TY - BOOK ID - 31185665 TI - When the state meets the street : public service and moral agency PY - 2017 SN - 9780674545540 0674545540 PB - Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, DB - UniCat KW - Civil service KW - Municipal officials and employees KW - Local government KW - #SBIB:35H2102 KW - #SBIB:35H500 KW - Local administration KW - Township government KW - Civil service, Municipal KW - Municipal civil service KW - Municipal employees KW - Municipal officers KW - Town officers KW - Bureaucrats KW - Career government service KW - Civil servants KW - Government employees KW - Government service KW - Public employees KW - Public service (Civil service) KW - Moral and ethical aspects KW - Personeelsmanagement bij de overheid: specifieke aspecten KW - Bestuur en samenleving: algemene werken KW - Law and legislation KW - Legal status, laws, etc. KW - Northeastern States KW - Northeast (U.S.) KW - Northeastern United States KW - United States, Northeastern KW - Officials and employees. KW - Subnational governments KW - Administrative and political divisions KW - Decentralization in government KW - Public administration KW - Local officials and employees KW - Public officers KW - Public service employment KW - Officials and employees KW - Gemeenteambtenaren KW - Ambtenaren KW - Civil service - Moral and ethical aspects - Northeastern States KW - Municipal officials and employees - Northeastern States KW - Local government - Moral and ethical aspects - Northeastern States KW - Northeastern States - Officials and employees UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:31185665 AB - When the State Meets the Street probes the complex moral lives of street-level bureaucrats: the frontline social and welfare workers, police officers, and educators who represent government's human face to ordinary citizens. Too often dismissed as soulless operators, these workers wield a significant margin of discretion and make decisions that considerably affect people's lives. By combining insights from political theory with ethnographic fieldwork as a receptionist in an urban anti-poverty agency, Bernardo Zacka shows us firsthand the predicament in which these public servants are caught up. Public policy consists of rules and regulations, but its implementation depends on how street-level bureaucrats interpret them and exercise discretionary judgment. These workers are expected to act as sensible moral agents in a working environment that is notoriously challenging and that conspires against them. Pressed to cope with the pressures of everyday work, they often and unknowingly settle for reductive conceptions of their responsibilities. Zacka examines the factors that contribute to this erosion of moral sensibility and what it takes to remain a balanced moral agent in such adverse conditions.-- ER -