Perspectives from the Front-line: Street-level Bureaucrats, Administrative Burden and Access to Oklahoma’s Promise

EasyChair Preprint 1093

Abstract

An emerging theme in public administration scholarship is the impact of administrative burden—or onerous experiences of government—on access to public programs and the efficacy of democratic governance more broadly. In this article, we connect the growing literature on administrative burden with street-level bureaucracy literature, highlighting the ways in which role perceptions shape street-level discretion and program access in environments of administrative burden. Drawing on a state-wide survey and unique administrative data on the Oklahoma’s Promise program, we find that street-level bureaucrats’ role perceptions interact in ways that predict both the use of discretion and a key client outcome—program access. Our findings also highlight how restricted administrative capacity moderates the relationship between role perception and program access in environments of administrative burden. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of these findings for future research at the intersection of street-level bureaucracy and administrative burden.

Keyphrases: administrative burden, education policy, social equity, street-level bureaucracy

@booklet{EasyChair:1093,
  author    = {Elizabeth Bell and Kylie Smith},
  title     = {Perspectives from the Front-line: Street-level Bureaucrats, Administrative Burden and Access to Oklahoma’s Promise},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 1093},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2019}}