Raone J., »Hybridity, institutional logics and modernization of public services : Revisiting Lipsky at the regulatory front-lines » (ST 2)

Raone J., »Hybridity, institutional logics and modernization of public services : Revisiting Lipsky at the regulatory front-lines » (ST 2)

Julien Raone (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgique)

This paper questions the impact of the modernization of public services and the influence of NPM-based reforms on street-level bureaucracy in charge of risk regulation. Adopting an institutional logics perspective, it revisits two essential couples of concepts brought in by Michael Lipsky. Reviewing discretion and control, it argues that the focus of managerial reforms does not reside in the control of discretionary street-level activities but in the regulation of subjectivities. Reinterpreting dilemmas and coping mechanisms, it suggests that front-line officials are torn apart in the middle hybrid institutional arrangements made of competing logics, and engage with them through ethics, reflexivity and self-creation. Shifting the frame of classical debates on discretion at street-level, it associates this situation of hybridity and ambivalence with the experience of modernity in the public sector. Examining the case of the inspection services in the sector of Food Safety, such a reading of these Lipskian classics opens up a new research agenda presenting institutional logics and hybridity as two crucial challenges for the management of Modern Street-level Bureaucracy.

Section thématique 2 : Crise de la démocratie et nouveau management public – Discours, pratiques, instruments
Session 1 : Entre injonction, valeurs invoquées et pratiques et valeurs traduites dans la mise en œuvre : la réalité du NPM et les réactions des acteurs, jeudi 10 avril 2014, 14h00-16h30