Street-Level Bureaucracy

Analisa-se a percepção dos docentes do curso bacharelado em
Secretariado Executivo do IFMT - Campus Cuiabá Octayde
Jorge da Silva em relação à sua atuação na política pública
educacional, a partir de conceitos de burocracia de nível de rua.
O estudo exploratório é qualitativo e faz uso de entrevista
semiestruturada. Os resultados são: 1) o docente está inserido em
uma estrutura burocrática institucional que pauta a sua atuação e
discricionariedade; 2) foram identificadas expectativas diversas,
propriamente discentes desmotivados, instituição incapaz de
articular um esforço pedagógico convergente, docentes que
enfrentam um ambiente não ideal sem incentivos institucionais
para práticas pedagógicas comuns; 3) a discricionariedade do
docente se relaciona com as condições do discente; 4) o docente
possui liberdade e não sofre ameaças da gestão superior; 5)
dissintonia entre o que deseja o discente, planeja a gestão e
executa o docente. Este artigo contribui com a agenda que trata
do trabalho docente na rede pública de educação.

In this article, we analyze three cases in which subordinates' oral claims are refuted by superiors who draw on written documents of which the subordinates are the (in)direct authors. In this ventriloquization process (Cooren, 2012), the superiors construct these written documents as facts, which have institutionalized the evidential status of the claims. In particular, we use courtroom data and data from performance appraisal interviews in a medical organization. This comparison revealed that the latter allowed for a more flexible handling of written documents, while the former displayed a much more rigid structure in which the 'incorporation' of written records immediately entailed a number of interactionally non-negotiable implications. Overall, it became clear that by drawing on the different ontological status of written records, superiors subject subordinate participants to their authority, as such constituting the organization in the name of which they are acting and which reflexively entitles them to act in this way. Keywords discourse analysis-performance appraisal interviews-courtroom interactions-written documents-ventriloquization-authority * We would like to thank François Cooren for his comments on an earlier version of this article.

The Troubled Families Programme (TFP), established by the Coalition Government in the aftermath of the 2011 riots, set out to 'turn around' the lives of the 120,000 most 'troubled families' in England. When the rhetoric surrounding 'troubled families' is closely examined, a number of competing, and often contradictory, messages begin to emerge. This chapter examines the ways in which the Troubled Families Programme is positioned firstly by central government and secondly by local authorities and practitioners. Adopting a 'street-level lens' (Brodkin 2011a), interviews with managers and workers in one local authority area are analysed to examine 'the complexity of interactions concealed beneath the apparent monotony of bureaucratic routine' (Bourdieu, 2005: 140). The chapter concludes with reflections on the Janus-faced nature of the Troubled Families Programme and a discussion of its role in the crafting of a new 'smart' state.

Le présent article envisage d’explorer les processus de
bureaucratisation des associations de chasseurs néo-traditionnels au
Bénin. Son objectif est de décrire les pratiques bureaucratiques au sein
de ces associations et de mettre en exergue le sens que ces acteurs
donnent à ces pratiques initialement étrangères à leur mode de
fonctionnement. La bureaucratisation des chasseurs a été d’abord une
initiative de l’Etat puis adoptée par eux pour appartenir aux
organisations de la société civile. Dans l’imaginaire des chasseurs,
l’appropriation des pratiques bureaucratiques est une nécessité pour
la légitimation de leur institution, leur permettant de devenir des
auxiliaires des forces de sécurité publique. Certains chasseurs éclairés
ont habilement exploité ces pratiques bureaucratiques pour créer de
nouveaux centres de pouvoir qu’ils contrôlent pour renforcer leur
position.

Abstract EN
Drawing from Lipsky’s (1980) concept of street-level bureaucracy and the theories of justice (Rawls, 1971; Mashaw, 1983; Elster, 1992), this paper is focused on the dilemmas that social welfare services’ caseworkers face in their daily work. The field research is based on the collection and comparison of caseworkers’ narratives about complex cases. It was conducted within services located in the North and South of Europe: Bologna in Central Italy and Copenhagen in Denmark. Social work practices are analysed through caseworkers’ narratives to understand how their ideas influence the services.
This study is intended to answer the following research questions: What challenges do caseworkers have to cope with? How do they manage their discretion to shape ‘fair’ decisions? What conditions and limits contribute to shaping the services’ final decisions? What principles of justice regulate the processing of cases, and thus what concrete ideas of social justice underpin the services?

Abstract IT
A partire dal concetto di street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky, 1980) e dalle teorie della giustizia (Rawls, 1971, Mashaw, 1983, Elster, 1992), questo articolo analizza i dilemmi che gli operatori dei servizi sociali affrontano nella loro quotidianità. La ricerca sul campo è basata sulla comparazione di narrazioni raccolte dagli operatori riguardo a casi complessi. È stata condotta presso due servizi situati nel Nord e nel Sud dell'Europa: Bologna (IT) e Copenaghen (DK). I racconti degli operatori sono stati analizzati al fine di comprendere se e come le loro idee possano influenzare le pratiche dei servizi.
Questo studio si propone di rispondere alle seguenti domande di ricerca: quali sono le sfide che affrontano gli operatori sociali nello svolgimento del loro lavoro? In che modo impiegano gli spazi di discrezionalità di cui dispongono per prendere decisioni che ritengono ‘giuste’? Quali condizioni e limiti e quali principi di giustizia influenzano le decisioni sui casi assunte dai servizi?

