Trust and Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Willingness to Risk Their Lives for Others: The Case of Brazilian Law Enforcement

• Published date: 01 February 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740231200468
• Author: Nissim Cohen,Gabriela Lotta,Rafael Alcadipani,Teddy Lazebnik
• Date: 01 February 2024

Trust and Street-Level Bureaucrats’

Willingness to Risk Their Lives for Others:

The Case of Brazilian Law Enforcement

Nissim Cohen

1

, Gabriela Lotta

2

, Rafael Alcadipani

2

and Teddy Lazebnik

3

Abstract

Trust has proven to be a predictor of organizational outcomes. In some cases, such as law enforcement, achieving organiza-

tional goals requires workers to be willing to risk their lives. Is there a link between street-level bureaucrats’(SLBs) willingness

to endanger their own lives for the public and their trust in their peers, managers, and the institution to which they belong?

Using a national survey of 2,733 police off‌icers in Brazil and machine-learning-based methods, we found that there is a sig-

nif‌icant link between their willingness to risk their lives for others and their trust in their peers, managers, and the institution

to which they belong. Our f‌indings indicate that while these SLBs were very willing to risk their lives for certain groups, their

willingness declined sharply for others such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ)+people and the

homeless. In addition, police off‌icers’perceptions about discrimination, police professionalism, and organizational commit-

ment and support are linearly linked to their willingness to risk their lives. Our f‌indings demonstrate the important role

of trust in understanding public servants’practices in the extreme context of risking their lives for others.

Keywords

street-level bureaucrats, trust, risking one’s life, police, Brazil

Introduction

Street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) are the furthest away from

the centers of power and the closest to citizens

(Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2000). In their daily work

on the frontlines of government, they change people’s lives

(Evans, 2016; Maynard-Moody & Portillo, 2010). Their dis-

cretion in implementing policy has been def‌ined as a funda-

mental feature of providing public services (Brodkin, 2011)

and understood as a matter of freedom or choice that a

worker can exercise in a specif‌ic context (Evans, 2013).

This discretion is necessary to cope with uncertainties and

work pressures (Gofen, 2014; Lipsky, 2010; Portillo &

Rudes, 2014; Raaphorst et al., 2018; Riccucci, 2005; Sager

et al., 2014; Thomann, 2015; Tummers et al., 2015) and is

critical in extreme situations such as disasters and crises

(Brodkin, 2021; Henderson, 2014).

SLBs’discretion can have different results for different

citizens (Thomann & Rapp, 2018) and in different contexts

(Cohen & Hertz, 2020). Their choices are often based on sub-

jective assessments of their clients (Jilke & Tummers, 2018).

On the one hand, as Lipsky (2010) argued, they usually have

“nothing to lose by failing to satisfy clients”(p. 56). Hence,

their priorities are not always focused on their clients’needs

(Brodkin, 2011). Thus, they prioritize “speed over need”

(ibid, 266) in order to “make the numbers”(ibid, 259).

They make eff‌icient but unfair decisions (Cárdenas and

Ramirez de la Cruz 2017). They also engage in “creaming”

by selecting clients with whom performance targets are

more easily realized and focus on quick rather than effective

help for citizens (Considine et al., 2015; Soss et al., 2011).

Moreover, in some contexts, they use their discretion to

deny, defer, and disregard the claims and needs of their

clients (Brodkin, 2009; Cohen et al., 2016). In extreme situ-

ations, they may also intimidate their clients and heighten the

asymmetry of information between them and their clients,

increasing feelings of uncertainty in the latter (Cohen &

Gershgoren, 2016). On the other hand, their discretion also

allows them to help their clients (Tummers et al., 2015).

They get their hands dirty for society and are sometimes

even willing to risk their jobs to provide assistance to citizens

they believe worthy (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003,

1

University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

2

Getulio Vargas Foundation, Sao Paulo, Brazil

3

University College London, London, UK

Corresponding Author:

Gabriela Lotta, Getulio Vargas Foundation, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Email: gabriela.lotta@fgv.br

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2024, Vol. 54(2) 119–134

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/02750740231200468

journals.sagepub.com/home/arp

pp. 156–157). Indeed, they may be compassionate (Belabas

& Gerrits, 2017), become emotionally committed to their

clients (Lavee & Strier, 2019), empathize with them

(Jensen & Pedersen, 2017), and even act to change the

policy’s design to benef‌it their clients (Lavee et al., 2018).

However, in other cases (Do et al., 2017), helping citizens

has risks and costs for SLBs (Lipsky, 2010), including their

own lives (Cohen, 2022; Cohen & Golan-Nadir, 2020).

