Michael Lipsky (born April 13, 1940) is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, a public policy institution based in New York with offices in Washington, D.C., and Boston. He was a program officer at the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a $25,000 (about $550,000 in 2023) gift from Edsel Ford. ...

after serving as a professor of political science at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

. In 1998, Lipsky was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. He is well known in the field of

public administration Public administration, or public policy and administration refers to "the management of public programs", or the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day",Kettl, Donald and James Fessler. 2009. ''The Politics of the ...

for his classic book about street-level bureaucracy.

Street-level bureaucracy

The concept of street-level bureaucracy was popularized by Michael Lipsky in 1980. He argued that "policy implementation in the end comes down to the people who actually implement it".View summary.
/ref> He argued that state employees such as

police The police are Law enforcement organization, a constituted body of Law enforcement officer, people empowered by a State (polity), state with the aim of Law enforcement, enforcing the law and protecting the Public order policing, public order ...

and

social workers Social work is an academic discipline and practice-based profession concerned with meeting the basic needs of individuals, families, groups, communities, and society as a whole to enhance their individual and collective well-being. Social work ...

should be seen as part of the "policy-making community" and as exercisers of

political power In political science, power is the ability to influence or direct the actions, beliefs, or conduct of actors. Power does not exclusively refer to the threat or use of force (coercion) by one actor against another, but may also be exerted thro ...

. Lipsky identified several problems with street-level bureaucracy, including "the problem of limited resources, the continuous negotiation that is necessary in order to make it seem like one is meeting targets, and the relations with (nonvoluntary) clients". However, some commentators have challenged Lipsky's model. Tony Evans and John Harris argue that "the proliferation of rules and regulations should not automatically be equated with greater control over professional discretion; paradoxically, more rules may create more discretion." They also argue that the exercise of professional discretion by street-level bureaucrats is not inherently "bad", but can be seen as an important professional attribute.

Selected works

*1970: ''Protest in City Politics: Rent Strikes, Housing and the Urban Poor'', (Chicago: Rand McNally) *1980: ''Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service'' *1993: ''Nonprofits for Hire: The Welfare State in the Age of Contracting'' (with Steven R. Smith; Harvard University Press) *2010: ''Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service'', 30th Anniversary Expanded Edition (Russell Sage Foundation)

References

American political scientists 1940 births Living people MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty {{US-polisci-bio-stub