Dubois, Vincent (2018). El burócrata y el pobre. Relación administrativa y tratamiento de la miseria. [The bureaucrat and the poor]Valencia: Institució Alfons el Magnànim. 324 pp. ISBN: 978-84-7822-748-8 RESEÑAS Han sido necesarios casi veinte años para que el público hispanohablante pueda gozar del libro publicado por primera vez por Vincent Dubois en 1999. Se trata de la traducción de una obra, titulada en su versión original La vie au guichet, en la que se analizan las inte-racciones, en una oficina de subsidios fami-liares entre usuarios, que perciben o son po-tencialmente perceptores de dichos subsidios, y los "trabajadores de ventanilla", encargados de gestionar las demandas de dichos usuarios. Este libro es considerado por muchos una re-ferencia en el campo de la sociología y la ciencia política de los últimos 30 años. Tal reconocimiento se debe al hecho de que, en este libro, el autor aporta tres grandes innova-ciones en lo que concierne el estudio de las políticas sociales y de las políticas públicas en general. En primer lugar, Dubois se desmarca de los trabajos que estudian las políticas sociales des-de sus marcos normativos-las leyes y marcos jurídicos que las sustentan-e institucionales-gobernanza-para situarse en un enfoque etno-gráfico. Se trata de estudiar una política públi-ca en "acción" en el momento en que esta se torna realidad, al ser encarnada por individuos-los agentes administrativos de primera línea-cuyo trabajo es interpretar y dar cuerpo a dicha política pública. El segundo gran aporte del trabajo del autor francés es que las políticas so-ciales se analizan como una manera de descri-bir las formas de dominación contemporáneas puestas en práctica por el Estado y sus agentes. El tercer gran aporte del libro es que las formas de dominación estudiadas no se describen como el mero fruto de imposiciones mecánicas del Estado sobre los ciudadanos. Estos dispo-nen de una capacidad de acción en las interac-ciones sociales con los agentes administrativos que les permite participar, aunque sea de forma marginal, en la definición de las relaciones de dominación analizadas. El libro se estructura en tres grandes par-tes. En la primera, titulada las condiciones sociales de la relación administrativa, Dubois se encarga de describir los distintos perfiles de usuarios que acuden a las oficinas de sub-sidios familiares. Se trata de describir sus tra-yectorias sociales y el tipo de relación, en función de sus disposiciones, que éstos tejen con las instituciones del Estado. El lector des-cubre que no podemos hablar de usuarios en general, sino que existen personas para quie-nes las oficinas de subsidios familiares son un instrumento para obtener recursos comple-mentarios a los ya disponibles-salarios-y otras para quienes se trata de una relación de dependencia ya que el subsidio familiar es una fuente de ingresos vital. El tipo de rela-ción que une al usuario y a la oficina jugará un rol capital en las maneras en las que éste actuará en el marco de las interacciones con los agentes administrativos. En esta primera parte encontramos, igualmente, una descrip-ción de la organización material de los en-cuentros entre usuarios y agentes administra-tivos: descripción de todas las normas que la institución establece para organizar las inte-racciones en el seno de las oficinas de subsi-dios familiares. Según el autor se trata de una situación social desigual en la que los usua-rios deben respetar las normas impuestas por la institución. De estas normas y procedi-mientos destaca la codificación, traducción, administrativa que hace la institución de las existencias de los usuarios. En la segunda parte del trabajo, los dos cuer-pos del agente, el autor nos descubre que los agentes administrativos encargados de gestionar las demandas de los usuarios no son la mera en-carnación de normativas definidas por la institu-ción-quién tiene derecho o no a un subsidio-sino que éstos son individuos con trayectorias sociales que definen la manera en la que van a vivir y encarnar un rol administrativo que, lejos Cuadernos de Trabajo Social

La povertà e l’esclusione sociale si connota come un fenomeno definibile da concetti quali multifattorialità, multidimensionalità e cumulatività. Tale caratterizzazione è legate principalmente all’individualizzazione dei percorsi biografici ed alla frammentazione delle carriere lavorative. A fronte del crescere della complessità e della personalizzazione del bisogno, i servizi tendono a rispondervi con azioni altrettanto complesse e costruite sulla persona che richiedono la combinazione di: più strumenti di valutazione delle condizioni del richiedente, molteplici competenze professionali integrate, diverse misure di intervento. La necessità di intervenire sul bisogno in maniera flessibile amplia per gli operatori, gli educatori e gli assistenti sociali impegnati nei servizi a contrasto della povertà e dell’esclusione sociale, gli spazi di discrezionalità già insiti nella ‘natura’ del lavoro sociale (Lipsky, 1980). Ciò pone interessanti interrogativi rispetto alla responsabilità delle istituzioni sull’equità di trattamento dei cittadini nell’accesso ai servizi, sulla loro qualità, efficacia ed
efficienza e sulla complessa questione dell’accountability. Inoltre, il tentativo da parte degli Stati di razionalizzare la spesa pubblica e l’organizzazione dei servizi in seguito alla crisi del welfare state ha innescato vari processi di trasformazione del sistema dei servizi tra i quali l’introduzione della possibilità di esternalizzazione della gestione ad enti profit e no-profit e l’immissione di strumenti e competenze manageriali all’interno delle istituzioni pubbliche. Tali mutamenti pongono nuove questioni rispetto alla possibilità effettiva di controllo della fase di implementazione da parte del livello politico che detiene la responsabilità ultima verso i cittadini rispetto a scelte che possono essere determinanti per l’esigibilità (nei termini nei quali è prevista) dei diritti sociali e la qualità dell’offerta dei servizi. Emerge come nell’area delle politiche a contrasto della povertà
e dell’esclusione sociale diventi particolarmente rilevante la riflessione sugli spazi di autonomia dell’operatore ‘del livello della strada’ nella formulazione dell’intervento sociale e sulla costruzione di dispositivi e procedure che consentano un bilanciamento tra strumenti di accountability e strumenti professionali di intervento adeguati ad affrontare il bisogno nella sua complessità e multidimensionalità.

ABSTRACT The federal government provides for an array of benefits and services for the multitude of refugees who arrive in the United States each year. Generally, the government contracts implementation of these services to local nonprofit refugee resettlement organizations. This article examines the role of these organizations in implementing the Department of State’s Reception and Placement program. Specifically, this study focuses on the how caseworkers secure housing for newly arrived refugee clients in a context shaped not only by fluctuations in refugee admissions and allocations but also by federal contracts and performance standards. This article uses street-level organizations theory as a guide to analyze original data collected from a comparative organizational ethnography of 2 local urban refugee resettlement organizations. Key findings include that the structure of the refugee admissions and allocation system drives financial instability down to the local level, and that the ability of the local organizations to secure safe, sanitary housing differ based on the extent to which caseworkers prioritize fostering strong relationships with landlords. These findings have implications for how policy makers think about refugee allocations as well as for the ways in which social workers and administrators provide housing related services to their refugee clients.

En el escenario actual, en que el diagnostico respecto de la complejidad de
la realidad y los problemas sociales es un consenso, se han planteado diversas
propuestas para responder en consistencia con este diagnóstico desde
las políticas públicas, y específicamente desde los programas sociales dirigidos
a la población en situación de pobreza y exclusión social. Algunas de
las alternativas que se plantean son por ejemplo: avanzar en la coordinación
de políticas y programas, en integralidad de la acción del Estado, en
la descentralización de las decisiones desde el nivel central al nivel local, el
fortalecimiento de abordajes desde la perspectiva del desarrollo y la gestión
territorial, entre varias otras alternativas. En este trabajo se desarrolla
y argumenta acerca de las posibilidades que ofrece el re-visitar y actualizar
los planteamientos de Lipsky (1980, 1991) relevando el rol de los equipos y
profesionales de nivel de calle a cargo de la implementación de las intervenciones
sociales que en la actualidad son implementadas tanto por actores
públicos como de la sociedad civil o privados. Esto implica fundamentalmente
avanzar en el reconocimiento y uso adecuado de los niveles de autonomía
y discrecionalidad de los equipos y profesionales encargados de la
entrega de los bienes y servicios generados por las intervenciones sociales,
a la vez que generar estrategias para reducir los riesgos que ello implica.

