Does an Increased Share of Black Police Officers Decrease Racial Discrimination in Law Enforcement?

Based on representative bureaucracy theory, the current study investigates whether increasing Black representation in police forces is negatively associated with racial discrimination in law enforcement. This study additionally investigates how associations may differ according to the organizational or environmental contexts of the forces. Results show that an increased share of Black officers is associated with decreased police-involved deaths of Black residents, but is not significantly associated with a change in order maintenance arrests of Black suspects. In addition, the negative association between Black representation and police-involved deaths of Black residents disappears when the percent of Black officers surpasses about 15 percent, especially in organizations where White officers comprise a larger share. These findings support the potential negative role of organizational socialization on the effectiveness of increasing the share of Black officers in policing, implying that additional long-term efforts to change organizational culture are needed to realize the benefits of enhancing Black representation.

Gendered Funding: United Way Board Composition and the Funding of Women- and Girl-Serving Organizations

Representative bureaucracy theory posits that the passive representation of women in leadership positions will lead to active representation of the concerns of women in general. This article attempts to identify whether this theory plays out on boards of nonprofit funding organizations, specifically United Ways across the United States. Using random effects modeling of interrupted time series data covering 15 years, the findings suggest a small yet significant nonlinear effect of women in leadership positions on boards upon the size of funding for women- and girl-serving organizations. This partially supports representative bureaucracy theory, but raises questions as to why there is a negative representational effect past a certain “critical mass” of women.

Beyond the Front-Line: the Coping Strategies and Discretion of Lithuanian Street-Level Bureaucracy During COVID-19

This article presents the results of a project funded by the Research Council of Lithuania: ‘Public policy solutions and their improvement to overcome the COVID-19 crisis in Lithuanian municipalities: solution tools and service delivery.’ The research methodology is based on street-level bureaucracy theory and ongoing qualitative research in the form of interviews with social workers and doctors. Interviews were conducted in the Lithuanian municipalities which became the first COVID-19 hotspots in March-April 2020. The aim is to identify the response and coping strategies of street-level bureaucracy. The findings of current research suggest that the workload of street-level bureaucrats increased, the situation changed very rapidly, and there was a constant need to adopt rules and even recommendations issued by the ministry. Fear of COVID-19 infection, a lack of accurate information, uncertainty, and the possibility of allowing staff with children to leave the workplace led to staff shortages. This in turn motivated the administration and the remaining employees to look for suitable coping strategies.

International public administration on the tip of the tongue: language as a feature of representative bureaucracy in the Economic Community of West African States

Recent scholarship shows increasing interest in gender, ethnic or national representation within regional and international organizations. In contrast, language as a criterion of representation has rarely been scrutinized. We argue that this constitutes an important oversight for two reasons: (1) language is an important identity marker; and (2) language regimes in international public administrations can uniquely address representativeness relative to both member states and groups of citizens. Our article explores language representation in the Economic Community of West African States, and pursues a twofold objective: first, it extends the applicability of representative bureaucracy theory to the issue of language; and, second, it broadens the scope of representative bureaucracy studies by providing the first study on a prominent West African regional organization. As such, we develop avenues for future research on other regional and international organizations. Points for practitioners The article is of particular relevance for managers in multilingual international and regional organizations. Organizations tend to overlook the role and impact of languages on their functioning, often considering them as a technicality. Taking the example of the Economic Community of West African States, the article argues that linguistic regimes are important for the performance and the legitimacy of the organization in terms of acceptance by both citizens and its member states.

STREET-LEVEL BUREAUCRACY AND PUBLIC POLICIES: ANALYZING EDUCATIONAL POLICY IMPLEMENTATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the implementation of educational policies and the roles of school professionals considering the street-level bureaucracy theory (LIPSKY, 1980). This study assumes that educational reforms elect schools as planning and administration centers, making them and the professionals working there responsible for new attributions which are motivated by improved autonomy, in addition to administrative and educational decentralization. In these contexts, which are marked by schools’ increasing empowerment, the discretionary power exercised by its professionals (teachers, principals, coordinators, among others) is a key element to understanding the availability and implementation of programs and their ability to either influence or change the design of educational policies on a local level. This perspective emphasizes the importance of considering those closer to actions deriving from such policies, that is, the actors who see the bottom-up process because they are in the lower end. According to Lipsky (1980), these are the so-called local policy agents or street-level public agents. As for schools, we understand that to enforce a certain policy, factors such as interpersonal influence, commitments, and informal negotiations are as important as formal processes and regulations. Finally, this study attempts to prove the impacts and contours assumed by changes in school dynamics in terms of translating local educational policies.

Optimization of the Implementation of Village Government in Indonesia

The issuance of Law of the Republic of Indonesia No. 6 of 2014 concerning Villages, positioning villages as the spearhead of national development. The existence of a village law also provides clarity about the position and the authority of the village government in managing village household affairs. The regulation also regulates government policies regarding the allocation of village funds which allows them to be used to develop their potential. In addition, the village policy gives villages a source of funds and adequate authority to improve the welfare of the village community. Regulations that provide substantial authority and responsibility to villages must certainly be balanced with the implementation of village governments that are able to commit to running good governance. In implementing the policy, it turns out that there are still cases of misappropriation of the allocation of village funds by the village government apparatus. This paper will explain the analysis related to the importance of village governance in implementing the Law of the Republic of Indonesia No. 6 of 2014 using the rational bureaucracy theory put forward by M. Weber.

Navigating Conflicting Rights Among Residents, Visitors, and Families in Long-Term Care Facilities

Background: An abundance of long-term care regulations creates a bevy of rights for nursing facility residents, staff, and families. Front-line workers and managers have significant discretion and responsibilities for interpreting these rights. Building on street-level-bureaucracy theory (Lipsky, 2010), which focuses on how front-line workers implement policy, this study examines how staff at various levels (direct care, mid-level professional, top management) resolve conflicting rights. Methods: This study employs a novel advanced multi-method qualitative design with semi-structured staff interviews (n=90), content analysis of long-term care facility policies (n=75), and participant observation of two facilities for a multi-layered comparative case study. Findings: Data analysis revealed variations in staff responses to conflicting rights regarding autonomy and safety (e.g. fall prevention, dementia, coronavirus) and discrimination (i.e. sexual/racial harassment). While harassment was rampant, direct care workers responded more deferentially to residents and often justified harassment as part of a customer service job in one’s home. Staff at all levels relied on teams to develop creative problem-solving approaches, but team composition and discretion varied significantly between facilities and staff levels. While staff included few social workers, staff heavily relied on them to adjudicate conflicting rights. Implications: Conflicting rights impact resident care and relationships among residents, staff, and families. This research provides policymakers and practitioners with new data about how staff resolve conflicting rights, which can facilitate stronger policies to support an overburdened and underpaid long-term care workforce. This research also expands street-level-bureaucracy theory to include managers and reveals how various team approaches can produce diverse solutions.

This for That: What EEOC Trends Reveal About Representative Bureaucracy

Representative bureaucracy is one of the mechanisms used to achieve representative democracy. This article assesses how bureaucratic representation affects public access to administrative remedies, a recourse linked with social equity in public service organizations. Representative bureaucracy theory is applied to 14 years of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission demographics and outcomes data. The analysis asks whether passive representation trends parallel trends in active representation outcomes, using longitudinal workforce, charge, suit, and resolution data. Results suggest trends in client driven outcomes (charges) were consistent with passive representation, while organizational outcomes (suits and resolutions) outpaced disability representation but fell short of racial and gender representation. The trend analysis findings, which offer timely insights into the effects of human resource management, suggests organizational priorities and processes affect representation more than previously thought.