10 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / March 2000 Peters, Pierre / MUTUAL EMPOWERMENT 11 Peters, Pierre / MUTUAL EMPOWERMENTADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / March 2000 Many contemporary reforms of the public sector advocate empowerment as a solution for many of the problems of governing. The difficulty arises when different groups—clients, lower-level officials, senior officials, and local communities—are all the subject of empowerment. Attempts to enhance the power of all these players in the policy process is argued to create the probability of political conflict, and this is demonstrated with a set of examples. Efforts at empowerment further may be the sources of substantial disillusionment and possible alienation when it becomes apparent that all groups cannot be empowered at once. CITIZENS VERSUS THE NEW PUBLIC MANAGER The Problem of Mutual Empowerment B. GUY PETERS University of Pittsburgh/University of Strathclyde JON PIERRE University of Gothenburg One of the powerful ideologies growing up throughout the public sector during the contemporary period of administrative reform (Aucoin, 1996) has been that of empowerment. In democratic societies, the term empowerment has positive connotations, appearing to promote more directly democratic forms for governing and opening organizations to the influences of its members. As with so many terms of this sort, empowerment is often used to mean exactly what each speaker or writer wants it to mean and in the process has become debased. Empowerment is used in any numberofwaysandisusedbothasadescriptionofwhathasbeenhappening in government and as an ideology for promoting even more change. We will also be arguing that as appealing as the concept of empowerment is, if taken too literally it has the potential to undermine three important values in Western societies: representative government, accountable bureaucracy, and a strong and effective state. Some advocates of ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 32 No. 1, March 2000 9-28 © 2000 Sage Publications, Inc. 9 empowerment recognize those potential problems. For example, Dilys Hills (1994) writes that the fostering of the civic-republican tradition of citizenship will itself provide,throughtherealopportunitiesprovidedbyimproveddemocraticinstitutions and processes, the necessary empowerment and motivation. The improved scale of and vitality of participation, it is hoped, will allow representative democracy to be challenged critically, not undermined. (p. 26) A naive acceptance of the idea of empowerment without consideration of the negative side effects may generate more harm than good for society and especially for the governance of those societies.1 This article is therefore something of an unpacking of the concept and also something of a set of caveats about too easy acceptance of its virtue.THE TARGETS OF EMPOWERMENT We can distinguish at least three clear targets for grants of increased power. These three target groups may have slightly different interpretations of wha ...

1. 10 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / March 2000
Peters, Pierre / MUTUAL EMPOWERMENT 11
Peters, Pierre / MUTUAL
EMPOWERMENTADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / March
2000
Many contemporary reforms of the public sector advocate
empowerment as a solution for many of the problems of
governing. The difficulty arises when different groups—clients,
lower-level officials, senior officials, and local communities —
are all the subject of empowerment. Attempts to enhance the
power of all these players in the policy process is argued to
create the probability of political conflict, and this is
demonstrated with a set of examples. Efforts at empowerment
further may be the sources of substantial disillusionment and
possible alienation when it becomes apparent that all groups
cannot be empowered at once.
CITIZENS VERSUS THE
NEW PUBLIC MANAGER
The Problem of Mutual Empowerment
B. GUY PETERS
University of Pittsburgh/University of Strathclyde
JON PIERRE
University of Gothenburg
One of the powerful ideologies growing up throughout the
public sector during the contemporary period of administrative
reform (Aucoin, 1996) has been that of empowerment. In
democratic societies, the term empowerment has positive
connotations, appearing to promote more directly democratic
forms for governing and opening organizations to the influences
of its members. As with so many terms of this sort,
empowerment is often used to mean exactly what each speaker
or writer wants it to mean and in the process has become
debased. Empowerment is used in any

2. numberofwaysandisusedbothasadescriptionofwhathasbeenhappe
ning in government and as an ideology for promoting even more
change.
We will also be arguing that as appealing as the concept of
empowerment is, if taken too literally it has the potential to
undermine three important values in Western societies:
representative government, accountable bureaucracy, and a
strong and effective state. Some advocates of
ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 32 No. 1, March 2000
9-28 © 2000 Sage Publications, Inc.
9
empowerment recognize those potential problems. For example,
Dilys
Hills (1994) writes that
the fostering of the civic-republican tradition of citizenship will
itself
provide,throughtherealopportunitiesprovidedbyimproveddemocr
aticinstitutions and processes, the necessary empowerment and
motivation. The improved scale of and vitality of participation,
it is hoped, will allow representative democracy to be
challenged critically, not undermined. (p. 26)
A naive acceptance of the idea of empowerment without
consideration of the negative side effects may generate more
harm than good for society and especially for the governance of
those societies.1 This article is therefore something of an
unpacking of the concept and also something of a set of caveats
about too easy acceptance of its virtue.THE TARGETS OF
EMPOWERMENT
We can distinguish at least three clear targets for grants of
increased power. These three target groups may have slightly
different interpretations of what the group against which they
have been empowered is and what exactly they are empowered
to do. All three are, however, meant to experience greater
latitude for autonomous action and decisions.
Citizens and clients. Empowerment is most commonly discussed
in reference to the clients of the public sector, or perhaps in