Everyday Practices of the State: An Ethnography of Indigenism. Is an ethnographic study of how anthropologists and their ideas shaped the state’s policies toward indigenous people and its institutional practices. The book focuses on the Instituto Nacional Indigenista (the National Indigenist Institute, or INI), the branch of government that dealt with indigenous people for most of the twentieth century in Mexico.  Saldívar discusses how anthropological concepts of indigeneity and development shaped, and where shaped by, the daily practices of state employees. She traces these ideas and practices from the founding of the modern Mexican state in the 1920s up to the 1990s, and shows how shifting concepts shaped the Institute’s development programs over time.  The book explores the mutual interdependency of indigeneity and state power in Mexico.

Across the globe, states have long aimed to control the movement of people, identify their citizens, and restrict noncitizens' rights through official identification documents. Although states are now less likely to grant permanent legal status, they are increasingly issuing new temporary and provisional legal statuses to migrants. Meanwhile, the need for migrants to apply for frequent renewals subjects them to more intensive state surveillance. The contributors to Paper Trails examine how these new developments change migrants' relationship to state, local, and foreign bureaucracies. The contributors analyze, among other toics, immigration policies in the United Kingdom, the issuing of driver's licenses in Arizona and New Mexico, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and community know-your-rights campaigns. By demonstrating how migrants are inscribed into official bureaucratic systems through the issuance of identification documents, the contributors open up new ways to understand how states exert their power and how migrants must navigate new systems of governance.

Contributors. Bridget Anderson, Deborah A. Boehm, Susan Bibler Coutin, Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz, Sarah B. Horton, Josiah Heyman, Cecilia Menjívar, Juan Thomas Ordóñez, Doris Marie Provine, Nandita Sharma, Monica Varsanyi

Literatura o polityce społecznej dotyczy w przeważającej mierze zagadnień z poziomu krajowego i ponadnarodowego. Badacze przyjmują, że wprowadzane rozwiązania instytucjonalne i kierunki polityki zależą w dużym stopniu od decyzji władz centralnych oraz ponadnarodowych procesów społeczno-ekonomiczno-politycznych, takich jak globalizacja czy europeizacja. Z tej perspektywy wymiar lokalny wydaje się mieć drugorzędne znaczenie. Postrzega się go jako miejsce „implementacji” programów opracowanych na wyższych szczeblach: krajowym i ponadnarodowym. W trakcie realizacji polityki społecznej pojawiają się wprawdzie różne trudności, lecz namysł nad nimi pozostawia się praktykom.

Dopiero od niedawna dostrzega się, że takie ujęcie ma zbyt uproszczony charakter. Można wskazać kilka powodów, dla których więcej uwagi poświęca się zagadnieniom lokalnej polityki społecznej. W pierwszej kolejności należy wspomnieć o zachodzącym w krajach zachodnich od lat 80., a w Polsce od lat 90. procesie decentralizacji. Powołując się na konieczność racjonalizacji wydatków, zwiększenie efektywności czy rekomendacje Unii Europejskiej, poszczególne kraje delegują część uprawnień na poziom lokalny, znosząc w ten sposób zastane hierarchie i zwiększając odpowiedzialność władz niższych szczebli. Decentralizację przedstawia się jako panaceum na problemy centralnego zarządzania i nieefektywnej biurokracji państwowej, pozwalające na dostosowanie działań do lokalnej specyfiki i potrzeb. W dyskusjach nad tą kwestią – podejmowanych np. w nurcie badań nad europeizacją czy governance – wskazuje się, że choć decentralizacja powinna zwiększać swobodę planowania i realizacji działań, to jednocześnie rozmywa kompetencje poszczególnych instytucji i zwiększa złożoność procesów zarządzania polityką społeczną. Ubocznym skutkiem decentralizacji są więc wyzwania związane z koordynacją działań między różnymi szczeblami administracji.

Zwraca się również uwagę, że w wielu krajach dochodzi do włączenia w realizację polityki społecznej nowych podmiotów: organizacji pozarządowych, prywatnych firm czy lokalnych społeczności. W efekcie polityka społeczna na szczeblu lokalnym staje się częścią procesu politycznego, a przestaje być – jeśli kiedykolwiek była – czystym administrowaniem. W celu realizacji, niektórych przynajmniej, programów konieczne jest budowanie koalicji partnerów i zdobywanie poparcia lokalnych elit. Popularnym hasłem obrazującym te przemiany jest choćby „partnerstwo lokalne”. Włączenie nowych podmiotów w realizację polityki społecznej zwiększa też znaczenie rachunku ekonomicznego i metod zarządzania pochodzących z sektora prywatnego, co opisuje pojęcie new public management. Relacje między administracją publiczną a innymi organizacjami opierają się coraz częściej na modelu biznesowym. Przeprowadza się przetargi, zawiera się kontrakty na świadczenie usług, które rozlicza się według kryteriów efektywności kosztowej. Polityzacja i ekonomizacja lokalnej polityki społecznej rodzi nowe zagrożenia oraz wiąże się z nieznanymi wcześniej wyzwaniami organizacyjnymi i kulturowymi, takimi jak konieczność pogodzenia różnych kultur organizacyjnych czy problem standaryzowania usług pomocy społecznej lub definiowania efektów.

W związku z tym pojawia się pytanie – i jest to trzeci powód zainteresowania lokalną polityką społeczną – kto ma zarządzać jej planowaniem i realizacją. Przestaje być oczywiste jeszcze niedawno przyjmowane założenie, że lokalna polityka społeczna powinna być domeną samorządu. Z jednej strony postuluje się urynkowienie usług publicznych, powołując się na doświadczenia takich krajów, jak Australia i Wielka Brytania. Z drugiej strony rozmaite ruchy na rzecz partycypacyjnych form demokracji dążą do ich uspołecznienia. Lokalna polityka społeczna staje się areną ścierania się różnych interesów i wizji dotyczących obecności państwa w tym obszarze.
Należy jeszcze wspomnieć o postulacie indywidualizacji usług polityki społecznej. Indywidualizację rozumie się trojako. Po pierwsze, pojęcie to oznacza nową filozofię świadczenia usług. Zamiast usług dostarczanych zgodnie z jednym, uniwersalnym wzorem (one-size-fitsall), działania powinno się dopasowywać – czy jak się to obrazowo ujmuje – „skrawać” do jednostkowej sytuacji (tailor-made services), szczególnie w przypadku osób doświadczających trudności jednocześnie w wielu sferach życia. Po drugie, tego rodzaju podejście zakłada, że zamiast odgrywać drugorzędną rolę, adresaci polityki publicznej będą uczestniczyć w procesie świadczenia usług. W praktyce realizacja tych dwóch postulatów okazuje się trudna, m.in. ze względów finansowych i organizacyjnych. Część europejskich badaczy podkreśla wręcz, że w wielu sektorach kluczowe znaczenie okazuje się mieć trzecie, inne, oblicze indywidualizacji. Polega ono na przeniesieniu odpowiedzialności z państwa na jednostki (opisywane np. jako prywatyzacja ryzyka), a także na stopniowym odchodzeniu od praw uniwersalnych na rzecz uzależniania dostępu do oferty publicznej od spełnienia wielu kryteriów behawioralnych (tzw. conditionality). Spośród obowiązkówobywatelskich akcentuje się zaś przede wszystkim te, które dotyczą pracy zarobkowej.

