A playbook for mastering the art of bureaucracy from thought-leader Mark Schwartz.

Publisher description

Street-Level Bureaucracy is an insightful study of how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of public programs.

The classic book on the way American government agencies work and how they can be made to work better -- the "masterwork" of political scientist James Q. Wilson (The Economist) In Bureaucracy, the distinguished scholar James Q. Wilson examines a wide range of bureaucracies, including the US Army, the FBI, the CIA, the FCC, and the Social Security Administration, providing the first comprehensive, in-depth analysis of what government agencies do, why they operate the way they do, and how they might become more responsible and effective. It is the essential guide to understanding how American government works.

This important text integrates the study of ethics into public management training, highlighting Supreme Court opinions on three specific constitutional values-equality, freedom, and property-focusing on the pedagogical aspects of law and posing challenging questions to help readers apply theories to concrete situations. It includes a case index for further research. Topics of specific interest include abortion, affirmative action, bureaucratic bashing, civil disobedience, the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, the Iran-Contra scandal, moral absolutism, privileged communications, religious fundamentalism, and whistle blowing. The Midwest Review of Pubic Administration lauds it as "...a unique teaching tool."

The end of bureaucracy has been anticipated many times throughout the history of management science, as well as in modern social and political theory. This book sets out to show why bureaucracy persists and what values it embodies and upholds. Thus the book seeks to show how and why bureaucratic forms of organization have played, and continue to play, a vital and productive role in ordering our political, social, economic, and cultural existence. The book also describes and analyzes the impact of contemporary programmes of organizational reform in the public and private sectors on bureaucratic structures, and seeks to highlight some of the costs of attempts to de-bureaucratize organizational life in business, government, and the third sector. Overall the volume highlights the values of bureaucracy and at the same time indicates why distinctively bureaucratic forms of organization should continue to be valued.

Argues for a more robust conception of responsibility in public life than prevails in contemporary democracies.