Clerical heretics: the importance of bureaucracy clerks in social policy implementation

Street-level bureaucrats, such as social workers, teachers and nurses, use their discretion to shape social policy implementation, often backed by their established professional status. However, not all bureaucrats are deemed professionals, and public service clerks—clerical bureaucrats—who perform routine tasks and enjoy limited discretion, can also play a crucial role in policy implementation. While lacking the legitimacy for decision-making autonomy that traditional professionals have, clerical bureaucrats’ residual discretion can be expanded through anticanonical tactics, whose rationales and purposes are subject to mixed or hybrid institutional pressures. Although scarcely researched, they can exert significant influence on social policy implementation, which increasingly relies on the work of clerks. This chapter locates clerical bureaucracies in the street-level struggle between managerialism and professionalism, postulates how they expand and use their discretion. It then discusses their future amidst deskilling and digitalisation trends, providing inputs for policymakers and proposing further avenues for research.