W polskiej literaturze przedmiotu są prace, w których lokalny wymiar polityki społecznej jest obecny. Brakuje jednak konkretnej wiedzy o zachodzących tam procesach i ich specyfice. Jeśli już się pisze na ten temat, to porusza się przede wszystkim aspekty prawne i instytucjonalne. Mniej zaś uwagi poświęca się kwestiom organizacyjnym. W małym stopniu uwzględnienia się również punkt widzenia policy-makers i street-level bureaucrats – ludzi zaangażowanych w planowanie i realizację polityki społecznej, nie mówiąc już o osobach, do których ta pomoc jest kierowana.

Przygotowując numer tematyczny „Polityki Społecznej”* chcieliśmy pokazać, że nie wszystkie pokładane w lokalnej polityce społecznej nadzieje są łatwe do spełnienia. Zebrane w numerze teksty dowodzą, że w gminach i powiatach mamy do czynienia z szeregiem zjawisk, które się zupełnie pomija albo nie przywiązuje do nich należytej wagi. Mamy nadzieję, że oddane w ręce Czytelników artykuły pomogą pogłębić krytyczną refleksję nad tymi problemami.

The changes in the welfare systems and the reduction of resources have put strong pressure on social professions. In this article the impacts that cuts and austerity measures introduced in the welfare system have had on social work practice will be outlined through a comparative analysis of researches, studies on workings practices, and other considerations drawn from training activities. Through these materials, the reactions and survival strategies of social workers to the constant increase in workload and the pervasive feeling of not being able to respond to the social mandate of the profession will be explored. Signs of innovation and positive changes will also be traced.

A pdf is available by request to jmheyman@utep.edu .  The anthropology of bureaucracy should address the role of organized power in organizing complex and unequal societies.  This article reviews the development of bureaucracy studies, focusing on the thinking done by bureaucrats in their efforts to control the actions of others.  Then the central concept of thought-work is placed within a series of queries about levels and relationships of power, with particular attention to the encompassing classifications and assumptions embodied in organizational worldviews.  The worldview of officers of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, examined as a case study, are found to give cohesion to a contradictory policy that balances publicly visible arrests and invisible but effective perpetuation of undocumented labor migration.  Human rights abuses and avoidance of abuses are both explainable as outcomes of these thought-work routines.  A stronger theoretical approach to organized power enhances applied anthropology's ability to address the behavior of state and private bureaucracies with respect to the rights and interests of nonbureaucrats.

Public Order, Private Rules:
Representations of the Crowd and Behavioural Recommendations in Italian Police Handbooks

This article aims at contributing to the debate on policing protest, focusing on police knowledge and its role in the management of public order. To this end, the article, by means of the conceptual tools provided for by critical discourse studies, examines some police handbooks. Although these textbooks allow a reader to observe only part of the whole of police knowledge and do not supply a completely realistic description of actual practices of the operators, they do show an interesting perspective on public order and its management. The police handbooks on which the article focuses express both an articulate philosophy of security and a quite clear idea of the role played by police forces in keeping public order. Moreover, they examine fieldwork procedures in depth, show detailed descriptions of crowds and their behaviours, and describe for operators the attitudes they must exhibit while performing these services. More in general, police handbooks give precious information on the discretionary power that characterizes police activities in policing protest.

Corrupt exchanges are often brokered by a third party, but this phenomenon has not been satisfactorily explored by researchers of corruption. Literature on brokerage in general provides interesting models but they have not previously been applied to corrupt exchanges. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with respondents who participated in actual corrupt transactions, this paper identifies several distinct brokerage types in low-level corruption in contemporary Hungary. The paper also provides explanation of variation in corruption brokerage in terms of actors' group affiliations, forms of the corrupt exchanges, brokerage mechanisms, as well as neutrality, benefit and motivation, risk distribution, and stability of the brokerage structure. Finally, we discuss some policy implications of corruption brokerage.

Muhtars, the lowest level elected political position in Turkey, hold an ambiguously defined place within the administrative hierarchy. They are public officials, but local citizens do not always associate them with the central government. Street-Level Governing is the first book to investigate how muhtars carry out their role—not only what they are supposed to do, but how they actually operate—to provide an ethnographic study of the state as viewed from its margins. It starts from the premise that the seeming "margin" of state administration is not peripheral at all, but instructive as to how it functions.
Muhtars exist at the intersection of everyday life and the exercise of power. Their position offers a personalized point of contact between citizens and state institutions, enabling close oversight of the citizenry, yet simultaneously projecting the sense of an accessible state to individuals. Challenging common theories of the state, Massicard outlines how the position of the muhtar throws into question an assumed dichotomy between domination and social resistance, and suggests that considerations of circumvention and accommodation are normal attributes of state-society functioning.

Le déploiement du nouveau management public et ses instruments de gestion, ne sont pas nécessairement  synonymes du développement de l'évaluation de politiques. Ils tendent plutôt à s’y substituer. Cette recherche analyse l’institutionnalisation de l’évaluation de politiques, indépendamment de contraintes descendantes, à l'échelle d’une organisation. Partant du cas de la Caisse d'Allocations Familiales de la Gironde, elle interroge pourquoi et comment l'évaluation est institutionnalisée dans une organisation et les effets qu'elle produit. L'évaluation de politiques constitue une norme floue qui fait l'objet d'appropriations et d’usages stratégiques par ses protagonistes. Elle prend forme à travers le travail institutionnel des acteurs qui l'investissent parce qu'ils y trouvent un intérêt. Ils en négocient les normes et les usages, contribuant ainsi à définir la nature du changement qu'elle introduit dans les relations sociales et la conduite de l'action publique. Ces acteurs donnent sens et consistance à l'évaluation par la pratique dans la durée, en fonction de la structure sociale, organisationnelle et politique dans laquelle ils s’inscrivent.

New public management policies and its instruments do not necessarily go hand in hand  with the development of policy evaluation, and tend in fact to replace it. This research analyzes the institutionalization of policy evaluation at the scale of an organization, without any top-down obligation. Taking the case of the Caisse d’Allocations Familiales (Family Benefits Agency) of the Gironde department, it examines how and why evaluation has been institutionalized within the organization as well as the effects it has had. Evaluation of public policy constitutes a hazy norm that implies strategic appropriation and uses by its protagonists. It takes shape through the institutional work of actors who become involved because they have a vested interest. They negotiate norms and usage, thus defining the nature of the change it introduces in social relations and the conduct of public action. These actors give meaning and consistency to evaluation through their practice over time, according to the social, organizational and political structure to which they belong.

