Discretion from a psychological perspective

Street-level bureaucrats – such as teachers, social workers and police officers – have to implement public policies. However, they are not simple machines implementing rules, but have opportunities to make their own decisions. In other words, they have autonomy, or discretion in their work. This chapter shows how a psychological perspective can be beneficial when investigating discretion. This is firstly illustrated using the concept of policy alienation. Many street-level bureaucrats feel alienated from public policies. When they perceive they do not have enough discretion to implement the policy or feel that a policy is meaningless for society and clients, they experience policy alienation. This attitude can furthermore lead to different types of behaviours. These behaviours can be classified using the notion of coping during public service delivery. Coping can be grouped in three types, namely: moving towards clients (for instance breaking rules for a client), moving away from clients (for instance by not answering emails for clients) and moving against clients (for instance by becoming aggressive to clients). We introduce the concepts of policy alienation and coping during public service delivery and end with future research directions for scholars interested in studying discretion from a psychological perspective.