When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency

353 Pages·2017·2.52 MB·English

by  Bernardo Zacka

When the State Meets the Street

When the State Meets the Street
Public Ser vice and Moral Agency
Bernardo Zacka
The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press
cambridge, mas sa chu setts
london, england
2017
Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
First printing
Interior design by Dean Bornstein
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Zacka, Bernardo, 1983– author.
Title: When the state meets the street : public ser vice and moral agency /
Bernardo Zacka.
Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017005846 | ISBN 9780674545540 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Civil service— Moral and ethical aspects— Northeastern States. |
Municipal officials and employees— Northeastern States. | Local government—
Moral and ethical aspects— Northeastern States. | Northeastern States—
Officials and employees.
Classification: LCC JF1601 .Z34 2017 | DDC 172/.2— dc23
LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2017005846
Jacket design: Graciela Galup
Jacket art: John Cumming/Getty Images
For Marc and Yolande

Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Street- Level Discretion 33
Chapter 2: Three Pathologies
The Indifferent, the Enforcer, and the Caregiver 66
Chapter 3: A Gymnastics of the Self
Coping with the Everyday Pressures of Street- Level Work 111
Chapter 4: When the Rules Run Out
Informal Taxonomies and Peer- Level Accountability 152
Chapter 5: Impossible Situations
On the Breakdown of Moral Integrity at the
Front Lines of Public Ser vice 200
Conclusion 240
Notes 261
Bibliography 303
Acknowl edgments 325
Index 329

Preface
I first encountered the state at checkpoints. Lebanon in the 1990s had no
shortage of agencies to staff them. The occupying Syrian Army, the Lebanese
Armed Forces, and the country’s often- competing security agencies— the
Internal Security Forces, the General Security, and the State Security— all
had outposts on the street.
When crossing a checkpoint, you come face- to- face with an armed
officer who remains largely inscrutable. The encounter is not conducive to
conversation. It is also riddled with uncertainty. From your seat in the car,
you can never know for sure what the officer— almost always a he—is on the
lookout for, nor what exactly the scope of his prerogatives are. And the very
last t hing you want to do is appear to question his authority by trying to
find out.
The experience begins with a well- rehearsed sequence of movements:
you slow the car down, turn on the dome light, lower the volume on the
radio, and put on an earnest face. What happens next is a highly discre-
tionary and personal interaction: eyes meet, a searching look is thrown at
the vehicle, a question or two is sometimes asked, and a judgment is made
regarding who passes and who doesn’t. The outcome is variable and
hinges, or so it seems, on contingent circumstances: on how the encounter
unfolds, and on who happens to be stationed t here that day.
This way of experiencing the state, through a personal encounter with
a low- ranking official endowed with discretionary power, is not limited to
the realm of security, nor is it exclusive to Lebanon. It is a daily real ity, in
developing countries as well as in advanced liberal democracies, for the
millions of people who depend on public ser vices, and for those who—
often through no fault of their own— regularly come into contact with law
enforcement.
Years l ater when I began my gradu ate studies in po liti cal theory these
personal encounters with frontline officials w ere, to my surprise, no-
where to be found. Although they loomed large in my imagination of the
state, they seemed to have dis appeared b ehind layers of abstraction. The
modern state, I learned, was impersonal, its agents (in princi ple, if not in
ix .