Abstract
This study has the purpose of outlining a project of research to investigate which is the role of volunteers inside of the Camera del Lavoro in Milan. It’s a territorial structure of CGIL that, providing a series of welfare services works in direct contact with people. We will attempt to give a description of the shift that have brought the trade union to become not only a collective subject that negotiate the workforce’s conditions, but also an agency that provides welfare services to the population on behalf of the government. The first part of the project, the one that concern the literary review on the theme, consideration will be given on one side to the contributions given by  street-level burocracy’s studies and on the other we’ll try to give consideration of which are the latest changes in the provision of public services. We’ll attempt to portray which implications can bring these processes in personnel management on the part of agencies providing these services, by focusing on volunteers that are part of it. Assuming some hypothesis we will try to apply the tools of street-level burocracy in order to give a definition of the work done by the volunteers, and the one of volunteer management trying to give a frame of the problems that who manage the volunteers have to cope with. Attention will also be given to the volunteers’ socio-demographic components and to the motivations that brought them to do this type of work. We’ll investigate these dimensions using qualitative and quantitative methods. First of all will be conducted exploratory interviews with organization’s managers, in order to detect critical issues and potentialities linked to the most recent changes and to define more clearly the investigation’s dimensions. Once we have done that we’ll analyze how to use the semi-structured interview’s track tools to go in depth directly with volunteers. One last part will treat the structuring of a questionnaire that addressed to all the volunteers of the Camera del lavoro of Milan could give us an overall picture of the situation. This will be also useful as instrument of control for interviews’ results, through the questionnaire we’ll be able to set the regularities detected on a larger scale and try to explain the irregularities.

Abstract
L’elaborato propone di delineare un disegno della ricerca per indagare quale sia il ruolo dei lavoratori volontari all’interno di un’organizzazione quale la Camera del Lavoro di Milano. Si tratta di una struttura territoriale della CGIL che, attraverso la fornitura di una serie di servizi opera a diretto contatto con le persone. Si cercherà di descrivere quali sono i mutamenti che hanno portato il sindacato a essere non solo un soggetto collettivo che contratta le condizioni lavorative della forza lavoro, ma anche un ente che fornisce servizi alla popolazione per conto del governo. Nella prima parte del progetto, quella relativa alla rassegna della letteratura sul tema, verranno presi in esame da un lato i contributi che ci offre la street-level burocracy e dall’altro si cercherà di dare conto di quali sono i più recenti cambiamenti nella fornitura di servizi pubblici. Cercheremo di descrivere quali conseguenze possono portare questi processi nella gestione del personale da parte degli enti che forniscono questi servizi, concentrandoci sui volontari che spesso ne fanno parte. Date alcune premesse proveremo ad applicare gli strumenti della street-level burocracy, per dare una definizione del lavoro che i volontari svolgono, e quelli del volunteer management, per provare a dare un quadro dei problemi che chi gestisce i volontari in una tale struttura deve affrontare. Sarà data attenzione anche alle componenti socio-demografiche dei volontari e alle motivazioni che li spingono a svolgere questo tipo di lavoro. Le dimensioni saranno indagate tramite tecniche qualitative e quantitative. Innanzitutto saranno realizzate una serie di interviste esplorative con i vertici dell’organizzazione, al fine di rilevare criticità e potenzialità legate ai più recenti cambiamenti e di definire in maniera più precisa le dimensioni d’indagine. Una volta fatto ciò analizzeremo come utilizzare lo strumento dell’intervista semi-strutturata per andare in profondità direttamente con i volontari. Un’ultima parte riguarderà la strutturazione di un questionario che indirizzato a tutti i volontari della Camera del Lavoro di Milano ci possa dare un quadro più generale della situazione. Quest’ultimo ci servirà anche da strumento di controllo per i risultati delle interviste, per riuscire a collocare le regolarità rilevate su una scala più ampia e provare a spiegare le irregolarità.

Esta tese analisa como a institucionalização da Política Nacional de Saúde Integral da População Negra (PNSIPN) chegou em burocracias da Estratégia Saúde da Família (ESF), no município do Rio do Janeiro. A pesquisa se insere em um contexto específico das relações raciais brasileiras, um período de políticas afirmativas para diminuir desigualdades raciais, advindas das novas relações entre os Movimentos Negros e o Estado, após a redemocratização, resultando numa proposta de focalização da saúde na população negra, legalizada pela PNSIPN. Diante da construção institucional-legal da focalização, analisou-se o processo de implementação da PNSIPN em três Unidades Básicas de Saúde (UBS) da ESF, em distintos territórios urbanos racialmente segregados do Rio de Janeiro, com base em documentos do Estado, vinte e dois meses de etnografia nas três Unidades, e cinquenta e sete entrevistas em profundidade com diversos profissionais da saúde pública que trabalhavam nessas burocracias. Com base em perspectivas teóricas da implementação das políticas públicas, das relações raciais e dos repertórios de ação, a análise evidenciou que a governança da saúde da população negra é realizada de distintas formas entre os fragmentos do Estado. A regulação dos serviços em saúde para negros ocorreu por meio de práticas burocráticas visíveis, como as engenharias institucionais-legais da focalização, construídas a partir do ativismo feminista negro junto ao Estado. Paralelamente, por práticas burocráticas menos visíveis, como as práticas mais corriqueiras operantes nessas Unidades, a exemplo do silêncio organizacional em relação às desigualdades raciais em saúde e à PNSIPN, dos repertórios de ação de resistência e de engajamento à saúde pública focalizada, e das mediações inclusivas e excludentes de usuários socialmente vulneráveis, a depender da alocação dos mesmos à categoria não oficial de cadastrados difíceis. A figura social de cadastrados difíceis da ESF esteve presente nas três burocracias pesquisadas, mas, articulado ao repertório de ação de resistência à focalização, que continha o silêncio como uma estratégia antirracista. Evidenciou-se, também, que as situações organizacionais de discriminação do serviço, ou qualidade inferior no uso do mesmo, reincidiram numa interseção das desigualdades, em mulheres, negras, periféricas e consideradas difíceis de serem cuidadas, em função das suas condições sociais, e não biológicas de saúde. Esse conjunto de práticas burocráticas potencializou consequências diretas ao processo de contínua implementação da focalização nas burocracias locais pesquisadas, como: quase ausência de práticas cotidianas focalizadas na ESF, maior rejeição a propostas regulamentares e diárias de uma saúde focalizada, a reprodução de justificativas essencialistas às desigualdades raciais em saúde, a censura e desuso de expedientes locais da focalização já existentes, a reprodução de estereótipos interseccionais de raça, gênero e classe, e discriminação no cuidado de cadastrados categorizados como difíceis.

