Good Intentions, Hollow Systems: The Frontline Struggle for Equity

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Ofek Edri-Peer
August 15, 2025

Social equity has become a key value in public administration research and practice. It is embedded in strategic plans, discussed in conference keynotes and increasingly referenced in public service mandates. Yet for many frontline workers, the street-level bureaucrats who serve at the interface between the citizens and the state, social equity remains a utopian ideal, something out of reach. While equity dominates the discourse, in practice systems often fail to provide the resources, flexibility or support needed to actually implement it. As a result, public frontline workers are often forced to shoulder the burden of equity on their own.

Our recent systematic review of empirical studies on street-level coping mechanisms pointed to a problematic pattern. When serving vulnerable populations, frontline workers frequently use their own personal resources or search for long-term solutions outside the formal systems in which they operate. These are not officially supported tools. These are coping strategies that frontline workers adopt when facing difficult situations, often out of commitment to their profession and compassion for their clients. These mechanisms fill institutional voids. Instead of equity being delivered by design, it is improvised by necessity.

Take, for example, a teacher who provides free after-school tutoring to a student from a vulnerable background or a social worker who spends weeks pushing to revise an administrative form that places an unfair burden on people experiencing homelessness. These actions reflect deep ethical commitments to fairness, dignity and care. But they also indicate institutional abandonment. When equity rests on personal sacrifice, it is not a system-level solution – it is a workaround.

In the short term, such efforts may actually help individual clients. But over time, they place an unsustainable emotional and cognitive burden on workers, creating burnout, inconsistency and unequal service delivery. Worse, they cover the deeper problem: public institutions are not structured to deliver equity systematically. Instead, they rely on the goodwill, interpretation and resilience of the individuals working at the frontlines.

The challenge becomes even more pronounced in developing countries where chronic resource scarcity and fragile systems severely limit what frontline workers have to offer. Our analysis found that in these contexts, frontline workers are more likely to engage in behaviors that distance them from citizens, what we call “moving away” or even “moving against” citizens. Rather than finding ways to help, overwhelmed workers may ration services, display frustration or avoid interaction altogether. This is not a failure of ethics, it is a failure of support.

These patterns in the academic literature point to a troubling truth: in environments where the need for equity is most urgent, the capacity to enact it is often weakest. While this is especially visible in under-resourced systems, it is also relevant in contexts like the United States where public service environments may be shaped by competing priorities, bureaucratic constraints and structural inequities. Even in higher-income settings, frontline workers are frequently asked to do more with less, to serve equitably while operating within systems that lack the flexibility, time or support to make that service sustainable or effective. Frontline workers are expected to represent public values yet are often placed in impossible positions, carrying the weight of institutional shortcomings on their own.

This should be a wake-up call for public administration leaders, policymakers and reformers. If we want equity to move from rhetoric to routine, we must stop treating it as an abstract value and start embedding it in institutional practice. We must begin by talking about it consistently and meaningfully with those on the frontlines. Too often, routine service delivery is focused on survival: managing caseloads, following procedures and responding to the most immediate and urgent demands. In such environments, there is little time or space to reflect on the values that are meant to guide the work. Reintroducing conversations about equity is not a luxury, it is a critical first step toward change. It means recognizing the emotional labor involved in public service and offering mechanisms for reflection, supervision and resilience. It also requires rethinking performance systems so they prioritize equitable outcomes, not just procedural compliance or quantity. Above all, we must build structures that allow equity-oriented practices to be part of the job, not extra work done in the margins.

Importantly, this is not a critique of individual frontline workers. In fact, the evidence shows just how deeply many of them care. But personal effort should not be the foundation of equitable service. It is admirable, yes, but it is also unsustainable and unjust. If we continue to build systems that fail to support frontline implementation of equity, we are simply outsourcing it. We are asking individuals to carry what institutions cannot or will not hold. Equity must not depend on how much a worker is willing to give. It must be built into how the system is designed to serve.

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Author: Ofek Edri-Peer is a PhD candidate in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa and a Founder’s Fellow of class 2025-2026. Her research interests include street-level bureaucracy, procedural justice and social equity. Her latest work has been published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Public Management Review, Public Administration and The American Review of Public. [email protected]

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