Research On Street-level Bureaucrat's Action From The Perspective Of Order

Street-level bureaucrat's action reflects the holistic image of social structure and social institution,they supply empirical basis to social members on judging social order in specific scene.Social order is an empirical fact which is felt and evaluated by individual.Therefore,social members experience “social order” via multi-domain and multi-level “orders”.Participants in an interaction must act orderly so that the interaction can be sustained.The orders in street-level bureaucrat's action should comply with good social order.So orders are the mediator between street-level bureaucrat's action and social order.Former researches on street-level bureaucrats concerned discretion in policy implemention,they showed us a negative view on the relation between street-level bureaucrats' action and social order.The bug is they ignored the influence of “orders”.It is difficult to describe the process of interaction as well as orders in action,however,Conversation Analysis(CA)is an excellent method,it can capture details and reduce settings via corpus transcription.With the assistance of observation,CA provides the methodology to this research.The research questions are as follow.What do street-level bureaucrat's action look like in specific institution? What has street-level bureaucrat done to make action seem orderliness,and how to achieve that? What is the relationship between orders and social order? What are the effects on social order from street-level bureaucrat's action?We can recognize street-level bureaucrat as the idea type while understand street-level bureaucrat's action in local context via comparative analysis.The group which had different nominations acted the similar role in the continuous history.There is different extension of China's street-level bureaucrats in different eras from Qing Dynasty to nowadays.They can be called “Xuli” in broad sense in Qing Dynasty,section officer and staff at bottom agency in ROC period,and cadre whom interact with the public at the basic level in PRC before reform and opening-up.All of them were designed for saving China from extinction and struggle for survival,they should make efforts on social mobilization and drawing resources.Lastly,street-level bureaucrat's action is considered as terminal strength of steadying social structure,consolidating institutions,and leading social action(social affecting/ soziales Wirken).Therefore,China can be the research field as there are street-level bureaucrats in our country.The achievement of order can embody the process of interplay among “structure-institution-action”,it will be the analytical frame of our research.Modernization of governance request that street-level bureaucrat's action should obey some normative imperatives.In sum,we can analyze street-level bureaucrat's action from the identity construction derived from social structure,accountability requested by institution,and emotion entrainment brought by social action(social affecting/ soziales Wirken).Identity construction of street-level bureaucrat seeks to keep superiority of structural identity in interactional context,it is useful to coping with the work in hand so as to protect employment security.It includes power dimension and status dimension in identity construction.Identity construction of street-level bureaucrat may infringe statutory rights of client,involving beneficial right,right-to-know as well as participation right.The accountability of street-level bureaucrat's action means that the possibility of describing,reporting and legitimizing action in street-level administrative interaction.There are four types of account,all of them cite institutions to make action accountable in some degree.Legal system-based accounts rely on laws and regulations,policy-based accounts depend on policy,task-based accounts aim at completing institutional tasks,collusion-based accounts means the cooperate between street-level bureaucrats and clients whereas break the formal institutions.They contains crisis of violating the formal system even though each of the four types can make street-level bureaucrat's action accountable.As social action(social affecting/ soziales Wirken),street-level bureaucrat's action must affect others virtually.It means initiating the relevant conscious experience whose appearance is emotion.The emotion entrainment is the medium of social action(social affecting/ soziales Wirken),people get experience via it and seek for maximizing emotion energy(EE).We can know the state of emotion entrainment by measuring individual EE,then we can evaluate the social solidarity between individuals.Positive emotion entrainment is good for social solidarity,the neutral one doesn't hurt social solidarity in the short term but damages the latter one in long time,negative emotion entrainment destroys social solidarity.We pursue the solidarity between street-level bureaucrats and client,however,the truth is that the maximum strategy of EE in street-level bureaucrats' action will ruin social solidarity probably.In sum,street-level bureaucrats maintain orders in specific contexts which make sure the priority of their own identity,resources for accounting,and emotional experiences.Street-level bureaucrat's action shows us a conservative orientation in interaction.In a weak sense,we may consider street-level bureaucrat's action is maintaining the current social order.However,they ignore the contents of the social order.“Structural dilemma of functionalization of everyday life”,institutional contradiction in “controlling approach” and limitation of individual action caused by “goal orientation” can explain the above phenomena.Therefore,there is a gap between contextual orders and social order.Responsibility is the foundation which can bridge the divided.If we want to have a better social order in modernization of governance,we should make street-level bureaucrats take personal responsibility.It means they will suffer the consequences of their own actions,not the politician,manager,let alone the citizens.There are two aspects to consider on improving street-level bureaucrats' action.On one hand,we should consider the distinctiveness between America and China as well as ancient times and contemporary.On the other hand,we should protect the rights of clients,set up the authority of formal institutions,and promote the social solidarity between street-level bureaucrats and client in street-level administrative interaction by taking personal responsibility.To specific subject,public administration can be seen as instrument,career or job.All of social members,both elites and the masses,should take part in the process for improving street-level bureaucrat's action.