Para uma síntese da tese, ver: https://pp.nexojornal.com.br/academico/2020/A-gest%C3%A3o-da-sa%C3%BAde-da-popula%C3%A7%C3%A3o-negra-em-unidades-b%C3%A1sicas-de-sa%C3%BAde

This article examines the role of microfinance staff and procedures in enabling microfinance's social mission. It does so primarily through studying institutional ruling relations and practices in rural Bangladesh. Attempting to move away from the linear and deterministic approaches of impact studies , it ethnographically scrutinizes the everyday practices of implementers. Findings point to the emergence of systemic practices that jeopardize micro-finance institutions' potential to perform their social mission. These include low client-selection standards, hard selling of loans and forceful loan renewal, little follow-up on loan use, and abusive and violent client-retention and repayment-collection strategies. This is conceptualized as a 'practice drift' as distinct from the commonly reported 'mission drift'. Rather than stemming from planned, top-down changes in institutional mission and strategy, practice drift emerges from a displacement of decision-making processes to the branches. The article argues that observed changes in microfinance practice are enabled by decentralized structures and management systems that leave the choice of tactics used to achieve targets to the discretion of field staff.

(ITA) Questo lavoro è il risultato del mio studio per il master professionale di II livello in Management e Politiche delle Pubbliche Amministrazioni presso la LUISS Guido Carli di Roma (2021). Il lavoro mira a comprendere quale sia il ruolo della discrezionalità burocratica nella fase attuativa di una politica pubblica. Il lavoro è strutturato in tre capitoli. Nel primo viene analizzato il concetto di "politica pubblica", concentrandosi sulle diverse fasi del ciclo politico. Il secondo capitolo riguarda la burocrazia. Attraverso lo studio dei principali studiosi e teorici, viene analizzato cos'è la burocrazia e il suo ruolo in fase di attuazione. L'ultimo capitolo si concentra sul nucleo del lavoro: vengono analizzati i diversi elementi delle discrezionalità burocratiche e in che modo influenzano l'attuazione.
Questo lavoro è diventata una pubblicazione indipendente acquistabile su Amazon al link https://www.amazon.it/regno-della-burocrazia-discrezionalit%C3%A0-nellimplementazione/dp/B0974FM7BJ.
(ENG) This work is the result of my study for my II level professional master in Management e Politiche delle Pubbliche Amministrazioni at LUISS Guido Carli in Rome (2021). The work aims to understand which is the role of bureaucratic discretion during the implementation stage of a public policy. The work is structured in three chapters. The first will be analyzed the concept of "public policy", focusing on the different stage of the policy cycle. The second chapter is about bureaucracy. Through the study of main scholars, we'll analyze what the bureaucracy is and it's role during the implementation stage. The last chapter focus on the core of the work: the different elements of bureaucratic discretions will be analyzed and in which way they influence the implementation.

For agenda setting and policy design, public policies that involve or affect local communities are often negotiated in the field rather than the office, yet development literature has surprisingly neglected the characteristics, social conditions, perceptions and attitudes of field-level implementers of policy. In the context of Indian forestry for instance, forest guards are the representatives of the forest department in rural society, who interpret and explain forest policies to local people. Thus far, little literature has been devoted to their perceptions of forest policy and administration and the social context in which they function. This essay presents an ethnography of the social and professional life of forest guards in Himachal Pradesh with a view to understanding the pragmatic realities of implementing forest policies in India.
Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 37, No. 40 (Oct. 5-11, 2002), pp. 4125-4133

En el contexto económico postindustrial buena parte de las clases populares quedan fuera del mercado de trabajo formal y se producen importantes transformaciones en su relación con la actividad política, relacionadas con el modo en que las nuevas políticas sociales se insertan en las tramas socioculturales y asociativas del mundo popular. En base a materiales empíricos sobre el caso argentino, mostramos la porosidad existente entre Estado y sociedad civil popular, y la existencia de conflictivos principios morales de justicia que regulan esa interfase.

This article concerns the extent to which corrupt behavior is dependent on the organizational power structure and the resources available for illegal exchange. This qualitative study is based on 42 in-depth interviews with organizational actors in different organizations in Hungary. Four core themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: (a) isolated corruption at the bottom, (b) the middle level’s own corruption, (c) “technicization” when middle-level professionals and expert groups are used to legalize the corruption of the dominant coalition, and (d) “turning-off controls” when organizational elites intentionally deactivate internal and external controls to avoid detection.

Scholars have examined representative bureaucracy as a viable means to make the bureaucracy more responsive to citizens in a democratic society. The theory argues that a diverse public service that mirrors the social demographics of its population in terms of gender, race, and ethnicity (passive representation) is more likely to be responsive to the needs of all citizens (active representation). While a substantial body of empirical research exists, a comparative understanding of the theory is lacking in Africa. This study expands empirical research on the theory to Ghana. It investigates whether passive representation of female teachers makes the education bureaucracy more responsive to girls. The analysis of a nationally representative data set on senior high schools within the 216 districts of Ghana revealed that increasing the presence of female teachers is positively associated with the performance of girls on math and science exit exams.

Is it possible to be corrupt yet ethical? Or good but unethical? In one of Indonesia’s most corrupt towns, the answers to these questions are far from clear for young elite civil servants, who must navigate the moral-ethical landscape of post-Suharto bureaucracy. For them, anticorruption efforts heighten uncertainty regarding what corruption is and facilitate slippage between various constructions of ethical selfhood. The uncertainty arises at the intersection of local moral economies, national ideologies of state building, the particular global morality of anticorruption, and a conception of the good that inspires neoliberal ideas on governance. Finding themselves at this intersection, young civil servants can find no unambiguous contrast between being “good” and “corrupt.” [corruption, anticorruption, good governance, civil service, morality, ethics, Indonesia]

Political theory is rediscovering the colossus of public administration—the vast public service and regulatory bureaucracies and their countless employees and extensions that conduct the daily business of government. This review explains how something so visible could ever have fallen from view, and surveys four burgeoning areas of research. These pertain to the legitimacy of public administration, to the articulation of standards of good government distinct from good public policy, to the analysis of how the moral agency of bureaucrats is implicated and undermined by the everyday operation of bureaucratic agencies, and to how we should conceptualize the state when we apprehend it through the seemingly banal routines of administration. What emerges from this body of work is a picture of the executive bureaucracy as an object of normative, critical, and conceptual inquiry on a par with the other two branches of government, the legislature and the judiciary.

Il progetto di ricerca si propone di utilizzare l’approccio street-level bureaucracy nell’ambito delle politiche di accoglienza rivolte alle persone homeless.  Lo studio si situa nel contesto generale del sistema di welfare italiano caratterizzato da interventi a contrasto della povertà frammentati e categoriali. In questo quadro la discrezionalità assume un’importanza fondamentale. Nello specifico il progetto si propone di analizzare l’esercizio della discrezionalità professionale da parte degli street-level bureaucrats, ovvero degli operatori maggiormente a contatto con l’utenza (Lipsky, 1980/2010). In base a quali elementi gli operatori effettuano le proprie scelte? A quali tensioni sono sottoposti? Quali sono i fattori sul piano sia macro sia micro che producono discrezionalità? Se e come quest’ultima influenza la “capacità di aspirare” (Appadurai, 2004) delle persone che si trovano a usufruire dei servizi forniti dagli operatori street-level?
Il problema più generale entro cui si inserisce l’interesse scientifico della presente ricerca è la condizione di non uniformità, di disuguaglianza, nell’accesso ai diritti. Ci si propone dunque di indagare a quali livelli si giochi tale accesso e quali fattori concorrano a favorirlo oppure ostacolarlo.

