ABSTRACT
In contemporary public administration literature, administrative discretion is a contested issue because it allows the unelected and insulated members of the bureaucracy to exercise political powers. Some scholars call for the elimination of discretion where possible and structured or confined in other cases. Others consider it not only inevitable but also an effective precondition for the existence of democratic governance. From these two contrasting views, a consensus has emerged: although it may pose an apparent threat to the democracy, “excising discretion from the bureaucracy is impossible”. In this paper, our focus is on discretion exercised by street-level bureaucrats. Relying on literature that identifies various factors shaping administrative discretion at the street level, we seek to develop a framework that explains how the interaction of these factors causes variations in the discretion exercised by street-level bureaucrats. At the same time, we explore the nature of variation of discretion in the context of developing countries and ask whether the identified factors that shape discretion are sufficient to explain these variations.
