DISCRETION AND AUTONOMY: depicting key-concepts for studies on bureaucracy

A deep comprehension of public policy implementation processes, as well as the transformations in policy models, have brought the bureaucracy and the context of its actions to the center of many public policy studies. Since... [ view full abstract ]

A deep comprehension of public policy implementation processes, as well as the transformations in policy models, have brought the bureaucracy and the context of its actions to the center of many public policy studies. Since the development of theories about street level bureaucracy, the bureaucrat is considered the central actor to understand the results of a policy. His role of adapting the actions to the contextual circumstances is seen as crucial to the institutional efficiency. These ways of thinking bureaucracy bring up the necessity of new analytical models that are capable of interpreting bureaucratic action and the multiple roles it plays in different contexts.
Two concepts take center stage in this debate: discretion and autonomy. Both concepts are widely used to characterize the bureaucrat’s actions that goes beyond the principal-agent relationship. Nevertheless, they are commonly treated as practical synonyms, without a critical questioning about its conceptual differences and analytical implications. Our work is located specifically in this theoretical gap. Our aim is to develop a critical analysis of the concepts of discretion and autonomy, as well as to comprehend its implications in terms of empirical studies about bureaucracy. We map the political science, public administration and organizations literatures that historically deal with both concepts, their different usages and analytical consequences. Thus, our study consists in a theoretical analysis that seeks a conceptual refining of the literature about implementation of public policy and state bureaucracy.
We first present the literature of discretion in bureaucracy and its main topics and methodological approaches. Then we map the emergence of the concept of autonomy in Political Science, from neo-institutionalism to studies about institutional activism. We finally develop a comparison between both concepts and its main approaches and ideas. Some of our conclusions are that discretion is directly related to rules and laws, whereas autonomy is associated with the notion of legitimacy. While discretion has a clear contractual dimension, autonomy has a dimension of power, which brings up notions of creativity, institutional change and influence to the analysis. In terms of empirical approach, discretion studies focus mainly on interpretations, adaptations and subjectivities that characterize the bureaucracy’s actions, whilst studies of autonomy seek to understand actions that might extrapolate the limits of the rules, or even change them. We conclude, then, that discretion and autonomy are central concepts of the literature about bureaucracy that aim to understand public policy implementation within different cultural and social contexts. Yet they need theoretical improvement and greater clarity in methodological and analytical terms.