3. reference to the public in general (see Sorenson, 1997). The
idea is that government has
becometooremote,toobureaucratic,andtoohierarchicaltobeaccept
able in democratic regimes. The argument of the empowerment
advocates is
thatpeopleshouldbeempoweredtomakemoredecisionsabouttheiro
wn
lives,whetherthatpoweristobeexercisedasindividualsorasmember
sof communities.2 Furthermore, it is argued that the state must
cease acting in loco parentis for perfectly competent adult
citizens.3 This power relationship between citizens and
government is especially evident in social
serviceagenciesinwhichthetypicalroleoftheserviceworkeristocont
rolas well as to benefit the client (Handler, 1996).
Programs for citizen involvement stress the need to make
government more accessible to the public and to grant citizens,
and clients, greater influence over policy.4 In particular, this
view of government argues that representative (“aggregative”)
institutions are inadequate to involve the
publicandthereforeintegrativeinstitutionspermittingdirectpartici
pation and influence are needed. As one definition describing
the program of empowerment for citizens and clients in
Denmark (see also Hoff, 1993) expresses the point,
Empowerment means transforming individuals into citizens; that
is increasing the ability of each individual to internalize a
holistic perspective on societal governance. . . . The keyword in
designing democratic institutions which serve the integrative
aspects of empowerment is participation. (Sorenson, 1997, p.
557)
Similarly, Britain, Burns, Hambleton, and Hoggett (1994)
describe empowerment and high quality democracy as “lying in
the existence of an informed, organized and confident citizenry
engaged within the public
spherewherenovoicesareexcluded”(pp.269-
270).Theseideashavebeen spreading beyond their usual locales
in the industrialized democracies to become part of reform

4. efforts in other countries, where “civic empowerment” of those
with “little previous experience with participation” is stressed
(Abers, 1998, pp. 511-512). The empowerment of citizens also
has become part of the agenda for some international
organizations seeking more fundamental change in less
developed countries (Timberg, 1995).
One way in which this version of empowerment has been
expressed is “consumerizing” the public sector, although even
here there are a multiplicity of meanings as became apparent
when examining Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United
States (Hood, Peters, & Wollmann, 1996). Governments are said
to need to treat the public more as customers than as clients and
to learn how to listen to what people want, as well as to
makedecisionsaboutwhattheywillget.Forexample,atthemoreextre
me end of the spectrum of involvement, citizens, in their role as
parents and residents as well as citizens, have been gi ven the
opportunity to manage schools and housing estates, rather than
leaving that to public managers (Birchall, Pollitt, & Putman,
1995; Hess, 1994). At a less extreme level of citizen
empowerment, there are a variety of devices that permit citizens
to participate in open hearings, in more dialogical and
deliberative settings for decision, in coproduction, and at a
minimum to have their complaints about government taken more
seriously than in the past (Roberts, 1997; Tritter, 1994). All of
these devices are designed to grant the citizen a more direct and
meaningful role in making and implementing public policy; in
other words, they are directed at empowering citizens.
Government employees. The second group to be granted
increased power through empowerment are employees of public
organizations, especially workers at lower echelons within these
organizations. This is really an old idea, going back to the
human relations approach to management and the assumption
that employees would work harder and better if they were
provided more opportunities for involvement in their
organizations.Involvementandempowermentthereforehasthepote
ntialtobemanipulative, but once the genie of empowerment is let

5. out of the bottle it may be difficult to contain. In more recent
times, empowerment often has been intended less as
manipulation and more as a genuine means of improving the
working lives of employees and has been found in private as
well as public-sector management (Kernaghan, 1992).
The idea of empowerment has been adopted as one component
of the contemporary reforms of management in and out of the
public sector. At its simplest, empowerment has been
manifested in the “quality movement,” with quality circles and
similar mechanisms being one way to give groups of workers
greater control over their organizations and their jobs
(Bouckaert & Pollitt, 1993; Swiss, 1992). For example,
speaking more
abouttheprivatethanthepublicsector,VogtandMurrell(1990)arguet
hat “quality teams, whether they are part of the formal
organizational structure or temporary, are at the heart of
empowerment” (p. 96).
Empowerment has also been central to reforms in the public
sector in North America. Programs such as PS 2000 in Canada
(Tellier, 1990) and the Gore Report in the United States (Peters
& Savoie, 1996) have placed the idea of empowering employees
at the core of the change process. For example, the PS 2000
program in Canada argued that
empowerment asks employees to assume responsibility for
change and to be accountable for their actions within an
environment which accepts a degree of risk-taking and
acknowledges intent as well as results. (Tellier,
1990, p. 52)
This emphasis on involving employees in their organizations
continues with the most recent round of public-sector reform in
Canada, La Releve, and its attempts to renew the vitality of
public service (Privy Council Office, 1997).
Even some aspects of the managerial reforms in New Zealand,
Australia,andtheUnitedKingdomhavesoughttogivemanagersgreat
erautonomy
tomakedecisions,eveniflowerechelonworkersmaynotbeempowere

