Controlling Administrative Discretion Promotes Social Equity? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

• Author: Sergio Cárdenas,Edgar E. Ramírez de la Cruz
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12590
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

80 Public Administration Review • January | February 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 1, pp. 80–89. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI:10.1111/puar.12590

Edgar E. Ramírez de la Cruz is

professor in the Public Administration

Division at Centro de Investigación y

Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico City,

Mexico. His primary interests are urban

governance and sustainability. He is also

interested in public management, education

policy, and policy networks. He is editor

in chief of

Gestión y Política Pública

and

associate editor of

Urban Affairs Review.

He

earned his PhD from the Askew School at

Florida State University.

E-mail: edgar.ramirez@cide.edu

Sergio Cárdenas is professor in the

Public Administration Division at Centro

de Investigación y Docencia Económicas

(CIDE) in Mexico City, Mexico. His primary

interest is educational policy. He is editor

of

Reformas and Políticas Educativas

, as

well as member of the Global Education

Innovation Initiative. He earned his Ed.D.

from the Harvard Graduate School of

Education.

E-mail: sergio.cardenas@cide.edu

Abstract : Although social equity has been a formal pillar of public administration for decades, identifying

mechanisms through which public officials inadvertently reproduce unfair conditions remains a relevant topic. In

particular, it is important to understand how the habits and practices of street-level bureaucrats may result in an

unjust allocation of public resources. This article provides evidence on how the administrative discretion conferred

on school principals may result in an efficient but unfair condition regarding the allocation of students across schools,

thus undermining social equity. By exploiting a natural experiment, we are able to provide reliable evidence on how

controlling administrative discretion decreases the segregation of students based on their socioeconomic status.

Practitioner Points

• An inadequate conceptualization of social equity by street-level bureaucrats may compromise the fulfillment

of organizational goals regarding social outcomes.

• The implementation of cost-reducing policies should be constantly evaluated based on reliable measures of

how these policies will affect “nervous areas” of government such as social equity.

• Without appropriate checks and effective training for public officials, policies that allow administrative

discretion without oversight may result in an efficient but unfair distribution of public goods.

• Procedures such as randomization that reduce the effects of personal bias may result in a fair method of

allocating resources, especially when policy makers lack reliable information to select beneficiaries and

street-level bureaucrats lack proper training.

S ocial equity is a concept that results from the

views of a generation of scholars who, in the

late 1960s, contravened the “traditional ideas

of a politics–administration dichotomy and public

administration practiced by neutral competents”

(Norman-Major 2011 , 233), suggesting that

practitioners and scholars should be not only

concerned about whether public agencies reach

certain levels of efficiency, effectiveness, and economy

but also aware of “for whom government operates”

(Norman-Major 2011 , 237). By defining social

equity as “the fair, just, and equitable management

of all institutions serving the public directly or by

contract, the fair and equitable distribution of public

services and implementation of public policy, and

the commitment to promote fairness, justice and

equity in the formation of public policy” (National

Academy of Public Administration, cited in Gooden

and Portillo 2011 , 61–62), advocates have proposed a

model of government that is dependent on the success

of transforming public officials into actors who share

the goal of reducing inequities in any policy process.

Achieving social equity, then, is contingent on finding

methods to influence public officials’ perceptions and

decisions regarding the selection of policy options, the

design of budgets, the evaluation of results, and the

selection of potential recipients of public resources.

Although highly desirable, inserting social equity as

a guiding principle for public officials is not a simple

process. As Frederickson ( 2010 ) notes, accepting

equity as a relevant goal among others traditionally

followed (e.g., efficiency or economy) means that

bureaucrats will constantly face moral dilemmas

during the design and implementation of policies that

they may not be prepared to address. In addition,

practitioners will find it difficult to operationalize

the notion of social equity because of the lack of

conceptual clarity regarding the term, the limited

importance this concept has during the preservice

training of future public officials, and the lack of

empirical research on social equity (Gooden and

Portillo 2011 ).

How public officials address these dilemmas will echo

experiences, training, and personal considerations

(e.g., the perception of organizational goals,

stereotypes, or even their own interpretations of the

Sergio Cárdenas

Edgar E. Ramírez de la Cruz

Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) , Mexico

Controlling Administrative Discretion Promotes Social Equity?

Evidence from a Natural Experiment