Compare methods

	Street-Level Bureaucracy Analysis	Co-Production Assessment
Field	Public Administration	Public Administration
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1980	1996
Originator	Michael Lipsky	Elinor Ostrom
Type	Qualitative frontline-implementation analysis	Service-relationship assessment framework
Seminal source	Lipsky, M. (1980). Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN: 9780871545442	Ostrom, E. (1996). Crossing the Great Divide: Coproduction, Synergy, and Development. World Development, 24(6), 1073–1087.
Aliases	Frontline Discretion Analysis, Street-Level Discretion Study, Lipsky Street-Level Bureaucracy Framework	Coproduction Analysis, Citizen Co-Production Assessment, Service Co-Production Evaluation
Related	4	4
Summary	Street-level bureaucracy analysis examines how frontline public employees — teachers, police officers, caseworkers, benefits clerks and nurses — exercise discretion when they deliver services directly to citizens. Coined by Michael Lipsky in his 1980 book Street-Level Bureaucracy, the approach argues that the decisions these workers make under conditions of scarce resources and conflicting demands effectively become public policy. The method studies how routines, coping strategies and informal rationing shape what citizens actually receive, often diverging from the policy written by legislators. Its goal is to explain the gap between policy as designed and policy as experienced at the counter.	Co-production assessment analyses how public services are produced jointly by professional providers and the citizens, clients or communities who use them, rather than delivered to passive recipients. The concept was developed by Elinor Ostrom and colleagues and sharpened in her 1996 article, which argued that the inputs of "regular producers" such as teachers, police or doctors and those of citizen "co-producers" are often complementary, so that neither can produce the service well alone. The framework assesses what citizens contribute, how their inputs combine with professional inputs, and the conditions under which this combination creates synergy. Its purpose is to identify and strengthen the joint production at the heart of many public services.