6. dinthe process (Ranson & Stewart, 1994, pp. 242-268). Also,
the project of renouveau in the French state under Michel
Rocard stressed the need to enhance “participation and
experimentation” by public managers and to remove barriers to
their exercising power (see Bezes, 1999; de Closets, 1989).
Scandinavian public management has traditionally been more
participatory than that of most other countries, but even there
some reforms have been in the direction of enhanced
involvement for public employees (Gustafsson, 1987). In all
these various guises, empowerment simply means permitting
employees to make more decisions on their own, without
reference to superiors or to formal rules, with the assumption
that these employees know best their local conditions and the
needs of their clients.
Speaking of Canada, as well as of his own government in
Australia, John Hart (1998) argues that empowerment is perhaps
the most basic of the reforms of government in the past several
decades. He argues that
empowerment is much more than delegation. In the words of the
Public Service 2000 task force report, it “encourages managers,
supervisors and employees to try new ways of achieving goals,
motivating them to be creative and innovative in improving the
service they deliver. Empowerment asks employees to assume
responsibility for change and to be accountable for their actions
within an environment which accepts a degree of
risktakingandacknowledgesintentaswellasresults.”...Empowerme
nt,more than any other of the doctrinal components of New
Public Management, reaches deep into the managerial
psychology. (p. 289)
Inallthesecases,empowermentisameansof“breakingthroughburea
ucracy” (Barzelay, 1992) and permitting the public employees
to have greater influence over their working lives.
Subnational government. The third target for empowerment is
subnational governments. The argument is that central
governments have, through grants and intergovernmental
regulations, tended to homogenize policy and stifle creativity in

7. these lower echelons of government. In this arena,
empowerment may be discussed as “decentralization” or
“devolution” of powers. The 1980s and 1990s have been
remarkable in the way in which previously highly centralized
regimes such as France and Spain have begun to devolve power
to lower levels of government (Loughlin & Mazey, 1995).
Although the nation-state remains the principal actor in Europe,
the increasing importance of “Europe of the Regions” points to
this form of empowerment (Le Gales & Lesquesne, 1998).
The fundamental idea is, however, the same and
decentralization simply empowers decision makers of local or
regional governments to make decisions that better match their
own needs and capabilities, perhaps within a broad, national
framework. For example, speaking primarily in
thecontextoftheUnitedKingdom,FosterandPlowden(1996)argueth
at
local services are better delivered if the local communities
served are involved in the provision and production process
through empowerment. Community policemen are more
effective in maintaining law and order, because they are able to
involve more members of the community. . . . Finally,
empowerment may revitalize democracy by motivating more
people to care enough about their local community to vote or
even stand for election. (p. 129)
Oneillustrationofthismovementisthecontemporarydebateoverwel
fare reform in the United States, with the national plan for
policy change returning much greater power and responsibility
to the individual states (Beaumont, 1996; Hills, 1998). The
older welfare system already was becoming a patchwork of state
waivers, but the emerging system more explicitly grants powers
to the states, for good or for ill. There is also an indwelling
assumption that this form of empowerment will, in the long run,
also empower the former recipients of welfare benefits. Indeed,
some of the political rhetoric discusses the requirement for
work in the programs as a form of empowerment.ASSESSING
EMPOWERMENT

8. Although a powerful idea from a strictly political perspective,
the
empowermentoftheseseveralgroupsinsocietyraisesanumberofrela
ted political and administrative issues. The most obvious and
most important
considerationisaccountability.Empoweringclientsandworkersinp
ublic organizations may appear democratic, but in some ways it
is profoundly antidemocratic. Empowerment appears to create
the problem of ensuring
thatpoliciesaremadeanddeliveredinaccordancewiththepublicinter
est, defined rather broadly, and in accordance with the
intentions of legitimate decision makers.5 Allowing clients
excessive power over decisions affecting them risks
unnecessary spending of public money and the familiar problem
of “capture” of regulators by the regulated interests (Wood &
Waterman, 1995). One of the standard prescriptions for making
environmental and economic regulation in the United State more
effective is to permit regulators more personal discretion, but
with that discretion also
maycomesomeerosionofthepolicygoalsselectedbytheir“principals
.”6
Similarly, empowering lower echelon workers to make more
decisions on their own authority presents risks of spending
public money unwisely and unfairness to clients based on who
their caseworker might be. In addition to ensuring a sympathetic
hearing for their clients, government organizations also have
responsibilities to the public as a whole (in their role as
taxpayers if nothing else), as well as to other clients who
deserve equal treatment. Furthermore, advocates of
empowerment assume that clients will get a better deal if there
is greater latitude for lower echelon
workers;theyappeartoforgetsomeoftheextremelynegativeexperien
ces of lower status citizens with discretion exercised by public
organizations such as the police (Geller & Toch, 1996).7
Governing always implies balancing competing values, and that
requirement becomes extremely clear

