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Administrative Centralization and Bureaucratic Responsiveness: Evidence from the Food Stamp Program

Delegation of administrative authority is commonly thought to involve a tradeoff between the discretion necessary for bureaucratic effectiveness and democratic responsiveness. In many contexts, however, discretion and responsiveness go hand-in-hand: Street-level bureaucrats may adapt their behavior to accommodate local norms and values, even when implementing identical statutory language. I argue that this type of bureaucratic adaptation can explain local variation in participation rates in the national food stamp program. By exploiting between-state differences in the level at which the program is administered, I further show that administrative centralization does not appear to moderate such responsiveness, which is high across institutional settings. Using data on application denial rates for a subset of these states, I offer additional evidence that some of the county-level variation in program participation is a product of decisions made by local case workers. Together, these findings offer important insights on the institutional preconditions for bureaucratic responsiveness and control.