This paper examines the local construction of law on the street regarding immigrants. Local agencies play a key role in immigration enforcement and in providing services to immigrants. As such, they are increasingly the ‘face of the state’ to immigrants, a face which varies across localities and regions and ranges from friendly to hostile. Some agencies have a full array of policies and procedures for providing services to immigrants, including policies requiring equal service without regard to immigration status, informational materials in foreign languages and training in providing neutral professional service, while others have few or none of these things.
Much of the research has focused on law enforcement actions towards immigrants, but many other public agencies frequently interact with these groups and shape official policies and immigrant perceptions of the state. This paper focuses on public libraries a service organization that receives scant public or academic attention. The purpose of this paper is two-fold; first, it develops a framework for measuring the degree of ‘welcomeness’ of public agencies. Second, it examines how widely local agencies are welcoming (or unwelcoming) to immigrants and what are the conditions that shape the degree of welcomeness. To address these questions, this paper uses results from nationwide surveys of local public library systems in counties with a minimum population of 30,000 and a foreign-born population of least 5%. The research is framed by three competing theoretical approaches: minority group threat, neo-institutionalism and economic regimes. Libraries face conflicting political pressures that are often hostile to immigrants and professional norms favoring equal service to all in the community. The degree of welcomeness depends on the balance between these opposing forces. This study improves understanding of how administrative policies and practices evolve in the context of political and institutional pressures. Preliminary results find a remarkable degree of deliberate welcomeness toward immigrants even in some politically conservative states.

What explains changes in public policies outcomes? This issue is the core business of the comparative politics and has been given several answers. Obviously, numerous theories have proposed to explain the very shape of policies’ results stressing institutions or actors, convergence process or differentiation. Notwithstanding the variety of paradigms and theoretical prisms, it appears that the classical public policies’ theory shadows a very central process in its analyse. The implementation is indeed rarely questioned as a major concern. However, this phase of the policy-making has a huge impact onto political decisions’ concrete results. And was forgotten in political process academic approach. It was without counting on Michael Lipsky’s lighting on these dimensions of the state intervention on citizens’ lives. This theory, namely the Street-Level Bureaucracy theory, requires focus on the implementing process, i.e. state representatives’ activities at a policies’ users level. And, as a consequence, it sets aside centralized state policy-making to really draw attention at the Street-Level Bureaucrats’ practices considered as a major phase in the shaping of public policies. It implies additionally a removal from a long theoretical tradition of thinking the state’s action which is really significant of the classical academic analysis. This long tradition draws its sources from both Hegelian definition of the modern state and Weberian conceptualization of bureaucratic ethics. It thus consists in a real reversal from classical way to see the state and its action, which cannot anymore  be seen as this abstract and blind intervenor it used to be seen, argued Lipsky and his fellows. Public policies toward citizen are not only rules and operations thought in democratic fora and applied formally and indiscriminately, but also face-to-face unformal services performed by human beings – and not by this ‘absolutely rational’ hypothetical body which is the Hegelian state. This Lipskyan statement forms a sociologization of the state intervention which has been salutary for the very understanding of the policy-making.

This article reimagines poverty governance as a labor process. Extending theories of bureaucratic fields and street-level bureaucracies, the proposed model suggests that the state manages the poor through fragmented activities embedded in horizontal and vertical relations of production. I use an ethnography of 911 ambulance operations in a single California county to advance this perspective. From plugging gunshot wounds to moving sidewalk slumberers, ambulance crews interact with a mostly impoverished clientele base by transforming spaces in bodies and bodies in spaces. This two-sided governance puts the ambulance in recurrent contact with the hospital emergency department and the police squad car. Across these institutions, ambulance crews struggle with their nurse and police counterparts over the horizontal shuffling of burdensome work, shaping the life chances of their subjects in the process. At the same time, bureaucratic and capitalistic forces from above activate a lean ambulance fleet that is minimally wasteful and highly flexible. This verticality structures clientele processing through the ambulance and fuels tensions across the frontlines of governance. In an effort to advance theory and fill an empirical gap, this article proposes a new model for understanding the management of marginality and highlights an overlooked case of poverty regulation.

El artículo analiza las prácticas de asignación de beneficios de agentes estatales pertenecientes al Ministerio de Desarrollo Social de la Nación en la Argentina de la última década. Sobre la base del trabajo de campo etnográfico en dicho organismo, se reconstruyen las pragmáticas de justificación que contienen dichas prácticas y los conflictos de valor que plantean. Se muestran las dificultades que encuentran los agentes estatales para acordar principios de justificación que permitan eludir en simultáneo acusaciones potenciales de discrecionalidad, por un lado, e indiferencia, por el otro. Argumentamos que esta dificultad permite comprender los modos específicos, a menudo extra-programáticos, en que se regula cotidianamente la asignación de beneficios. En particular, mostramos que estos conflictos de valor están en la base de cierto privilegio que los agentes otorgan a la interacción directa con los receptores de recursos, es decir, al desplazamiento al terreno. Desde una mirada centrada en el nivel capilar de las políticas, el artículo intenta contribuir al conocimiento de las condiciones en las cuales se ejerce la autoridad asistencial del Estado