9. whenoneconsidersthepotentialeffectsofempowermentongovernm
ent.
There is often a good deal of naivete, or hypocrisy, in the
debate over empowerment, especially the empowerment of
subnational governments. It is not clear how decisions made by
public officials in a state capital, or even a city hall, are any
less bureaucratic and intrusive than are similar
regulationsmadeinWashingtonorStockholm.8Thecontentofthereg
ulations made may be different in the different states and
localities, but that does not imply that they will be superior.
This skepticism over devolution
isespeciallyrelevantgiventhattherootcausesofsomeofthepolicypro
blems being devolved, for example, poverty, reside more at the
national or international levels than at state and local levels.
Devolution of power to local communities may be good politics,
but it is less apparent that it is necessarily good public policy.
Another problem that empowerment raises is coordination. If
organizations,theiremployees,andsub nationalgovernmentsarealle
mpowered to make policy decisions relatively autonomously,
then it will be
increasinglydifficulttoproduceanycoherenceinpublic-
sectordecisionmaking. It can be argued that coordination in
government is often overvalued (Bendor, 1985; Landau, 1969)
but, in an era of scarce financial resources and citizen
grumbling about inefficiency, creating any more incoherence
within the public sector is probably not desirable. Therefore, the
creation of more public organizations through programs such as
Next Steps and then empowering their employees to make more
autonomous decisions
raisessignificantquestionsaboutthestyleofgovernancethatisbeings
upplied (Peters, 1996).
THE VIEW FROM THE STREET
The decentralization, deconcentration, and devolution of
authority
fromthestatetolocalgovernmentsdescribedabovecomesaliveprima

10. rily in the exchange between the public bureaucracy and its
clients at the local level of government. However, these reforms
per se do not change the exchange between the state and civi l
society; they merely authorize or enable local governments to
organize the exchange according to their preferences rather than
those of central government. Put differently, although these
reforms are vertical by nature (Gurr & King, 1987; King &
Pierre,1990),they,bythemselves,donotalterthehorizontaldimensio
nof public-private interaction at the local level.
Thegreaterautonomyaccordedlocalgovernmenthasprobablyrevital
ized and politicized the local debate among politicians,
managers, and professional bureaucrats on how to organize the
interface between local bureaucracy and its citizens. The
decentralized and less regulated system of government offers
better opportunities for professional norms to guide the
exchange between street-level bureaucrats and their clients than
did
theprevioussystem(Ashford,1990).Increasingbureaucraticdiscreti
onis
alsoanintegralcomponentofthenewmanagerialism,displacingdecis
ion
makingfrompoliticianstothebureaucracyandfromhighertolowerec
helons of the bureaucracy (Zifcak, 1994).
We can find examples of empowerment in most advanced
Western democracies. In Germany, the concept of Bürgernähe
(closeness to citizens) has become a catchword for much recent
administrative reform (Derlien, 1995a, 1995b). In the
Scandinavian countries, so-called
thirdsectorinitiativesaimatbringingvoluntaryassociationsintothep
rocessof public service production and delivery, thus creating a
new interface between the state and civil society. In the United
Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand (among other places), the
new managerialism is manifested in new public management
that aims both at making the public bureaucracy more customer-
oriented and at strengthening the position of citizens relative to
the public sector (Hood, Peters, & Wollmann, 1996).

11. These changes at the institutional level have had repercussions
on the intraorganizationallevel,particularlytheface-to-
faceinteractionbetween the public bureaucrats and their clients.
Bureaucrats have gained greater discretion and autonomy but at
the same time also face greater financial responsibilities. More
important, however, the recent managerial reforms have
highlighted the organizational dilemma between control over
some aspects of the behavior of lower echelon employees on
one hand and the need for discretion at these same levels on the
other. How can supervisors provide simultaneously for greater
discretion and for enhanced financial controls, greater controls
over fraud, waste, and abuse, and higher quality standards?
Furthermore, how can they provide for all those positive
outcomes in an era in which the public service itself is
becoming deinstitutionalized and populated by larger numbers
of noncareer employees who lack a public service ethos?
There are several factors underscoring the importance of
discretion in this type of bureaucracy. First, the meeting
between a client and a professional public employee is to a
significant extent a matter of balancing the
personalintegrityoftheclientagainstthebureaucracy’sneedforinfor
mation in order to be able to make correct decisions on which
services to offer. Citizens are legally entitled to have their
exchange with a public bureaucracy conducted in strict
confidence. For instance, to show that he is qualified for certain
types of public financial support, the client must present
information about his life situation that is highly personal by
nature. It is vital to the client that this information is not made
available to persons other than those directly involved in
handling the matter.
Second,discretionisalsoimportantforthebureaucracyasanorganiza
tion. Delivering social services in an efficient and effective
manner
presupposesthattheservicesareadaptedtoindividualneeds.Relying
strictly on routinized decision making makes the service ill -
attuned to individual needs and hence less likely to attain its