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as the Covid-19

pandemic (Gofen & Lotta, 2021), demonstrated that frontline

workers must sometimes deal with risky situations that

imperil their lives. While the literature has already explored

the factors that inf‌luence SLBs’willingness to implement

policies (Thomann et al., 2018), what remains underexplored

are the factors that explain SLBs’willingness to risk their

lives for others.

In this article, we build on Cohen’s (2022) exploratory

research about the role of trust in how SLBs do their jobs.

While research has indicated that trust is a predictor of orga-

nizational outcomes (Colquitt et al., 2007) and commitment

(Cho & Park, 2011), we investigated whether it is a signif‌i-

cant factor in SLBs’decisions to risk their lives for others.

There are times when SLBs such as doctors, nurses, police

off‌icers, and f‌iref‌ighters must put their lives in danger.

Why are they willing to do so? Based on the above, we

posit that this willingness is linked to the SLBs’trust in

their institutions and the people in their organizations.

Indeed, trust is a reasonable factor in this regard because it

is the “glue”that connects the state and society (Van de

Walle & Bouckaert, 2003). As such, it is one of the most

studied elements in the public administration literature

(Bouckaert, 2012) and has become the focus of several

studies on SLBs (Davidovitz & Cohen, 2022a, 2022c,

2022d; Rothstein & Dietlind, 2008).

According to Hardin (2002), Party A trusts Party B

because A presumes that it is in B’s interest to act in a way

consistent with A’s interests. Thus, trust may be described

as the belief of an individual in the good faith of others and

their future intentions (Hosmer, 1995). This element features

prominently in daily interactions between people (Rothstein

& Dietlind, 2008), including state agents and citizens

(Spink et al., 2021), and depends on the broader context of

trust between the state and society (Uslaner, 2003). As

such, it has long been considered a key concept in social rela-

tions and social capital (Hardin, 2006; Uslaner, 2002).

Trust exists at three main levels: interpersonal, organiza-

tional, and institutional (Nyhan, 2000; Oomsels &

Bouckaert, 2014). These levels are all present in SLBs’

work. Therefore, we investigate whether the trust of SLBs

in their peers, managers and the institution they belong to

is ref‌lected in their willingness to risk their lives for others.

Interpersonal trust is usually developed through frequent con-

tacts between individuals and depends on the personal char-

acteristics of the trustee (Zand, 1997). However, because

organizational and institutional trust often develop from the

structured relationships or formal rules of the organization

(Fox, 1974), it is built by the organizational culture or

through the management of the system (McCauley &

Kuhnert, 1992).

While we do not explore the motivations of these SLBs to

join the public sector, we are interested in why, after joining

their organization, they are willing to risk their lives to help

others. We distinguish between this willingness and other

seemingly related phenomena such as public service motiva-

tions or organizational citizenship behaviors. Specif‌ically, we

suggest that since trust plays a core role in any relationships

between two parties (Kramer, 1999) and has consequences

for behavior (Lewicki et al., 1998), understanding this link

will improve our understanding of the delivery of public ser-

vices at the street level (Davidovitz & Cohen, 2022a). Other

scholars have examined trust in public professionals (Six,

2013, 2018). We focus not only on SLBs’trust in their insti-

tution but also on their trust in the people in their organization

and its impact on how services are provided in the extreme

context of life-threatening situations.

We examine our question empirically by studying police

off‌icers in Brazil. These civil servants are classic examples

of SLBs (Cohen & Cohen, 2021) who have daily interactions

with citizens (Lipsky, 2010) and can have a signif‌icant

impact on their lives in critical situations (Maynard-Moody

& Musheno, 2000). With the Brazilian Forum of Public

Security’s (FBSP’s) cooperation, we distributed a question-

naire to a sample of 2,733 detectives and military police

throughout Brazil. This methodology allowed us to investi-

gate the impact of various factors on SLBs’choice to risk

their lives for others. While Cohen’s (2022) exploratory

research improved our understanding of this topic, its

results were tentative and cannot be relied upon for effective

decision-making. In this paper, we use a representative

sample to contribute to the theory, testing the hypotheses

and variables proposed previously in an exploratory way.

The paper proceeds as follows: in the next section, we

brief‌ly review trust in the context of SLBs. In the third

section, we present the research model, and in the fourth

section describe the research context. In the f‌ifth section,

we present our data analysis, and lastly, in the f‌inal

section we discuss the possible implications of the

analysis.

Understanding Trust in Street-Level

Bureaucrats’Work

There are numerous def‌initions of trust, which is not surpris-

ing, given its associations with situations involving personal

conf‌lict, uncertain outcomes and problem solving (Nyhan,

2000). One common def‌inition sees trust as the willingness

of one individual to be vulnerable to the actions of another,

or to a group or institution that has the ability to harm or

betray the trustor (Levi & Stoker, 2000; Mayer et al.,

1995). It is a psychological state comprising the intention

120 American Review of Public Administration 54(2)