Negli ultimi decenni, numerose amministrazioni comunali hanno attuato un vasto insieme di strategie, piuttosto diversificate sul piano degli strumenti giuridici e delle prassi amministrative, finalizzate a restringere i requisiti per l’iscrizione anagrafica Queste strategie, a volte, si sono scontrate con la resistenza di alcune organizzazioni e/o di alcune istituzioni: lo scontro, in questi casi, ha avuto come oggetto specifici provvedimenti e decisioni municipali ma anche, più in generale, lo stesso significato giuridico e socio-politico della residenza.
Attorno a questo istituto, dunque, si è andato rapidamente strutturando quello che, mutuando un concetto di Bourdieu, può essere considerato un vero e proprio campo di tensione e conflitto. Gli attori che si “contendono” la residenza, infatti, cercano, ognuno dalla sua prospettiva e perseguendo i propri obiettivi, di esplicitare principi pratici di visione e divisione del mondo e di imporre tali principi come categorie legittime di costruzione della realtà sociale.
Gli attori che compongono il campo della residenza sono piuttosto eterogenei: tra loro troviamo sindaci, operatori e dirigenti comunali, il Ministero dell’interno, l’Istat, l’Unar, l’Anusca, la polizia locale, prefetti, politici – a volte di livello statale, più spesso di livello regionale e locale –, organizzazioni che tutelano i diritti dei migranti e delle persone vulnerabili, sindacati, giornalisti, magistrati – ordinari e amministrativi –, avvocati e giuristi.
Il conflitto tra gli attori qui indicati, sostanzialmente, può assumere tre forme differenti – nettamente distinguibili in via analitica ma spesso tra loro concretamente intrecciate –, configurandosi come: una disputa giuridica sul significato della residenza; una controversia giudiziaria su casi specifici di rifiuto dell’iscrizione; uno scontro politico sul controllo della popolazione locale. Più in dettaglio, il primo tipo di conflitto verte su confini giuridico-teorici, e gli attori che lo animano provano a imporre una specifica visione della residenza e delle procedure che portano al suo riconoscimento, tracciando una linea che, sul piano della teoria, sia in grado di escludere dal campo le altre visioni. Il secondo tipo di conflitto, invece, è incentrato su confini giuridico-pratici: la linea oggetto di contesa, qui, non è tracciata sul piano teorico ma al livello delle procedure concrete; la controversia, di conseguenza, è successiva a queste procedure, e l’arena in cui prende forma è costituita dai tribunali, amministrativi e civili. Il terzo tipo di conflitto, infine, è imperniato su confini politico-sociali: in questo caso, la demarcazione che alcuni attori provano a imporre, e che altri attori si impegnano a contestare, è quella tra cittadini locali legittimi e “illegittimi”, e la disputa può avere luogo parallelamente alla contesa giuridica o indipendentemente da questa.
L’esistenza di un campo così “denso” e di un conflitto così articolato è un fatto di assoluto rilievo per lo studio dell’iscrizione anagrafica: in primo luogo in quanto mostra la varietà delle “interpretazioni” della residenza fornite dagli attori formalmente incaricati di gestire le procedure per il suo riconoscimento e, al contempo, evidenzia il profondo scollamento tra tali interpretazioni e il dettato normativo; in secondo luogo perché rivela, seppur indirettamente, come i dati comunali relativi al numero di iscrizioni, alla quota di “rifiuti” e alle ragioni riportate per giustificarli possano essere affetti da profonde distorsioni.
Come emerso dalla ricerca che fa da sfondo a questa proposta di intervento, le forme illegittime di negazione della residenza possono tradursi, alternativamente, in dinieghi formali palesemente contra legem, in dinieghi informali o in rifiuti formali apparentemente legittimi ma in realtà pretestuosi. Nel primo caso, l’avvenuto diniego è registrato adducendo come motivazione il mancato soddisfacimento di requisiti assolutamente non previsti dalla legge, spesso (sebbene non necessariamente) introdotti da ordinanze o circolari. Nel secondo caso, il diniego avviene a voce, in modo da non lasciare tracce amministrative: gli operatori degli uffici anagrafici invitano coloro che richiedono l’iscrizione a non consegnare la propria dichiarazione di residenza perché “incompleta” o perché (sulla base di ragioni quasi sempre poco chiare) non sussisterebbe il diritto all’iscrizione. Nel terzo caso, infine, il rifiuto della residenza è motivato con la mancanza del requisito dell’abitualità della dimora – e perciò appare legittimo –, ma è formalizzato a seguito di accertamenti il cui esito è quantomeno discutibile, dato che risultano negativi nonostante la persona viva effettivamente nel luogo dichiarato, facendo perno, in maniera arbitraria, sulle condizioni dell’alloggio.
Ora, soltanto nel primo caso l’illegittimità dell’azione dell’amministrazione comunale è evidente, mentre negli altri casi è del tutto invisibile o, quantomeno, è celata. L’assenza di tracce amministrative, infatti, rende impossibile capire, stando alla semplice analisi dei dati comunali, se si sono verificati, episodicamente o sistematicamente, casi di rifiuto illegittimo; al contempo, la presenza, all’interno di tali dati, di un numero elevato di dinieghi motivati con la ragione – di per sé legittima – dell’insussistenza del requisito dell’abitualità della dimora può essere un indizio, ma certamente non costituisce una conferma, dell’azione illegittima da parte di un comune.
Di conseguenza, i ricercatori che si trovano oggi – e quelli che si troveranno domani – a decifrare le informazioni provenienti dalle amministrazioni comunali necessitano di un quadro di conoscenze di sfondo estremamente articolato in relazione alle dinamiche e ai meccanismi di esclusione che prendono forma in numerosi contesti locali: queste dinamiche e questi meccanismi, infatti, incidono, direttamente o indirettamente, sulle procedure di iscrizione anagrafica e, di conseguenza, sulle modalità con cui tali procedure possono essere studiate. Da questa prospettiva, i conflitti sull’iscrizione anagrafica costituiscono un punto di osservazione estremamente utile, in grado di fornire un aiuto prezioso nella ricostruzione dei meccanismi di esclusione dalla residenza e, dunque, nello studio delle fonti anagrafiche, così da tracciare un quadro più articolato e realistico delle migrazioni interne nel territorio italiano.

Implementing e-government in the contemporary American state is challenging. E-government places high technical demands on agencies and citizens in an environment of budget austerity and political polarization. Governments developing e-government policies often mobilize frontline workers (also termed street-level bureaucrats) to help citizens. However, we know little about how frontline workers cope in these challenging circumstances. This article fills this gap by examining frontline workers (such as Navigators) implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Based on a qualitative analysis, we find that frontline workers cope by “moving towards clients”: they bend rules, work overtime and collaborate to help clients. They are less inclined to “move away” or “against” clients, for instance via rigid rule following and rationing. In other words, frontline workers try to serve clients, even “when the server crashes.” Concluding, frontline workers can play a vital role for successfully implementing e-government policies.

台灣遊民政策經歷了威權政府犯罪化對待無家者、民主化政府以
社會福利處遇無家者的階段。如今公民社會進一步督促政府重視無家
者人權與居住需求，但政府回應消極。這種落差也反映在國家社福體
制的一線工作者接觸無家者的實務現場。本文用兼做遊民社工與無家
者的民族誌，透過「基層官僚治理」的取徑，探討這種落差如何及為
何出現，並探詢現今遊民社會福利體制造就何種非預期效果。首先，
說明現行遊民社福政策及體制預設的三條「脫離遊民狀態」路徑：協
助返家、協助就業、安置至機構，如何且為何未被無家者視為有用，
而無家者最迫切的需求—居住，卻被忽視。接著，解釋一線社工在
實作上藉由三項策略，包括：橫向攤付、向下收編及向上校準，治理
著無家者在不違反其主觀意願前提達成「假性脫遊」，並鞏固社工專
業。結果，在個案管理以及收編策略的作用下，無家者團結將更形脆
弱。在結論中，我從本文發現中指出，遊民問題絕非仰賴社會福利即
可解決的貧窮問題，政府應將之定位為居住問題，更積極保障其相關
權益。