Social Equities and Inequities in Practice: Street-Level Workers as Agents and Pragmatists

Street-level workers' judgments, decisions, and actions touch on questions of social equity, a dominant theme of H. George Frederickson's deep contributions to public administration scholarship. Based on empirical work, the authors question the dominant implementation-control-discretion narrative and suggest an alternative framing based on the concepts of agency and pragmatic improvisation. Street-level workers are often conservers of institutional norms and practices, but their work surfaces tensions between practice and the goals of social equity.