12. objectives. The real difficulty arises in determining just how
attuned to individual needs the service should be and therefore
just what the boundaries of acceptable discretion are. There are
numerous stories about regulatory creep in which the gradual
accretion of decisions creates a common law about what an
individual bureaucrat can or cannot do (see Handler, 1996).
Over time, this accumulation of individual decisions may create
patterns of implementing policy that vary markedly from
legislative intent for the program.
Finally, in addition to the bureaucratic rules about how public
services should be provided to citizens, there also exist
elaborate professional norms about how the bureaucrat should
conduct his or her job. Independence from detailed rules, and
from control from senior levels of the bureaucracy, is necessary
for the bureaucrat to be able to exercise his or her professional
judgment. To be sure, without substantial discretion already the
bureaucracy would not need to hire skilled and professional
staff because handling virtually all matters in the organization
would be guided by standardized rules. That Weberian ideal of
the bureaucracy is
almostneverachieved,however,andadministrativejobsretainsubsta
ntial discretion.
Astheknowledgeablereaderhasalreadyobserved,thisdilemmabetw
een
organizationalcontrolandprofessionaldiscretionisdirectlyrelatedt
othe
conceptofstreetlevelbureaucracydescribedbyLipsky(1980)andoth
ers. Street-level bureaucracies are public-sector organizations
whose services are delivered through direct communication
between the bureaucrat and
theclient,somethingthatclearlysetsthemapartfromothergroupsofp
ublic employees (Piven & Cloward, 1977). Typical street-level
public services include the police, teachers, social workers, and
health workers, and also some regulatory employees. The
defining characteristic of streetlevel bureaucrats is that they
daily “grant access to government programs

13. andprovideserviceswithinthem”(Lipsky,1980,p.3).Also,asaresult
of their direct and immediate contact with their clients, street-
level
bureaucratsareespeciallyinclinedto“puttheclientfirst”andtosideps
ychologically with the client against the formal norms of
bureaucracy.
Street-level bureaucracies frequently witness coalitions
evolving between clients and bureaucrats. Obviously, it is not a
coalition held together by similar interests (at least not in the
short term9) but rather by
theprofessionalnormsofthebureaucratthatinducehimorhertogivep
rimary consideration to the needs of the clients and not to
organizational rules about restrictive use of the bureaucracy’s
financial resources, standardization of the handling of these
matters, or even long-term objectives stated by managers of the
bureaucracy. Although the client gets better service and perhaps
more benefits from this bargain, the professional
receiveslargelythepsychicsatisfactionofhavingdonethejobinaprof
essional manner. This coalitional behavior, however, depends
on bureaucrats having professional norms, coming from social
work, law, or some other profession; in some senses, the true
Weberian might attach primacy to the interests of the
organization.
Some might argue that this conflict between a client orientation
and professional norms on one hand and responsiveness to
organizational management and objectives on the other is a
false dichotomy. It is often in
theinterestsofthebureaucracytodeliverservicesadaptedasmuchasp
ossible to each individual’s needs. Also, street-level bureaucrats
are controlled by higher echelons of the bureaucracy, by formal
rules, and also—and arguably more important—by the special
organizational culture of a public bureaucracy (Morgan, 1997).
However, what does appear to make street-level bureaucracies
special is the joint effect of lower level discretion and
professionalism. Discretion gives the bureaucrat the
maneuvering space needed to be able to conduct this work

14. according to professional norms and standards, rather than
organizational rules and procedures. Unlike the latter,
professional norms look unilaterally at which measures and
modi operandi are in the best interest of the clients and pay
minimal attention to budgetary consequences of this exchange
with clients.
As public bureaucracies in most Western democracies have had
to cut back significantly on expenditures, and as a market-based
approach to public services has quickly gained ground in the
public sector, the result has been an increasing opposition to the
organization from street-level bureaucrats. This opposition has
in many areas of public service been fueled by the rapidly
growing problems facing most bureaucracies in social welfare
services. One source of opposition is supervisors of the street-
level bureaucrats. Middle managers of the public bureaucracy
are the ones most directly responsible for conveying
organizational goals to the lower level employees.10 Thus, in
the eyes of the street-level bureaucrats, the supervisors come to
epitomize bureaucratic hierarchy, something which is in obvious
conflict with the self-image of the professional street-level
bureaucrat.
Another target for opposition for the street-level bureaucrats is
organizational rules. These rules express organizational
objectives and modi operandi. Also, the delegation of authority
from higher to lower levels of the bureaucracy is often
accompanied by a delegation of financial responsibility. For a
professional street-level bureaucrat, these are ideas that do not
rhyme well with professional ideals. For instance, a social
worker caring about the bottom line is hardly compatible with
identifying with the client. Although the intraorganizational
delegation of financial responsibility increases cost awareness
at the street level and places economic decision making at the
operative level of the organization, it may also create confusion,
frustration, and paralysis among street-level bureaucrats.
Interestingly, the long-term outcome of this situation may well
be a deprofessionalizationofthestreet-

