221103196
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them through informal privatization, policy improvisation, or alienative commitment
focused on mere job survival.
•Frontline agency is an indispensable factor for understanding the selective and often
distributive nature of service delivery and rule enforcement in the Global South.
Keywords
frontline work, Global South, institutional analysis, literature review, street-level
bureaucracy, weak institutions
Introduction
How do structurally adverse working conditions impact the behavior of street-level
bureaucrats? And how does this affect policy implementation, public service provision,
and citizens’experiences of the state? Most research on street-level bureaucracy has
been conducted in institutional contexts of the Global North that are generally character-
ized by high levels of professionalization, administrative capacity, and bureaucratic
autonomy (Bertelli et al., 2020; Pepinsky et al., 2017). The vast majority of the
world’s street-level bureaucrats, however, work under a very different set of institutional
incentives and constraints, including highly politicized bureaucracies (Zarychta et al.,
2020), precarious labor conditions (Lima and D’Asenzi, 2017), scarcity of basic
resources (Gibson, 2004), systematic corruption (Justesen and Bjørnskov, 2014), and
low social trust in government (Peeters and Dussauge Laguna, 2021). In this article,
we take stock of the literature on street-level bureaucracy in the Global South and
analyze recurring institutional factors and the way they shape frontline worker agency.
We do so through the concept of ‘weak institutions’(Brinks et al., 2020): state institutions
–rules that permit, require, or prohibit certain behavior –that fail to redistribute and
refract power, authority, or expectations in a way that significantly diverges from a pre-
institutional outcome (Brinks et al., 2020: 8).
1
The primary aim of this article is to advance our understanding of frontline work,
service delivery, and state-citizen interactions in weak institutional settings. Therefore,
we: (1) identify and outline a specific body of literature and (2) develop an analytical
framework for understanding the nature of frontline work in weak institutions. Our find-
ings suggest that the variation in frontline agency patterns, which ranges from policy
improvisation to predatory bureaucracy, can be understood as responses by street-level
bureaucrats to institutional factors such as resource shortage, social inequality, and pre-
carious labor conditions. Deficiencies in the institutional preconditions for policy imple-
mentation and service provision trigger an institutional waterbed-effect, pushing these
deficiencies towards the street-level where frontline workers cope with them in highly
diverse ways. Thereby, we help shed light on how precarity makes frontline work in
the Global South different from strong institutional settings, and, more broadly, on the
often-contested nature of state-citizen interactions, the patchiness of service delivery,
and the mechanisms underlying implementation and enforcement gaps (Holland, 2015;
McDonnell, 2017; Peeters and Dussauge Laguna, 2021).
978 International Review of Administrative Sciences 89(4)
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