Since the seminal work by Lipsky (1980), literature on SLB has grown considerably in the last decades, focusing on the relationship between SLB and citizens in public service delivery to empirically grasp the drivers and the effects of frontline workers’ behavior on policy implementation. Within this broader debate, literature reviews highlight the presence of a line of study focused on the discretionary power of SLB and examining how it is wielded, what can influence its use, and what effects it can have in citizens’ access to services (Saruis 2013, Chang and Brewer 2022). Discretion is particularly relevant in the field of social services where the relationship between SLBs and citizens/users has a direct impact on service implementation. It can, in fact, be adopted by SLB to incentivize citizens’ participation in service, to grant access to benefits or to disincentivize it.

Drawing on literature on coping strategies and, namely, on the work by Tummers et al. (2015) the paper investigates the interactions between behavioral and cognitive coping and to propose a theoretical framework that identifies the types of discretion and the drivers behind them. The framework is tested on the case study related to the implementation of the Italian Minimum Income Scheme ‘Citizen Income’ (CI) at a local level. The paper critically assesses the adoption of discretionary decisions by frontline workers of the Employment Centres and the Social services of the Region Veneto in the application of conditionalities to the beneficiaries of the measure. It relies on the results of 61 mixed interviews, three focus groups and a survey conducted with all the regional case managers.

The results of the empirical analysis suggest that both case managers of the Employment Centers and the Social Services adopt a discretionary approach in using conditionalities that largely rely on cognitive aspects but also that these attitudes vary between the two groups, and therefore affecting the capacity of CI recipients to maintain their benefit.

The impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the discretionary powers of street level bureaucrats (SLBs) in the implementation of public policies has attracted increasing academic attention in recent literature. While some studies argue that the use of ICT restricts the discretion of SLBs, i.e., through the automation of decisions, others claim that digitalization and the associated improved accessibility of data increases the discretionary scope at the street-level. This paper examines these dynamics within the context of the Swiss naturalization policy, specifically focusing on the non-standardized and manual documentation of naturalization interviews. We ask the following question: How does the way in which the minutes of the naturalization interviews are kept - manual and analogue vs. automated and digital - influence the discretion of the SLBs, the equal treatment of applicants and ultimately the legal compliance with natu-ralization policy?

Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, including an online survey of cantonal (i.e., sub-national) and municipal authorities as well as in-depth interviews with various stakeholders, this study explores the dual consequences of the current recording practices. Findings show that, on one hand, the lack of standardization, automation and digitalization allows SLBs substantial discretion in interpreting and documenting interviews. On the other hand, this high degree of discretion results in inconsistent decision-making depending on where the naturalization application is submitted and decided on, undermining legal compliance and the principles of equal treatment.

The findings suggest that automating the recording and transcription of naturalization interviews could mitigate these issues by standardizing the documentation process. This, in turn, would reduce potentially unjustified differences in SLB decision-making by strengthening the applicants’ position through more procedural transparency, promote equal treatment, and enhance legal compliance. The paper argues that such technological integration could harmonize the naturalization process, ensuring that all applicants are assessed based on consistent criteria and reducing the influence of individual discretion.

Ultimately, this research contributes to the broader discourse on the application of ICT in public service delivery by highlighting how such tools can in certain contexts serve as means for improving consistency in SLB-behavior. The implications of this study extend beyond the realm of naturalization, offering insights into the potential benefits and challenges of automating bureaucratic processes and digitalizing relevant data more broadly.

This study employs a mixed-method approach to investigate the effectiveness of anti-discriminatory measures in addressing bureaucratic discrimination against mobile EU citizens seeking unemployment benefits across diverse administrative contexts. We focus on two overarching questions: (1) What types of measures are most effective in tackling bureaucratic discrimination? and (2) Do national administrative contexts influence the effectiveness of anti-discrimination measures? Drawing on hierarchical Bayesian conjoint analysis, inbox-task experiments, and interviews with bureaucrats in Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, and Denmark, we test the effectiveness of our treatments in reducing bureaucratic discrimination. Our results highlight the importance of tailoring some anti-discriminatory interventions to specific national contexts or attributes while also emphasizing the potential universality of certain measures. This study has significant implications for policy design aimed at fostering equal treatment for mobile EU citizens within European social security systems.