15. levelbureaucracy.Thestreet-levelpersonnel will—consistent with
their professional training and ideals— maintain a client-
oriented approach to their tasks. In times of budgetary cutbacks,
they may also develop an “us-versus-them” coalition with their
clients and disregard policies and objectives formulated by
higher echelons of the bureaucracy. Although this stance will
fulfill one of the canons of professionalism, putting the interest
of the client first, it will tend to undermine the position of these
employees within the organization and
lessentherespectinwhichtheirprofessionisheldbyimportantsociala
nd political actors. Nurses’strikes in the United Kingdom, for
example, have come to be regarded by many as economically
self-serving, rather than as attempts to defend standards of care
for the nurses’ patients.
Looking at these developments at an organizational level, we
should
askwhatlikelyconsequencestheywillhaveforthebureaucracy’scapa
bility to deliver services in an efficient and coordinated way.
The Lipsky model of the street-level bureaucracy is a functional
model. It accommodates both the needs of clients and formal
rules and also acknowledges professional values as important
organizational resources. That said, the street-
levelmodelofapublicbureaucracyalsoislargelyunabletooperate
according to clear policy goals or to make intelligent and
rational decisions (particularly as soon as more than one
organizational level is involved in the decision). The model
does not have a clearly defined mechanism for conflict
resolution and, hence, may fail when conflict is encountered.
Thus, paradoxically, the street-level bureaucracy model is—
partly by design, partly de facto—both functional and anarchic.
It is anarchic by design because of the nature of the task and
work situations facing
streetlevelbureaucrats.Ononehand,toomuchorganizationalcontrol
overtheir actions would result in a rigid and inefficient
implementation of
standardizedrules.Ontheotherhand,providingthestreet-

16. levelbureaucratsextensive discretion jeopardizes equal treatment
of similar cases and with that the fundamental value of equity.
At an organizational level, such discretion may also drive up
expenditures and reduce organizational coordination and
control.
Professional norms play a key role in filling the void of
organizational control at the street level. Because the senior
levels of the bureaucracy cannotproduceguidelines—
whatSimon(1960)calls“programmeddecisionmaking” —
forhowthestreet-levelbureaucratshouldhandlethemyriad of
different situations she or he faces in daily work, those
managers must rely on a developed and skillful professional
sense of judgment on the part of the bureaucrat. Without that
professional socialization, the upper echelon management and
their political masters would probably be unwilling to offer
even the somewhat limited latitude to these employees that
traditionally has been given.
The major dilemma, however, is that a significant part of these
professional norms leads the bureaucrat to identify more with
the client than the bureaucracy. The street-level bureaucrat
typically argues that each different client is in some ways
unique, hence decision making cannot be programmed or
routinized. For the professional street-level bureaucrat,
professional norms are much more apt to guide his or her
exchange with his or her clients than are norms formulated by
bureaucratic managers. Intraorganizational norms are, by
definition, characterized by organizational politics, budgetary
restrictions, senior control over lower echelons of the
bureaucracy, and organizational objectives such as efficiency
and political responsiveness. Many of these objectives run
counter to the professional ideals embraced by professional
groups such as social workers, teachers, and medical doctors.
One interesting counterpoise to the impact of the “old”
professions on service delivery at the street level is the
development of the public service itself as a profession. This
development is being slowed somewhat by fiscal pressures

