Reorganizing the Welfare State: New Administrative Models, Old Bureaucratic Problems

Bureaucratic discretion is a fundamental feature of social provision, one that presents enduring difficulties for management. European states that have commonly held to a strong, bureaucratic tradition are increasingly looking toward American models of privatization and devolution. This working paper offers a critical perspective on the American experience and considers its implications for the diffusion of American practices to other countries. Specifically, it examines periodic efforts to reorganize the American welfare state that suggest a continuing dialectic between administrative reforms intended to enhance discretion and reforms intended to restrict it. In the U.S., efforts to address problems of discretion through administrative reform have taken two, divergent paths. One, utilizing the familiar public bureaucratic model, seeks to control discretion through hierarchical command structures and standardization. The other, utilizing decentralization and privatization, seeks to use incentive structures associated with market or quasi-market functions. Paradoxically, it may be that discretion is as problematic in the second model as in the first. In order to assess this possibility, it is necessary to understand the relationship between social politics, organizational conditions and street-level practice. Drawing on the experience of American social assistance programs, I will suggest the theoretical contours of this relationship and consider its implications for assessing new models of social provision in different national contexts.