Questions on equity in public service delivery have been a central focus of study in public administration literature. Representative bureaucracy literature, for instance, focuses on whether and how minority bureaucrats actively represent the interests of minority groups by affecting processes and outcomes that address group-specific needs. Research indicates how majority bureaucrats too could actively represent the interests of minority citizen-clients, due to spillover effects of the presence of minority bureaucrats, or because representation is a function of professional roles that stress needs (Meier, 2024). This underscores the involvement of both minority and majority bureaucrats in ensuring equitable decision-making for citizen-clients. However, from a behavioral perspective, there is still a lack of understanding of how equitable decision-making about citizen-clients can be promoted. We hold that this starts with “structural thinking”, i.e. recognizing how a citizen-client’s group membership, such as gender, social class or ethnicity, has affected one’s constraints and opportunities in life, possibly resulting in different needs (e.g. Watkins-Hayes, 2011).

This study aims to better understand how bureaucrats’ structural thinking about citizens’ situations can be facilitated through a workplace intervention. We seek to answer the following question: what are the effects of a structural thinking intervention on bureaucrats’ equality beliefs and causal attributions in evaluating citizen-clients’ situations? To assess the effects of a workplace intervention, we will conduct a field experiment in a public social service organization. The intervention will consist of a workshop designed to stimulate bureaucrats’ thinking about structural causes of existing societal inequalities and citizen-clients’ situations. To evaluate the workshops’ impact, we will employ vignette experiments depicting various scenarios reflecting citizen-clients’ situations as both pre- and posttests. We will draw on existing sociological and psychological insights on equality beliefs and cognitive causal attributions to develop the workshop (Amemiya et al., 2023; Irwin, 2018).

The research context consists of 70-80 regulators, spread out over nine geographically dispersed teams. These teams all monitor the lawful use of social services. As part of larger developments in Dutch public policies, they are encouraged to not strictly apply the law, but to consider citizen-clients’ circumstances in the spirit of the law. The study entails a treatment-control pre-post-follow-up design. The teams will be randomly distributed to either the treatment group or the waitlist control group (who will receive the workshop at a later point in time). Equality beliefs and causal attributions will be measured among all respondents (including those in the waitlist group) before and after the workshop in the intervention group. In addition, we will conduct semi-structured interviews with respondents of the intervention group to assess their experiences with the workshop.

At the EGPA conference, we would like to present the fully developed design of the study. The study's expected timeline looks as follows:

- June/August: interviews to gain deeper insight into organizational context, work of regulators, and existing workshops around the topic.

- September: Pre-test measures; all respondents (70/80).

- October: Intervention workshop; 4/5 locations (approximately 40 respondents).

- November and December: post-test measures at two moments in time; a week after the workshop, and 5 weeks after the workshop; all respondents (70/80). In addition, interviews with part of respondents treatment group.

- January and February: workshop to teams in waitlist group.

References

Amemiya, J., Mortenson, E., Heyman, G. D., & Walker, C. M. (2023). Thinking structurally: A cognitive framework for understanding how people attribute inequality to structural causes. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 18(2), 259-274.

Irwin, S. (2018). Lay perceptions of inequality and social structure. Sociology, 52(2), 211-227.

Meier, K. (2024). Representation by the Unrepresentative: A Theory of Contagion Effects in Representative Bureaucracy. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Conference of Minority Public Administrators. Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO), LA, February 25-28, 2024.

Watkins-Hayes, C. (2011). Race, respect, and red tape: Inside the black box of racially representative bureaucracies. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 21(suppl_2), i233-i251.