Street-level bureaucrats' policy enactment. A case study on the influences of institutional and actor-centred factors on civic integration consultants' policy enactment
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2024-01-31
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en
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Lipsky’s theory of street-level bureaucracy is a widely employed theory to assess the influence of street-level bureaucrat’s policy delivery. Street-level bureaucrats enact policy through interactions with citizens, hereby they tend to develop their own response repertoire apropos limitations to their work setting like time shortage, high caseloads, etc. This can induce differences in street-level bureaucrats’ policy delivery. To address these differences, this thesis has analysed how institutional and actor-centred factors influence street-level bureaucrats’ policy enactment in terms of their policy interpretations and translations, i.e. doing policy. A typical case study has been conducted concentrating on the policy enactment of civic integration consultants tasked with the enforcement of the Dutch Civic Integration Act 2021. They coordinate newcomers’ integration, and, thereby, exercise considerable influence over newcomers’ civic integration. This suggests that these civic integration consultants are a primary example of street-level bureaucrats. This thesis helps to increase our knowledge of street-level bureaucrats to better understand the efficacy of policy-making. With the help of nine documents, three participant observations, and fourteen semi-structured interviews, qualitative content analysis has been conducted. Findings demonstrate that institutional and actor-centred factors influence civic integration consultants’ policy enactment differently. Some factors affect civic integration consultants’ policy interpretations or fuel a clash between different policy interpretations, whereas other factors predominantly affect civic integration consultants’ policy translations. These insights shed further light on how institutional and actor-centred factors influence street-level bureaucrats’ policy enactment, and highlight that the interplay between street-level bureaucrats' policy interpretations and translations require further consideration. Policy interpretations and translations are the missing link accounting for some differences in street-level bureaucrats’ policy enactment.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen