The Determinants of Street-Level Bureaucratic Behavior: Gate-keeping in the Social Security Disability Program

The behavioral theory of choice posits that bureaucratic decisions can be understood not only as a function of rational decision-making, but also as a function of variables that influence decision-making due to the limitations on human’s cognitive abilities to process large amounts of information under conditions of ambiguity. In this paper, I test the hypotheses that hierarchy, bureaucratic culture (mission and attachment to rules) and emotion toward claimants explains variation in street level bureaucratic decision-making using survey data from the Social Security Disability program. The findings suggest that bureaucratic decision making is explained by bureaucratic culture and emotion, but at the margins. For many citizens, their experiences with government arise from their interactions with street-level bureaucrats (Goodsell 1981). These interactions create the public policies that citizens actually experience. Many street-level bureaucrats determine who gets benefits, how much they get and when they get them. In other words, street-level bureaucrats determine who gets access to public policies and programs. Therefore, understanding street-level bureaucratic decision-making is essential for understanding public policy. Despite the substantial literature that exists on this topic, we do not have definite answers or consistent understandings about who or what influences bureaucratic choices (Brehm and Gates 1997). In this paper, I generate a model using the behavioral model of choice to predict bureaucratic decision-making and test the model using survey data from examiners in three offices that determine eligibility in the Social Security Disability program. The literature on bureaucratic decision-making takes two different approaches – one closely related to economics and the other emerging from public administration and organization theory. Two recent works that have merged these two literatures together, serve as a useful starting point in creating a model to explain bureaucratic choice. In Working, Shirking, and Sabotage: Bureaucratic Response to a Democratic Public, John Brehm and Scott Gates (1997) explore the question of what bureaucrats maximize when making decisions and who or what influences their choices. They argue that bureaucratic decisions fall into three types – working, shirking or sabotage. When bureaucrats work they exert effort toward accomplishing policy goals that match their supervisors goals, when they shirk, they direct effort toward non-policy goals such as leisure and when they sabotage they exert effort toward accomplishing policy goals that differ from the goals of their supervisors. By revising traditional principal agent models that seek to explain how and whether political principals (supervisors) control their agents (bureaucrats), Brehm and Gates (1997) demonstrate that supervisors are very limited in their ability to control subordinate’s behavior. Through empirical testing, they find instead that street-level bureaucrats decisions are explained most of all by bureaucrats’ own preferences and by the preferences of fellow bureaucrats. Luckily, these preferences are aligned with fulfilling their policy missions. Marissa Golden (2000) finds support for this claim in her study of federal executives. Although she found a few instances of sabotage, most federal executives felt a professional obligation to follow appointed and elected officials and believed they had a responsibility to fulfill their missions in line with superior preferences. Although supervisors have a limited impact on whether bureaucrats work, shirk or sabotage because the link between hierarchical controls and bureaucratic behavior is weak, bureaucratic responsiveness exists because bureaucrats act in ways consistent with the preferences of elected officials/ and or their missions. Brehm and Gates (1997) work suggests that we should understand bureaucratic decision-making by understanding the policy preferences of bureaucrats, rather than the administrative controls that supervisors use to affect decisional outcomes. Understanding policy preferences of street-level bureaucrats is essential for understanding bureaucratic behavior. If we can discern bureaucrats’ policy preferences, we can predict their