17. reducing public employment, as well as by the ideology of the
new public management that argues that public management is
not really different from private management. Even with those
contrary pressures, there is a sense that public managers have
adopted a more professional posture, with distinctive training,
codes of conduct, and professional organizations. Although the
leaked for best practice for the old professions is the client, the
leaked for public managers is often the public as a whole, in
both their citizen and taxpayer roles.
STREET-LEVEL BUREAUCRACY WRIT LARGE:
THE EMERGING POLITICS OF EMPOWERMENT
Tothispoint,wehavebeendescribingstreet-
levelbureaucracyasithas evolved over decades of implementing
social and economic programs. Street-level bureaucracy has
been a fact of public life, and in some policy areas such as
economic regulation (Bardach & Kagan, 1982) there have been
calls for enhanced discretion for implementers. The
contemporary
politicsofempowerment,however,tendnotonlytoacceptdefactodis
cretion at the bottom of organizations but to laud it and attempt
to expand it. The empowerment movement argues that
organizations will work better11 if their lower echelons are
given more discretion. The argument is advanced
simultaneously that clients and citizens should also be given
greater control over their own lives and that government
bureaucracies should make fewer decisions for clients, whether
the clients are welfare recipients or middle-class taxpayers. For
example, advocates (Vogt & Murrell, 1990) of empowerment
argue that there is no zero-sum game and that empowerment is
an interactive process based on a synergistic, not zero-sum,
assumption about power; that is, the process of empowerment
enlarges the power in the situation as opposed to merely
redistributing it. (pp. 8-9)
The ability to advance these arguments and these forms of
empowerment simultaneously appears to depend on an

18. assumption that the perspectives and desires of the two groups
are similar. We have already noted that the street-level model
has in it sources of conflict, and those appear exacerbated by
mutual empowerment. Thus, mutual empowerment is premised
on the older professional model in which client interests will
come first in the minds of service providers. That premise may
be correct, but it appears that changes in the nature of the
public sector will make it increasingly less viable. First,
empowerment is being pressed at the same time that fiscal
stringency is increasingly a consideration in making and
implementing policy. Thus, even if employee and client agree
on what should be done on behalf of the client they may not
have the money to pay for it. Given limited resources,
employees may compete among themselves for resources and
generate intraorganizational conflicts.
The new public management also places pressures on employees
to meet performance standards—benchmark or quality
standards. Although some of these standards may be qualitative,
others are quantitative so that the employee will encounter
pressures not to serve each client as well as he or she might
simply to meet the standards being imposed. Although
employees may be empowered to meet these standards in any
manner,
theyfindmostfittingthattheyarestillbeingheldtoaccount,andconfli
cts
overhowservicesarebeingdeliveredmayariseasreadilyasintraditio
nal modes of service delivery. Indeed, the conflicts may be
more destructive given that the employees cannot appeal to
supervisors or rules to justify their actions to clients.
In addition, professional norms require doing what is in the
client’s best interest, even if the client does not agree or does
not recognize that self-interest. Any disagreements over what
constitutes the best interest of the client can be solved relatively
easily so long as the employee remains
inanauthoritativeposition,butwithempowermentofclientsthatposit
ion is somewhat diminished. Furthermore, empowerment of

19. employees tends to diminish the role of supervisory personnel
within the organization so that the employee has no source of
reinforcement for decisions. Again, mutual empowerment may
exacerbate conflicts between clients and workers, especially
when clients may not be in a good position to judge their own
interests, for example, the mentally ill. Most objective analysts
of social services would argue that government should be about
something more than just giving everyone what he or she wants,
but in an age of empowerment it becomes difficult to make
more discerning judgments.CONCLUSION: THE PARADOXES
OF EMPOWERMENT
We should not expect the mutual empowerment of workers and
customers in contemporary public organizations to manifest
itself in overt shouting matches or fistfights, at least not
usually. What is more likely is a gradual erosion of the sense of
efficacy that the changes may have created initially. That is,
one of the purposes of mutual empowerment is to make workers
feel better about their jobs and to make clients feel better about
the services that they are being provided. Telling these groups
that they have greater control is likely to have that effect. If,
however, these individuals begin to confront others who are
also empowered and have to bargain and fight for their rights,
just as they had previously, then empowerment is likely to be
alienating and disillusioning. Indeed, both clients and workers
may perceive themselves being worse off after empowerment
than before, simply because they will believe that they were
deceived about the brave new world of empowerment that they
were entering.
The above discussion advanced a number of potentially difficult
questions for advocates of empowerment. The idea of extending
meaningful
influencetomoresegmentsofsocietyis,apriori,appealingondemocr
atic and humanistic grounds, but in practice presents problems
that should cause the would-be empowerer to reconsider just
how far empowerment should be extended and to whom.
Hierarchical, bureaucratic systems of government have many

