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Existing research on bureaucratic encounters typically studies how bureaucrats' and clients' characteristics influence frontline decision making. How social interactions between street-level bureaucrats and between officials and citizens could directly affect case-related decisions largely remains an underexplored field of study, despite the fact that new forms of governance introduce social dynamics in the form of trust and collaboration as tools to increase legitimacy. Relying on in-depth qualitative data of the Belgian labor inspectorate and the Dutch tax authorities, this study scrutinizes how decisions about cases could be affected by their immediate social context.

Existing research on bureaucratic encounters typically studies how bureaucrats' and clients' characteristics influence frontline decision making. How social interactions between street-level bureaucrats and between officials and citizens could directly affect case-related decisions largely remains an underexplored field of study, despite the fact that new forms of governance introduce social dynamics in the form of trust and collaboration as tools to increase legitimacy. Relying on in-depth qualitative data of the Belgian labor inspectorate and the Dutch tax authorities, this study scrutinizes how decisions about cases could be affected by their immediate social context.

Drawing on status characteristics and double standards theory, this study explores how social categories may affect the standards tax officials use in evaluating citizen-clients' trustworthiness, leading to differential evaluation. Whereas the street-level bureaucracy literature mainly focuses on the direct effect of social categories on officials' judgments, this study shows how stereotyping in the public encounter could be much subtler and more pervasive than is hitherto studied. Based on semistructured interviews containing 40 stories of tax officials who inspect entrepreneurs' tax returns, this study suggests that similar signals may indeed be interpreted differently for different social groups.

AbstractDrawing on street‐level discrimination literature and representative bureaucracy literature, we theorise that bureaucrats from social groups that have a lower status in society are less inclined to discriminate in evaluating citizen‐clients than bureaucrats from higher status groups. We conducted a 2 × 2 vignette survey experiment among bureaucrats in Dutch street‐level organisations (N = 3109) in various organisational domains. The study shows mixed findings. We found evidence for discrimination and so‐called reverse discrimination, revealing that bureaucrats ascribe more competence to higher status citizens, but lower trust at the same time. We did not find bureaucrats' own status background to matter in their biased evaluations.

AbstractThis article provides scholars studying frontline judgements an analytical framework—the signaling perspective—that could be used to examine how street‐level bureaucrats evaluate unobservable citizen‐client properties. It proposes to look not only at the kind of signals and cues officials gather, but also at the interpretive frames used to make sense of them. This offers a valuable contribution to the street‐level bureaucracy literature, which largely focuses on explaining discretionary decision making by looking at the influence of officials' personal preferences or client characteristics, but less on officials' interpretive frameworks to make sense of client characteristics. The analytical framework is illustrated by applying it to existing literature on trustworthiness judgements of social workers and police officers. Different interpretive frames were found from which frontline officials interpret citizen characteristics as signals. The article concludes by offering several avenues for future research.

AbstractThis special issue investigates the impact of populism and democratic backsliding on street‐level bureaucracy (SLB) across various countries and contexts. The cooccurrence of populism and democratic erosion significantly alters public administration, particularly affecting public sector employees responsible for policy implementation. This issue explores how populist strategies differ in their application to SLBs as compared to the Civil Service, the distinctive challenges SLBs encounter due to populism and democratic backsliding, and the pressures exacerbated during crises. By examining studies from Brazil, Mexico, Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Switzerland, and the United States, the papers highlight the interplay between political pressures and frontline service delivery. The findings underscore the necessity of understanding the relationship between democratic backsliding, populism, and SLBs, proposing a research agenda to further explore these dynamics and their implications for public administration and policy implementation.

In line with psychological and economic discrimination theories, street‐level bureaucracy studies show a direct effect of citizen characteristics on officials' judgements, or show how street‐level bureaucrats employ stereotypical reasoning in making decisions. Relying on sociological double standards theory, this study hypothesizes that citizen‐clients' status characteristics influence officials' evaluations not only directly, but also indirectly and more pervasively by influencing the interpretation of other signals. By means of a policy‐capturing study among Dutch frontline tax officials, this study takes a first step in testing double standards propositions in the context of official–citizen encounters. The findings support only some hypotheses, but indicate that citizen‐clients' level of education could serve as a moderating context affecting the interpretation of cues. The article provides important theoretical and methodological guidelines for future research on stereotyping at the front line.

Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach, we conducted a systematic review of 58 public administration studies of organizational socialization. Organizational socialization is the process of mutual adaptation between an organization and its new members. Our findings demonstrate a growing but geographically disparate interest in this issue. Public administration studies contribute to this research area with novel insights into the determinants of organizational socialization and its effects on employees' public service motivation, Eurocrats' support of supranational institutions, person–organization fit, and differences in the socialization of male and female public employees. The review also shows that the effects of organizational socialization on the homogenization of employees' attitudes should not be exaggerated, especially relative to other homogenizing factors such as attraction or selection effects. The reviewed articles are methodologically eclectic, with a recent but growing interest in longitudinal designs. There are also weaknesses in the operationalization of organizational socialization. We conclude with an agenda for future studies on organizational socialization in public administration research.