Book Review: When the state meets the street: Public service and moral agency

• Author: Jodi R. Sandfort
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0275074019870310
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

870310ARPXXX10.1177/0275074019870310The American Review of Public AdministrationBook Review
book-review2019
Book Reviews
American Review of Public Administration
2020, Vol. 50(1) 110 –115
Book Review
© The Author(s) 2019
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Zacka, Bernardo. (2017) When the state meets the street: Public service and moral agency. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard
University. 337 pp. $35.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978067454550.
Reviewed by: Jodi R. Sandfort
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA.
DOI: 10.1177/0275074019870310
In the last five years, there has been a resurgence in serious
The two central questions in this book focus on how
scholarship about policy implementation and the dynamics it
everyday pressures limit the moral disposition of frontline
unleashes within and between the multiple levels in intergov-
staff and how managers and colleagues might enable them to
ernmental systems. More panels about implementation are
remain “sensitive and balanced moral agents” (p. 11). The
appearing at public management research conferences and
attention to morality here is important. The portrait painted is
more research is being carried out that grapples with under-
not one of individuals fueled by self-interest, motivated to
standing public administration’s role in delivering public
shirk or arbitrarily impose biases. Rather, Zacka argues that
policy.
the ambiguous goals of policy, conflicting values, limited
When the State Meets the Street is a bold and interesting
resources, fuzzy decision criteria, and unpredictability give
contribution to the revitalization of this area of scholarship. It
rise to inevitable discretion. In fact, he considers the topic of
concentrates upon a well-developed stream in the policy
discretion in detail, looking critically at the ways in which
implementation literature focused upon the frontline of imple-
public administration and political science have understood
mentation systems, on what Michael Lipsky (1980) so aptly
the concept, and arguing instead that day-to-day work cre-
termed “street level bureaucrats.” Although...