Street-level Bureaucrats and New Modes of Governance: How conflicting roles affect the implementation of the Swiss Ordinance on Veterinary Medicinal Products

Abstract

Lipsky's seminal concept of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) focuses on their role as public servants. However, in the course of new modes of governance, private actors have gained an additional role as implementation agents. We explore the logic of private SLBs during the implementation of the Swiss Ordinance on Veterinary Medicinal Products (OVMP) where veterinarians are simultaneously implementing agents, policy addressees, and professionals with economic interests. We argue that, because of contradictory reference systems, it is problematic for the output performance if an actor is simultaneously the target group of a policy and its implementing agent.

Key words:

• Street-level bureaucrats
• new modes of governance
• implementation

Notes

1. As opposed to organizations or networks or other forms of semi-private or societal actors.

2. The cantons Uri, Schwyz, Nid-, and Obwalden, as well as Appenzell Innerrhoden and Ausserrhoden, share one public veterinarian. Zug did not participate in the interviews, but Liechtenstein is subject to the OVMP and treated as a ‘canton’ henceforth.

3. From 2004 to 2010, only 6.24 per cent of Swiss livestock farms have been checked on average (ISVET). There are no substantial differences between years.

4. We focus on economic aspects because they are a particularly revealing feature of the implementation arrangement. However, other factors affect the private veterinarians’ output performance; for instance, they share a sense of being field actors with the farmers and they feel they know best what the relevant field measures are.

5. This kind of dynamic is described by Lipsky (1980: 56) using the example of doctors which become much more solicitous when patients have medical alternatives on which to draw.

6. We do not preclude the possibility that the introduction of market principles in the vein of New Public Management reforms may have similar effects.