Universal Rules and Situations of Discretion: How Street-Level Bureaucrats Calculate Suffering

Аннотация

The process of determining eligibility for social services from the State is a legal procedure whereby it is determined whether the state should provide social assistance to a citizen and, if so, in what measure. The article studies the organisation created in one Russian city to carry out this procedure. The representatives of this organisation are typical street-level bureaucrats as defined by Michael Lipsky. They interact with citizens face to face, and decide the form in which social services will be provided, and if they will be provided at all. The creation of this organisation meant a redistribution of powers in the social sector, the fragmentation of the process of granting and providing social assistance and (formally at least) a stricter division between the process of decision-taking and the resultant action. The article analyses how, under such conditions of fragmentation and the introduction of new tools for automating the decision-making process, a space for discretion — the possibility of influencing at a local level and in some cases determining how the work should be carried out — is maintained. The research is based on a qualitative methodology, the basic material being interviews with employees of this new organisation. In addition, documents regulating procedures and monitoring of these were analysed and observations taken. The author demonstrates how “gaps” that arise in the social sector are overcome, and how the professional and ethical categories of specialists in the organisation determine how the process of recognising need as a whole, and the processes of evaluation in particular, are carried out.