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When the State Meets the Street probes the complex moral lives of street-level bureaucrats: the frontline social and welfare workers, police officers, and educators who represent government's human face to ordinary citizens. Too often dismissed as soulless operators, these workers wield a significant margin of discretion and make decisions that profoundly affect people's lives. Combining insights from political theory with his own ethnographic fieldwork as a receptionist in an urban antipoverty agency, Bernardo Zacka shows us firsthand the predicament in which these public servants are entangled.

Public policy consists of rules and regulations, but its implementation depends on how street-level bureaucrats interpret them and exercise discretionary judgment. These workers are expected to act as sensible moral agents in a working environment that is notoriously challenging and that conspires against them. Confronted by the pressures of everyday work, they often and unknowingly settle for one of several reductive conceptions of their responsibilities, each by itself pathological in the face of a complex, messy reality. Zacka examines the factors that contribute to this erosion of moral sensibility and what it takes to remain a balanced moral agent in such difficult conditions.

Zacka's revisionary portrait reveals bureaucratic life as more fluid and ethically fraught than most citizens realize. It invites us to approach the political theory of the democratic state from the bottom-up, thinking not just about what policies the state should adopt but also about how it ought to interact with citizens when implementing these policies. An unusual work of political theory, invigorating and innovative in terms of its methodology and argumentative thread...Its arguments are the result of a reflection on observed practices and on interpretations and analyses of similar practices in philosophical and social scientific literatures. The perceptiveness and care with which it builds taxonomies for the intra- and interpersonal challenges involved in navigating the normative demands of street-level bureaucracy are an outstanding example of this approach. This perceptiveness and care allow Zacka to address several audiences differently, thus providing orientation for political theorists, for street-level practitioners and their managers, and for citizens dealing with public services. Each of these audiences may come away with changed views. -- Janosch Prinz * Polity * A bold and interesting contribution...Given the recent 'behavioral turn' in public administration, Zacka's unique efforts to understand individual behavior in relation to social dynamic provides an alternative, serious mezzo-level explanation that should not be overlooked. -- Jodi R. Sandfort * American Review of Public Administration * A really rich and rewarding read. It fizzes with stimulating insights and ideas and offers the kind of empathetic portrayal of street-level bureaucracy which participant-observation is particularly good at. -- Simon Halliday * Social & Legal Studies * A sophisticated and empirically rich theorization of street-level agency and discretion. Through close and evocative appreciation of the conflicts and dilemmas posed by street-level work, it yields numerous valuable insights into everyday practice. -- James Kaufman * Social Policy & Administration * From its novel theorizing about the normative underpinnings of discretion to the nuanced discussion of the 'impossible situations' faced by street-level bureaucrats, When the State Meets the Street is essential reading that ought to inform the work of scholars and practitioners alike. -- Yanilda Mari a Gonza lez * Social Service Review * When the State Meets the Street is both a strikingly original work and a penetrating analysis of governmental decision-making. Not only is the book a sophisticated deconstruction of the administrative state, it also encourages liberty-minded readers to expand their intellectual horizons beyond the traditional citizen-government relationship. -- John Ehrett * The University Bookman * An excellent piece of work that will interest researchers, current and future policy makers, public administrators, and nonprofit leaders as well as students. But more importantly, as part of the need to integrate more political science in the study of public administration, this is a book that is particularly important to political scientists and implementation scholars. -- Nissim Cohen * Public Administration Review * Since Michael Lipsky coined the term in 1969, street-level bureaucracy has developed into a scholarly theme of its own. Nevertheless, the normative dimensions of the work done in this segment of government bureaucracy have remained almost entirely in the shadow so far. Filling this lacuna the book is an absolute must-read. -- Peter Hupe * Public Administration * An examination of street level bureaucracy rooted in anthropological fieldwork, but with the philosopher's toolkit dexterously deployed, it announces [Zacka] as a major new voice. -- Paul Sagar * Political Quarterly * One emerges from this insightful book with a considerable measure of respect for bureaucrats...Studying their experience as well as their behavior, is indeed, 'an experiment in living,' as well as a test of our own values and vision. It is, or should be, humbling. -- Glenn C. Altschuler * Psychology Today * A thoughtful book that usefully brings the tools of political theory to bear on questions of public administration. It argues persuasively that democratic theorists need to pay attention not just to the principles and the institutions that shape our laws but also to the street-level bureaucrats who interpret and apply them. -- Clarissa Rile Hayward * Perspectives on Politics * When the State Meets the Street offers an innovative take on the conditions of and possibilities for frontline workers' moral agency. Further, the strength of this work is grounded in Zacka's engagement with previous qualitative research on frontline workers, moving seamlessly from vocational rehabilitation agents in the United States to immigration agents in France...An essential read. -- Sule Tomkinson * Governance * It is wide-ranging in its theoretical breadth, evocative in its traversing of theory and practice, and convincing in its marshalling of argument. Above all, it is stylish. It makes bureaucracy-largely neglected in contemporary political theory as technical, apolitical, mundane-intellectually sexy...Brilliant. -- John Boswell * Critical Policy Studies * Drawing eclectically from a breathtakingly wide range of sources and disciplinary approaches to the study of politics, policy, and organizations, Zacka develops a robust and analytically rigorous framework for understanding street-level work that builds on, and ultimately surpasses, Lipsky's original treatment in several respects. -- Chad Broughton * Contemporary Sociology * Zacka persuasively argues that street-level bureaucrats are, in fact, moral agents 'vested with a considerable margin of discretion.' More importantly, he makes a compelling case for the normative desirability of that discretionary power...The book draws on a broad array of literatures, from other qualitative work on bureaucracies to psychology, sociology, and normative political philosophy, providing Zacka with an astounding and productive array of interlocutors...Zacka's remarkable book opens up many intriguing questions and will hopefully be one of many future studies that combine the virtues of an ethnographic approach and normative political theory. -- Yuna Blajer de la Garza * Contemporary Political Theory * Drawing from first-hand observations adds an anthropological sensitivity to the book, in the process showing that political philosophers have much to gain from venturing into the real world. The result is an original book that most democratic theorists should read, especially those interested in moral reasoning

When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency