Walking the Talk of Social Equity? Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Decisionmaking About the Provision of Personal Resources

• Published date: 01 January 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/02750740211050577
• Author: Einat Lavee
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Walking the Talk of Social Equity? Street-

Level Bureaucrats’Decisionmaking About

the Provision of Personal Resources

Einat Lavee, Dr.

Abstract

While public administration scholars argue that core values of social equity are exceedingly important in service provision, less

is known of how these values are practised on the frontline in the contemporary public administration. Research points to a

dual trend: together with practices aimed at increasing clients’wellbeing, public service workers’decisions about allocating

public resources are guided by moral perceptions of worthiness, leaving behind the most weakened populations. The current

study aims to decipher this duality, analyzing street-level bureaucrats’decisionmaking about providing personal resources to

low-income clients, in order to examine whether the pursuit of social equity is manifested in informal practices. Drawing on

indepth qualitative interviews of social service providers in Israel, we found that decisionmaking about personal resource pro-

vision is grounded in two distinct sets of values. Alongside a pattern of providing resources to deserving clients, street-level

bureaucrats also provide them to clients typically considered undeserving. These latter practices are aimed at decreasing social

inequality, demonstrating that social service providers often walk the talk of social equity.

Keywords

social equity, personal resources, street-level, worthy, qualitative

Introduction

Social equity is at the heart of public administration

(Frederickson, 2005, 2015; Svara & Brunet, 2020). Rooted

in the idea that each person is equal and has inalienable

rights (Guy & McCandless, 2012), scholars argue that core

values of justice and distribution of fairness have become

even more important with the emergence of new approaches

to public administration (Bryson et al., 2014). These

approaches move beyond the dominant values of New

Public Management, including efficiency and effectiveness,

and emphasize more democratic values (Osborne, 2010),

such as collective public interest, social equity and respect

for citizens (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2015).

Within the ongoing debate on the importance of social equity

in the public administration (e.g., Durant and Rosenbloom,

2017), scholars argue that values of social equity have become

a dominant paradigm in contemporary public administration

(Bryson et al., 2014; Johnson & Svara, 2011). Alongside exten-

sive literature that identifies simultaneous values of effectiveness

and social equity in the operation of government agencies

(Liang, 2018; Riccucci, 2009), less is known about the pursuit

of social equity in the everyday work of street-level public

service providers. Indeed, from the earlier days of public admin-

istration research, scholars acknowledged the importance of

exploring how social equity is practised (e.g., Williams, 1947).

Scholarly interest in social equity research increased with the

enactment of American welfare reform (e.g., Gooden et al.,

2001). However, less research has concentrated on contemporary

manifestations of social equity among policy implementers at the

street level. Such exploration is particularly important in times of

austerity and drastically growing levels of inequality (Gooden,

2017). As social equity is realized only when put into practice,

and not when discussed in principle (Maynard-Moody &

Musheno, 2012), the scarcity of such updated research is surpris-

ing. In the present study, we aim to fill this gap and provide evi-

dence of whether and how the ideals of social equity are

practically manifested within everyday implementation work.

Drawing on arguments regarding the critical role of government

in fulfilling the principle of equity, particularly as it pertains

to populations that are vulnerable due to their demographic or

socioeconomic status (e.g., Frederickson, 2015; Guy and

McCandless, 2012; Johnson and Svara, 2011; Liang, 2018;

Department of Human Services, University of Haifa, Israel

Corresponding Author:

Einat Lavee, Department of Human Services, University of Haifa, Israel.

Email: elavee@univ.haifa.ac.il

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2022, Vol. 52(1) 3–14

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/02750740211050577

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