Racial Discrimination and Street-Level Managers: Performance, Publicness, and Group Bias

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Oberfield, Zachary W.; Incantalupo, Matthew B.
• 署名单位: Haverford College; Yeshiva University
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3352
• DOI: 10.1111/puar.13376
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 1055-1070
• 关键词: Field experiments; charter schools; bureaucracy; welfare; GOVERNMENT; ACCOUNTABILITY; REPRESENTATION; cream; RACE

摘要

This article broadens our understanding of street-level governance by examining how citizen performance, organizational publicness, and group bias moderate racial discrimination among street-level managers (SLMs). We examine this topic with an experiment in which we requested enrollment information from public and charter school principals while randomly assigning a putative student's race and ability. As expected, SLMs discriminated based on race, and positive performance information mitigated this discrimination. Surprisingly, negative performance information also reduced discrimination. Turning to publicness, we find no evidence that less public organizations (charter schools) exacerbated anti-Black discrimination. Finally, we show that White SLMs discriminated against Black citizens. However, Black SLMs worked in more administratively difficult settings and, perhaps as a result, responded at lower rates; thus, Black citizens were equally likely to receive responses from White and Black SLMs. Therefore, improving access to public agencies may require representativeness and support for SLMs working in challenging organizational environments.