3. Negative entropy

一、英文題(25%) 請用中文作答,勿逐句翻譯,勿抄原文。 Please (1) summarize the material (15%) and (2) explain why Lipsky argues that "street-level bureaucrats implicitly mediate aspects of the constitutional relationship of citizens to the state". (10%) Public service workers currently occupy a critical position in American society. Although they are not normally regarded as low-level employees, the actions of most public service workers actually constitute the services "delivered" by government. Moreover, when taken together the individual decisions of these workers becomes, or add up to, agency policy. Whether government policy is to deliver "goods"-such as welfare or public housing-or to confer status--such as "criminal" or "mentally ill"--the discretionary actions of public employees are the benefits and sanctions of government programs or determine access to government rights and benefits. Most citizens encounter government (if they encounter it at all) not through letters to congressmen or by attendance at schoo! board meetings but through their teachers and their children's teachers and through the policeman on the corner or in the patrol car. Each encounter of this kind represents an instance of policy delivery. Public service workers who interact directly with citizens in the course of their jobs, and who have substantial discretion in the execution of their work are called street-level bureaucrats in this study. Public service agencies that employ a significant number of street level bureaucrats in proportion to their work force are called street-level bureaucracies. Typical strect-level bureaucrats are teachers, police oficers and other law enforcement personnel, social workers, judges, public lawyers and other court officers, health workers, and many other public employees who grant access to government programs and provide services within them. People who work in these jobs tend to have much in common because they experience analytically similar work conditions. Street-level bureaucrats dominate political controversies over public services for two general reasons. First, debates about the proper scope and focus of governmental services are essentially debates over the scope and function of these public employees. Second, street-level bureaucrats have considerable impact on people's lives. This impact may be of several kinds. They socialize citizens to expectations of government services and a place in the political community. They determine the eligibility of citizens for government benefits and sanctions. They oversee the treatment (the service) citizens receive in those programs. Thus, in a sense street-level bureaucrats implicitly mediate aspects of the constitutional relationsbip of citizens to the state. In short, they hold the keys to a dimension of citizenship. Reference:節錄自Lipsky,M.(1980).Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services (pp.1-2). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

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3. Negative entropy

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