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The Space in the Rules: Bureaucratic Discretion in the Administration of Ontario Works

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2015

Stephanie Baker Collins
Stephanie Baker Collins*
Affiliation:
School of Social Work, McMaster University E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

One of the central lessons taken from the work of Michael Lipsky on street level bureaucracies is that street level bureaucrats make policy. Two resulting broad public policy concerns are the impact of street level decision making on public policy and the impact on citizens’ access to public services. This article reports on a study of the views of Ontario Works’ case managers on the nature of bureaucratic discretion in the setting of a highly rule bound provincial income assistance programme in Canada. The focus of this article is on case managers’ interaction with contradictory and complex policy directives. An argument is developed that in such a restrictive policy setting, meeting the goals of unswerving policy implementation and citizen access to public services may work at cross purposes.

Keywords

Bureaucratic discretionpolicy implementationOntario Works
Type
Articles
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 221 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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