A 2020 International Review of Administrative Sciences article by Golan-Nadir, Cohen and Rubin proposed a mechanism by which citizens' dissatisfaction with how street-level bureaucrats exercise discretion in implementing a policy leads to the creation of a non-governmental alternative supply of the service: alternative supply emerges when three conditions hold jointly — citizens' dissatisfaction with policy implementation, street-level bureaucrats' monopoly over implementation, and citizens' perception that participation and voice channels are blocked. The mechanism was established only through a single case study, Israeli marriage registration and the Tzohar alternative marriage-service organization, and the authors present it as a preliminary framework. Follow-up work has studied adjacent dissatisfaction-driven responses — vigilantism, citizens' self-help, local governments' 'do-it-yourself' provision, and co-production in a second Israeli religion-based case — but no study tests the three-condition mechanism outside the original setting, adjudicates whether the conjunction of conditions is necessary, or empirically examines whether dissatisfied street-level bureaucrats themselves act as entrepreneurs. Determining these scope conditions is the open problem.

Background

Public services are commonly delivered not by managers or politicians but by 'street-level bureaucrats' — front-line public employees such as clerks, teachers, social workers, and police officers who interact directly with citizens and inevitably exercise discretion, deciding how formal rules are applied to individual cases. How such workers use their discretion shapes citizens' experience of policy and their satisfaction with it. A complementary tradition studies how citizens respond to unsatisfactory services, building on the economist Albert Hirschman's exit–voice–loyalty triad, in which dissatisfied clients may leave the service ('exit'), complain through available channels ('voice'), or stay out of attachment ('loyalty'). In the Israeli context this triad was extended to 'quasi-exit' or 'alternative politics': when dissatisfaction is widespread and the state is the monopoly supplier, citizens may not merely exit but set up their own non-governmental substitute provision (Lehman-Wilzig, 1991, Comparative Politics 24(1), DOI 10.2307/422203). The source article (Golan-Nadir, Cohen and Rubin, International Review of Administrative Sciences, online 2020, print 88(4):977–994, DOI 10.1177/0020852320972177) connects these two literatures. Through a qualitative case study of Israeli marriage registration — a religion-based service delivered under a state monopoly by registrar bureaucrats whose discretionary conduct generated widespread citizen dissatisfaction — the authors argue that informal personal, organizational, and environmental influences shape how street-level bureaucrats exercise discretion, producing that dissatisfaction, and that the dissatisfaction eventually led to the creation of Tzohar, a non-governmental organization of religious-Zionist rabbis that now provides alternative marriage-registration and marriage services outside the state rabbinate. The article's central theoretical claim is that an alternative supply of a public service emerges when three conditions hold jointly: (1) citizens' dissatisfaction with policy implementation (with how the policy is delivered, not necessarily with the policy itself); (2) street-level bureaucrats' monopoly over implementation, meaning no other official supplier exists; and (3) citizens' perception that participation and voice channels are blocked. The authors are explicit that this claim rests on a single case in one country, one policy sector, and one institutional arrangement; that discretion-based dissatisfaction is a preliminary framework rather than the only possible driver; and that the entrepreneurial strategies of dissatisfied street-level bureaucrats themselves are an unstudied possibility. Whether the three-condition mechanism generalizes to other countries, sectors, and service systems — and whether the three conditions are jointly necessary — is therefore an open empirical and theoretical question at the intersection of policy-implementation research and the study of citizen responses to public services.

