Street-level bureaucracy

Examples of Street-level bureaucracy in the following topics:

• Bureaucracies and Formal Groups

  • A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials who implements the rules, laws, and functions of their institution.
  • As opposed to bureaucrats carrying out "desk jobs," street-level bureaucracy is the subset of a public agency or government institution containing the individuals who carry out and enforce the actions required by laws and public policies.
  • Street-level bureaucracy is accompanied by the idea that these individuals vary the extents to which they enforce the rules and laws assigned to them.
  • The concept of street-level bureaucracy was first coined by Michael Lipsky in 1980, who argued that "policy implementation in the end comes down to the people who actually implement it".
  • Street-level bureaucrats include police officers, firefighters, and other individuals, who on a daily basis interact with regular citizens and provide the force behind the given rules and laws in their areas of expertise.

• Bureaucratization of Schools

  • Micro-level aggression can be subtler than outright discrimination like racial slurs.
  • In modern society, all formal organizations are, or likely will become, bureaucracies.
  • There are several positive aspects of bureaucracies.
  • Even after desegregation, black students faced intense racism in mixed schools, and minority students continue to face institutional racism and discrimination on the level of micro-interactions.
  • These needs formed the basis for school bureaucracies today.

• Integration Theory

  • Recently, some sociologists have been taking a different approach to sociological theory by employing an integrationist approach - combining micro- and macro-level theories to provide a comprehensive understanding of human social behavior (while these studies rarely cite Symbolic Interaction Theory, most of their models are based heavily upon Herbert Blumer's initial elaboration of Symbolic Interaction in relation to social institutions).
  • Ritzer proposes four highly interdependent elements in his sociological model: a macro-objective component (e.g., society, law, bureaucracy), a micro-objective component (e.g., patterns of behavior and human interaction), a macro-subjective component (e.g., culture, norms, and values), and a micro-subjective component (e.g., perceptions, beliefs).
  • This model is of particular use in understanding society because it uses two axes: one ranging from objective (society) to subjective (culture and cultural interpretation); the other ranging from the macro-level (norms) to the micro-level (individual level beliefs).
  • The model also shows that individual level values, beliefs, and behaviors influence macro-level culture.
  • This would indicate that there are multiple levels of influence involved in art tastes – both broad cultural norms and smaller level occupational norms in addition to personal preferences.

• Theories of Culture

  • ., society, law, bureaucracy), a micro-objective component (e.g., patterns of behavior and human interaction), a macro-subjective component (e.g., culture, norms, and values), and a micro-subjective component (e.g., perceptions, beliefs).
  • This model is of particular use in understanding the role of culture in sociological research because it presents two axes for understanding culture: one ranging from objective (society) to subjective (culture and cultural interpretation); the other ranging from the macro-level (norms) to the micro-level (individual level beliefs).
  • This model also posits that individual level values, beliefs, and behaviors can, in turn, influence the macro-level culture.
  • This would indicate that there are multiple levels of influence involved in art tastes – both broad cultural norms and smaller level occupational norms in addition to personal preferences.
  • According to Collins, cultural notions of race, class, gender, and sexuality may be used to explain and justify societal level patterns of oppression and privilege by allowing social beings to believe existing inequalities simply reflect the way things have always been.

• Hypotheses about two paired means or densities

  • In the section above on univariate statistics for networks, we noted that the density of the information exchange matrix for the Knoke bureaucracies appeared to be higher than the density of the monetary exchange matrix.
  • If we had a prior alternative hypothesis about the direction of the difference, we could use the one-tailed p level of .0052.

• Optimization by tabu search

  • Let's examine the Knoke bureaucracies information exchange network again, this time looking for automorphisms.
  • At this level of approximate equivalence, there are three classes - two individuals and one large group.

• Study Questions

  • Explain the differences among the "three levels of analysis" of graphs (individual, aggregate, whole).
  • Chrysler's research division is organized as a classical hierarchical bureaucracy with two branches (stylists, manufacturing) coordinated through group managers and a division manager.

• Global Crime

  • Global crime can refer to any organized crime that occurs at an international or transnational level.
  • Some espouse that all organized crime operates at an international level, though there is currently no international court capable of trying offences resulting from such activities (for example, the International Criminal Court's remit extends only to dealing with people accused of offences against humanity, such as genocide ).
  • This has led to the rise of global criminal organizations such as Mara Salvatrucha and the 18th Street gang.
  • Transnational Organized Crime is one of "The Ten Threats" warned by the High Level Threat Panel of the United Nations.

• New State Spaces

  • State power is not restricted to the national level.
  • New state spaces are evolving at both the local level (global cities) and the international level (the European Union).

• Income Distribution

  • The United States has a high level of income inequality, with a wide gap between the top and bottom brackets of earners.
  • Occupy Wall Street's mantra, "We are the 99%" points to what protesters see as starkly unequal distribution of income and wealth between the top 1% of earners and the rest of the population.
  • This graph illustrates the unequal distribution of income between groups with different levels of educational attainment.