A Historical Narrative Of Street-Level Bureaucracy Research

Since 1980, when Lipsky’ masterpiece Street-Level Bureaucracy:Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services was published, which represented the origin of the Street…, the public have begun to pay attention to street-level bureaucrats, a special group finding themselves in the bottom of political authorities and at the lower end of making policies.In a broad sense, studies on street-level bureaucracy could be traced back to 1969, when the concept of "street-level bureaucracy" was put forward. This concept has been developed for almost 50 years. Actually, this fantastic theory is still influencing the whole world extensively. Street-level bureaucracy research, as a special yet significant research field in public administration research, have been conducted by researchers of various countries and regions, the findings of which demonstrated the theoretical depth and vigor of this theory. However, as the way of social governance is undergoing a reformation "from government to governance", the limitation and credibility of this theory have more and more become the objects of researchers’ denunciation.Since 2003,when Ye Juanli and Ma Jun systematically introduced this theory into China for the first time, more and more Chinese scholars have adopted this theory to explain the prominent impropriety in policy implementation and the problems existing in the public servant system in current China. It is well acknowledged that in the Chinese context the research into street-level bureaucracy is highly instrumental and application-oriented. However, those scholars at home were to a large degree only parroting Lipsky’s studies. They have paid limited attention to the 30 years’ development of this theory and the applicability and explanatory power of this model in contemporary China were generally neglected. Therefore, the research into the sinicization of street-level bureaucracy is still in its infancy. On a comprehensive review of the literature on street-level bureaucracy, this study attempts to locate itself on the historical track of street-level bureaucracy research to re-picture the origin and development of the research on street-level bureaucracy.The origin of street-level bureaucracy theory could be traced back to two relatively independent yet closely related research areas in traditional academic research of public administration:administrative discretion and policy implementation. Lipsky exactly researched into the deviation in policy implementation from the perspective of street-level bureaucrats’ discretion. Street-Level Bureaucracy was especially timely in bringing a growing literature on bureaucratic discretion into direct conversation with an emerging literature on policy implementation.In reviewing, the history of street-level bureaucracy research can be roughly divided into three phrases:the first phrase is the period of its origin and initial establishment (1970s-80s). In this period, the research on street-level bureaucracy was geographically confined to the mainland of America, which contributed a lot to constructing the content of street-level bureaucracy research. Studies on street-level bureaucracy which were centered on discretion began to take shape:the traditional research model of street-level bureaucracy including the validation of discretion, the operation mode of discretion, influential factors of discretion, and the control path of discretion was formed.The second phase is the period of its development and breakthrough (1990s). During this period, the street-level bureaucracy research moved beyond the US in geography and drew the attention of British researchers. In content it maintained the previous research approach in the 1970s-80s, with some breakthrough when compared with the traditional model. The third phase is the period of its reflection and reconstruction (from 2000 onwards). In this period, street-level bureaucracy research was no longer confined to Britain or the US. It was widely researched on by relevant scholars all over the academic world, among which researchers from the Nordic welfare states should be highlighted. In content the traditional model of street-level bureaucracy was faced with unprecedented crises, which urged researchers to seek the reconstruction of the traditional model.In the end, this study attempts to analyze the development of street-level bureaucracy research from the perspective of the paradigm shift of public administration. Putting the development of street-level bureaucracy research in the history of public administration research, we can find that the three phases of street-level bureaucracy research roughly correspond to the three paradigm shifts of public administration, namely, the shift from the "public administration" to "public management" and to "governance".