公共行政中的街头官僚理论

Street-Level-Bureaucrat Theory in Public Administration

街头官僚作为最前线的政府工作人员,因其所拥有的自由裁量权而持有相当大的政策制定能力。街头官僚的这种特征早就被社会学家及其他研究者所关注,但"街头官僚"概念的提出及其理论的正式建立,则要归功于李普斯基。此后,街头官僚理论在摩尔等人那里得到部分修正和继续发展。在新的街头官僚理论中,信息革命似乎解决了传统街头官僚所面临的难题,但同时带来了新的滥用职权的可能。其中,官僚体制面临的最大挑战就是街头官僚的控制问题,这同时也是公共行政管理中的一个普遍性难题。

Street\|level bureaucrats are civil servants working at the bottom of governmental hierarchy. With the discretions they enjoy in policy implementation, street\|level bureaucrats actually are able to 'make' policy. Although sociologists had noticed these bureaucrats for a long time, it was Lipsky who corned the term and built a formal theory of street\|level bureaucrat. The theory of street\|level bureaucrat grew quickly since then, and has accumulated a large body of literature. While the recent information revolution seems to have solved many problems related to old type of street\|level bureaucrats, it is still possible for the new form of screen\|level bureaucrats or system\|level bureaucrats to abuse their power. The biggest question posed by street\|level bureaucrats is how to effectively control them, which is also one of the most difficult problems for public administration.