Social Equities and Inequities in Practice: Street‐Level Workers as Agents and Pragmatists

Abstract

Street‐level workers’ judgments, decisions, and actions touch on questions of social equity, a dominant theme of H. George Frederickson's deep contributions to public administration scholarship. Based on empirical work, the authors question the dominant implementation‐control‐discretion narrative and suggest an alternative framing based on the concepts of agency and pragmatic improvisation. Street‐level workers are often conservers of institutional norms and practices, but their work surfaces tensions between practice and the goals of social equity.