20. well-known problems, but it also appears undeniable that their
replacements also would. Indeed, extending empowerment may
exacerbate rather than solve the difficulties identified in
hierarchical governance.
In the first place, empowerment of all three candidates—clients,
employees, and subnational governments—may centralize rather
than decentralize governance. By empowering all the groups,
government would, in practice, minimize the mechanisms for
solving conflicts
throughbureaucraticandregulativeaction.Giventhatitwouldbenaiv
eto assume that no conflicts would arise among mutually
empowered groups, conflicts would be propelled upward in the
political structures for resolution (Handler, 1996). Intermediate
structures, whether in business firms, public organizations, or
intergovernmental relations, render useful services in
minimizing and resolving conflicts, and if those structures are
removed or devalued through empowerment then decisions must
go up to a level that can make a decision. Again, paradoxically
a set of reforms intending to decentralize may in the end prove
to be very centralizing.
In addition, empowering public-sector professionals along with
the simultaneous empowerment of their clients may
deprofessionalize those employees. Granting greater
discretionary power to client contact employees removes their
source of support against perceived unreasonable demands from
clients. Likewise, the empowerment of the clients
maygeneratemoreofthoseunreasonabledemands.Thismeansthatpr
ofessionals will be under greater pressure to do what clients
want and not necessarily what those professionals think should
be done in their trained judgment. In the end, conflict avoidance
and the search for support,12 may mean that the professionals
become more the creatures of their clients.
Finally, clients will not necessarily be winners in the
empowerment game. If clients are “reasonable” and bargain
with professional service
providers,theymayfindtheirlotimproved.If,however,serviceprovi

21. ders are not adequately professionalized and attach primary
importance to their own goals rather than to those of their
clients, then those clients may not get what they want. This is
especially true when service providers are required to conform
to other parts of the new public management agenda and
document their efficiency. Indeed, devaluing the professional
public service as part of the new public management may mean
that clients are less well off than under the former bureaucratic
system. In the traditional bureaucratic system, rules and
procedures protect clients from arbitrary and capricious action
(Gormley, 1989; Thomas, 1998), whereas the empowered,
entrepreneurial public servant may not be expected to recognize
such constraints so completely.
Furthermore, if clients subscribe to the concept of
empowerment and say that they are capable of solving their own
problems, some people will
bewillingtoagreewiththem.Inaneraofdownsizinggovernment,anid
eology of self-sufficiency, and communitarianism, clients of
public programs may be expected to “get on their bikes” and
support themselves. Even for groups of clients who might not be
considered good candidates for self-sufficiency, for example,
mothers with preschool children, the direction of public policy
is forcing them to provide more for themselves and depend less
on government. In short, empowerment can be a
wonderfulwaytograntclientsmorecontrolovertheirlives,butitcanal
so be a means of removing the supports for those lives.
Much of the above discussion is speculative, but it does point to
the
organizationalandpersonaldynamicsattheheartofthemovementtow
ard widespread empowerment as an ideology for managing in
the public sector. Empowerment is a positive idea, and
permitting individuals and
governmentstocontrolmoreofthethingsthatmattertothemcannotbe
easily denigrated as an abstract idea about democracy. On the
other hand, the concept of empowerment has potential
consequences that are less desirable and less benign. Indeed, it

22. has the capability to generate outcomes exactly the opposite of
those intended. This article then should be seen as an
admonition to the unwary to look carefully before they accept
all the virtues of empowerment.NOTES
1.
Foragoodcritiqueofsuchafacileacceptanceofempowerment,seeSol
as(1996).
2. Empowerment was also a theme of the 1960s. What
distinguishes
contemporaryeffortsisthattheyaremorepartofthepoliticalmainstre
amratherthanthemanifestationofa counterculture.
3. The negative effects of deinstitutionalization on the mentally
ill may represent amisapplication of this ideology.
4. The idea of citizen engagement has been especially important
in recent Canadianreforms. For Germany, see Klein and
Schmaltz-Bruns (1997).
5. Thisargumentissimilartothebottom-
upversionofimplementationtheory,withitsargumentthatpolicysho
uldbemadeinawaythatiseasiesttoimplementratherthaninaway that
the “formators” desire (Linder & Peters, 1987).
6. This obviously is phrasing the relationship in the principal
agent framework; seeHorn (1995).
7. This brings to the fore some of the schizophrenia associated
with discretion inbureaucracy. We want high levels of
discretion when it might help us but argue for tight controls
when there is a chance of discretion being used against us.
8.
Onecouldargue,infact,thattheregulationswillbemoreoppressivegi
venthatfirmsor individuals will have to comply with a range of
different and even conflicting requirements.
9. In the long term, however, these coalitions may help mobilize
popular support forbureaucrats fighting cutbacks in their
budgets. Professional bureaucrats frequently challenge local
elected officials not directly but indirectly by mobilizing the
constituency that will suffer from the cutbacks (Goldsmith,
1990; Laffin, 1986).

23. 10. In some ways, these middle-level supervisors could be
described as intraorganizational street-level bureaucrats because
they relate via personal communication to those who are
affected by decisions made higher up in the organization. At the
same time, they are familiar with the complex work and
professional ideals of the street-level bureaucrats and can easily
identify and sympathize with their ideas.
11. The notion of “work better” is somewhat vague at times.
Certainly, empowermentcan lead to lower costs and potentially
to a more involved and contented workforce. On the other hand,
it is not clear that these organizations will necessarily produce
better objective decisions for the society as a whole.
12. The logic is not dissimilar to regulatory capture. If other
sources of political andorganizational support are minimized,
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28. Competent – 80%
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