Government and Policy
Why Do Conservatives Love Government Red Tape?
New research shows how ideology and party relate to administrative burdens
By: Elizabeth Bell, Wesley Wehde, and Ani Ter-Mkrtchyan
If you’ve been paying attention to national headlines, you know the idealist notion of separating politics from public administration is more fiction than fact. From violations of the Hatch Act to unlawful police use of force against racial justice protestors, our current events have made one thing unequivocally clear — despite our desire for bureaucrats to be guided by non-partisan professionalism, politics can often prevail.
That’s the takeaway from our recently published study examining a key player in policy implementation: street-level bureaucrats, the empowered citizen-agents who wield the discretionary power to determine who gets what, when, and how.
School guidance counselors may not be the first image that comes to mind when you imagine a politically motivated street-level bureaucrat. We often hear more about police officers, especially in this moment of racial reckoning. But school guidance counselors hold the key to an important gateway of opportunity for low-income and racially minoritized students — college financial aid.
Going into our research, our goal was to better understand how school guidance counselors wielded that key, either as gatekeepers that reinforced barriers to access or as advocates that break down administrative burdens embedded in our financial aid system. We walked away with some striking findings about the role of political ideology in policy implementation.
In partnership with the state agency, we conducted a state-wide survey to examine how school guidance counselors implemented reforms enacted by the legislature that increased burdens on low-income students in the application process for Oklahoma’s Promise, the state means-tested tuition-free college program. These reforms included additional income verification checks, citizenship verification requirements, and academic requirements, all of which were in the hands of school guidance counselors to administer in the certification of student compliance.
We found that supposedly neutral bureaucrats were motivated by political ideology instead of professional standards and expert training.
On one hand, conservative counselors were more supportive of policies that created additional hurdles for impoverished students, like adding annual income verification checks and citizenship documentation requirements.
The more conservative the counselor, the more likely they were to see themselves as gatekeepers, ensuring that undeserving students did not “cheat the system” and gain access to program. Perceptions of client deservingness were particularly important to conservative counselors, who viewed administrative hurdles as weeding out undocumented immigrants and students who were not willing to work hard to gain access to government benefits.
Counselors identifying as politically liberal took an opposite approach, in which they proactively tried to reduce barriers to participation and improve equity in program access. Liberal counselors were less supportive of burdensome policies and saw these policies as counterproductive to the goal of Oklahoma’s Promise program. These counselors expressed anger over what they viewed as the state denying deserving students, like high achieving DACA students, access to financial aid that would unlock educational opportunities and transform the lives of disadvantaged youth.
Our follow-up analysis demonstrates that these findings extend beyond simply attitudes towards burden. Political partisanship of counselors also translates to differences in observed student outcomes. This follow up analysis finds that the proportion of income-eligible students that gain access to Oklahoma’s Promise is significantly lower in schools with counselors who identify with the Republican party. The takeaway of this research is that partisanship and ideology shape both the use of discretionary power by school guidance counselors and student access to the promise of higher education.
Actors like school guidance counselors wield the power to unlock opportunities by going above and beyond to support impoverished students and families in burdensome applications for transformational public programs. They also wield the power to block access to these opportunities. Our work adds to the body of evidence that finds ideological bias drives beliefs and discretionary decisions by street level bureaucrats in their day-to-day implementation of public programs. This is concerning not only for achieving democratic accountability but also for ensuring fair and equal treatment of clients by street level bureaucrats.
A key challenge for scholars and public managers moving forward is identifying mechanisms that can reduce the influence of individual political beliefs in the use of discretionary power. Today, the development of clear-cut standard operating procedures (SOPs) and implementation manuals could to prevent arbitrary decisions rooted in individual political beliefs.
In fact, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education has responded to the findings of this research and to a high-profile case of a counselor wrongfully denying a student access to Oklahoma’s Promise by establishing uniform standards when certifying student compliance with conduct requirements. Efforts like these to establish professional standards and guide the use of discretion may be key in advancing social equity.
