When a policy target group helps control their clients - How conflicting roles affect the implementation of the Swiss Ordinance on Veterinary Drugs

Abstract

Lipsky’s seminal concept focuses on street-level bureaucrats (SLB) as public servants. In this paper, we argue that in the course of new modes of policy implementation, SLB no longer necesserarily are bureaucrats or see themselves as public officials. We expect implementation arrangements with important roles of private actors in policy delivery to affect output performance due to emerging role conflicts between a private and a public role. We explore the logic of private SLB by way of the example of the implementation of the Swiss Ordinance on Veterinary Drugs (Tierarzneimittelverordnung, TAMV) in which the role of SLB is shared between the public servants, i.e. the cantonal veterinary services, and the private veterinarians, i.e. the first target group of the policy, who have to check the livestock owners. However, at the same time, the farmers are also the latters’ clients. This means that veterinarians are in an awkward position because they have to control their own clients who pay them for taking care of their livestock. Based on original survey data collected for the evaluation of the TAMV, we investigate how this particular arrangement affects the output performance of the TAMV. We find that street level bureaucracy does affect the implementing agents‘ output performance. The outputs of governance are worse than those of government. Furthermore, we detect differences in the relationships of the two types of SLB with their respective reference groups. Private veterinarians as private SLB have three conflicting functions within the implementation structure of the TAMV: they are simultaneously implementing agents, policy addressees and professionals with economic interests. The shift to governance has created multiple double roles for the private implementing agents which led to additional dilemmas for the SLB and negatively affected the delivery of output of both the public and the private agents. Thereby governance has magnified implementation problems. Our results suggest that both for what the state does and for how he does it, the type of SLB matters.