Problem Statement

The source article proposed that an alternative supply of a public service emerges when three conditions hold jointly: (1) citizens' dissatisfaction with how street-level bureaucrats exercise discretion in implementing a policy — dissatisfaction with the implementation, not necessarily with the policy itself; (2) the street-level bureaucrats' monopoly over implementation, so that no other official supplier exists; and (3) citizens' perception that voice and participation channels are blocked. This proposal rests on a single case — Israeli marriage registration and the Tzohar alternative — and the authors present it as a preliminary framework whose travel to other countries, policy sectors, and service systems is untested; the necessity of the three-condition combination has likewise not been adjudicated. The authors additionally flag, as a separate further-research direction, the entrepreneurial strategies of dissatisfied street-level bureaucrats themselves, an unstudied possibility. The open problem is to determine the scope conditions of this mechanism: to establish, by systematic empirical evidence, (a) whether the three-condition conjunction predicts the creation of alternative supply in institutional settings other than Israeli marriage registration — other countries, non-religious policy sectors such as education, taxation, or social work, or other service systems; and (b) whether the conjunction is necessary, or whether proper subsets of the conditions (for example, dissatisfaction without monopoly, or with open voice channels) also generate alternative supply, and conversely whether all three conditions can hold without an alternative emerging. Throughout, by alternative supply is meant a non-governmental provider that itself delivers the same service in place of the official supplier, as Tzohar does for marriage registration; the class is defined by such a substitute provider and not by dissatisfaction-driven responses that stop short of it, such as vigilantism or citizens' self-help, or by co-production that leaves the official supplier in place. Together, facets (a) and (b) address the source's central question — under what conditions does dissatisfaction with street-level discretion produce non-governmental service provision. Both facets, (a) and (b), must be resolved; the settings named under (a) are illustrative rather than jointly required, yet the evidence base must include at least one setting outside Israeli marriage registration, and a determination must bear on both the necessity and the sufficiency direction. The authors' separately flagged direction — whether dissatisfied street-level bureaucrats who believe clients deserve better service, yet are constrained by their organizations and peers, can themselves initiate or materially facilitate the alternative supply — concerns a different actor class and supply route and remains a related open question rather than a scope condition of the citizen-dissatisfaction mechanism.

References

  1. Niva Golan-Nadir, Nissim Cohen and Aviad Rubin (2020, online first; print 2022). How citizens' dissatisfaction with street-level bureaucrats' exercise of discretion leads to the alternative supply of public services: the case of Israeli marriage registrars. International Review of Administrative Sciences 88(4): 977–994. DOI: 10.1177/0020852320972177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852320972177
  2. Sam N. Lehman-Wilzig (1991). Loyalty, Voice, and Quasi-Exit: Israel as a Case Study of Proliferating Alternative Politics. Comparative Politics 24(1): 97–108. DOI: 10.2307/422203. https://doi.org/10.2307/422203
  3. Anna Uster and Nissim Cohen (2022, online first; print 2023). Local government's response to dissatisfaction with centralized policies: the 'do-it-yourself' approach. International Review of Administrative Sciences 89(3): 825–841. DOI: 10.1177/00208523221094414. https://doi.org/10.1177/00208523221094414
  4. Niva Golan-Nadir and Tom Christensen (2023). Collective action and co-production of public services as alternative politics: The case of public transportation in Israel. Australian Journal of Public Administration 82(1): 96–115. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8500.12578. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.12578
  5. Niva Golan-Nadir (2023). State Management of Unpopular Religious Public Policies in Israel. Israel Studies Review 38(3): 51–74. DOI: 10.3167/isr.2023.380305. https://doi.org/10.3167/isr.2023.380305
  6. Niva Golan-Nadir (2024). Religion and public administration at the micro level: The lens of street-level bureaucracy theory in democracies. Australian Journal of Public Administration 83(4): 736–748. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8500.12626. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8500.12626
  7. Ofek Edri-Peer and Nissim Cohen (2023). Procedural Justice and the Unintended Role of Street-Level Bureaucrats in Prompting Citizens to Act as Vigilantes. The American Review of Public Administration 53(2): 51–63. DOI: 10.1177/02750740221148192. https://doi.org/10.1177/02750740221148192
  8. Ofek Edri-Peer and Nissim Cohen (2024). Citizens' illegal behaviour as a response to unsatisfactory street-level encounters: the causal relationship between procedural justice and vigilantism. Public Management Review (online first): 1–21. DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2024.2399145. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2024.2399145
  9. Sagi Gershgoren, Ofek Edri-Peer and Nissim Cohen (2024, online first; print 2025). Cognitive Biases in Street-Level Resolutions: The Case of Multiple Claims in Tax Disputes. Public Administration 103(4): 1163–1177. DOI: 10.1111/padm.13044. https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.13044
  10. Ofek Edri-Peer, Nissim Cohen and Teddy Lazebnik (2026). A Decision Tree Model for Profiling Citizens' Support for Self-Help Strategies. Deviant Behavior (online first): 1–18. DOI: 10.1080/01639625.2026.2689553. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2026.2689553
  11. Niva Golan-Nadir (2022). The Israeli Case: The Use of Institutional Pressure Relief Valves. In Public Preferences and Institutional Designs, pp. 119–153. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-84554-4_6. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84554-4_6