Captured by bureaucracy: street-level professionals mediating past, present, and future knowledge

This chapter explores how street-level professionals can function as mediators between bureaucratic and tacit (Scott, 1998) knowledge in participatory planning processes. Lipsky’s classic study of street-level bureaucrats (1980) reveals how frontline workers are embedded in the logic of bureaucracy on the one hand and the messy reality of the street-level on the other. Street-level workers are required to translate the rational norms of bureaucracy – which are guided by accountability, quotas, and transparency – to the norms and practices of everyday life at the street-level – where they need experience, tacit knowledge, and improvisation. In Lipsky’s work, street-level bureaucrats are typically teachers, police officers, social workers, and court officials (Lipsky, 1980: 3). In this chapter, I propose to also understand policy makers and planners who have the responsibility to organize a deliberative or participatory process as street-level professionals. I use the term ‘professional’ to include the growing body of experts who, because of a growing demand for participatory planning, are in the unique position to bridge plans of the local government with plans of the community.