scholarly journals Captured by bureaucracy: street-level professionals mediating past, present and future knowledge

Author(s):  
Nanke Verloo

This chapter explores the role of ‘street-level professionals’ in planning, a peculiar expertise that emerges in response to the decreasing legitimacy and efficacy of public action in urban governance processes. In particular, it looks at the street-level professional in order to question the uneven tension between bureaucratic and tacit knowledge in contemporary participatory processes. The chapter shows how initiatives that attempt to mediate between governmental and local community ambitions are today trapped in existing bureaucratic structures. It argues that planners are in a unique position to develop an expertise for such street-level mediation. However, existing institutions tend to ‘capture’ that mediation through norms that require organising, reducing, and abstracting the complex knowledge of the community. Thus, the chapter contends that this entrapping capacity of institutions is a distinctive logic of today's technocratic planning.

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-201
Author(s):  
Ángel Iglesias Alonso ◽  
Manuel Villoria Mandeta

Implementing urban governance strategies to improve local democracy and to regulate local economic growth is an important determinant of effective local administrative change and performance. The underlying hypothesis adopted here is the assumption that the adoption of urban governance processes requires political leadership. It inevitably results in the introduction of innovations within the administrative apparatus in order to improve its performance. Indeed, understanding the interaction between these three aspects (political leadership, urban governance, and administrative modernisation) is of fundamental importance for the effectiveness of most, if not all, policy interventions directed at the introduction of democratic innovations and public administration modernisation initiatives in local governments. To bring out the importance of those interactions, case study1 research is used. KEYWORDS: • local government • urban governance • administrative modernisation • public policy • political leadership • Spain


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliana Bonacorsi de Palma

<span>Abstract: The role of the front-line public agents in the implementation of the public policies created by the first-tier is the subject addressed by the author. From the notion of street-level bureaucrats, it seeks to identify the difficulties encountered by such public agents in decision-making and the need for standards that provide for institutes and administrative dynamics that in fact lead to more efficient, impersonal and guaranteeing public action to protect the well-intentioned front-line public agent to fully exercise the discretion he needs in case-by-case action.</span>


2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Paterson

Recent years have witnessed an increase in new 'technologies of control' that decrease reliance upon labour intensive forms of policing. The electronic monitoring of offenders represents just one section of the expanding industry in 'techno-corrections' that incorporates elements of the private security, military and telecommunications industries. The surveillance capacity generated by these industries has diverted attention away from the role of human agency in the implementation of surveillance services. This paper is concerned with the reliance of 'technologies of control' upon 'street-level surveillance' which involves a shift in focus away from the capacity of surveillance technologies and towards the actions of agents of control, offenders and the local community, in ensuring the successful operation of electronic monitoring services.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Vivienne Dunstan

McIntyre, in his seminal work on Scottish franchise courts, argues that these courts were in decline in this period, and of little relevance to their local population. 1 But was that really the case? This paper explores that question, using a particularly rich set of local court records. By analysing the functions and significance of one particular court it assesses the role of this one court within its local area, and considers whether it really was in decline at this time, or if it continued to perform a vital role in its local community. The period studied is the mid to late seventeenth century, a period of considerable upheaval in Scottish life, that has attracted considerable attention from scholars, though often less on the experiences of local communities and people.


Author(s):  
Taylor F Brinkman

During the past decade, forty-six professional sports venues were constructed in the United States, while only 16 expansion teams were created by the major sports leagues. Nearly two thirds of these newly built stadiums and arenas were funded with public tax revenues, despite substantial evidence showing no positive economic impact of new sports stadium construction on local communities. In reviewing the economic literature, this article investigates the role of professional sports organizations in the construction and public subsidization of new sports venues. Franchise relocation and public stadium subsidization is a direct result of the monopoly power of professional sports leagues, whose franchise owners extract large subsidies from their host communities by threatening to relocate to viable alternative locations. After explaining how the most common methods of stadium subsidization project a disproportionate allocation of the benefits and costs of hosting a professional team to local community interests, this article outlines several considerations for local policymakers who seek to reinvigorate public discussion of equity concerns in professional sports finance.


2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (suppl 1) ◽  
pp. bjgp18X696713
Author(s):  
David Seamark ◽  
Deborah Davidson ◽  
Helen Tucker ◽  
Angela Ellis-Paine ◽  
Jon Glasby

BackgroundIn 2000 20% of UK GPs had admitting rights to community hospitals. In subsequent years the number of GPs engaged in community hospital clinical care has decreased.AimWhat models of medical care exist in English community hospitals today and what factors are driving changes?MethodInterviews with community hospital clinical staff conducted as part of a multimethod study of the community value of community hospitals.ResultsSeventeen interviews were conducted and two different models of medical care observed: GP led and Trust employed doctors. Factors driving changes were GP workload and recruitment challenges; increased medical acuity of patients admitted; fewer local patients being admitted; frustration over the move from ‘step-up’ care from the local community to ‘step-down’ care from acute hospitals; increased burden of GP medical support; inadequate remuneration; and GP admission rights removed due to bed closures or GP practices withdrawing from community hospital work.ConclusionMultiple factors have driven changes in the role of GP community hospital clinicians with a consequent loss of GP generalist skills in the community hospital setting. The NHS needs to develop a focused strategy if GPs are to remain engaged with community hospital care.


Author(s):  
Yugank Goyal ◽  
Klaus Heine

AbstractWhy do informal markets resist formalizing, even when the gains of doing so outweigh its costs in the long run? While a number of responses to this question have been advanced, we discover that part of the reason could be located in the tacit knowledge (attributed to Polanyi, Hayek) embedded in the marketplace, on which market institutions run. This factor is not fully explored yet. Tacit (idiosyncratic, inarticulate, nonconscious) knowledge is acquired personally through experience and cannot be transferred or conveyed to anyone. This is the knowledge we use to act without knowing it in a propositional form. We present the case of one of India’s largest informal footwear cluster, located in the city of Agra. We show that informal markets, hinged on tacit knowledge, cannot evolve easily and therefore may remain locked-in, despite external pressures or incentives to formalize. The study shows that efforts to overcome informality and reaping the benefits of formalized market structures cannot be done without taking cognizance of the sticky intangible knowledge on which these markets rest.


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