Street-level bureaucrats and new modes of governance - How conflicting roles affect the implementation of the Swiss Ordinance on Verterinary Drugs

Lipsky’s seminal concept of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) focuses on their role as public servants. However, in the course of new modes of governance, private actors have gained an additional role as implementation agents. We explore the logic of private SLBs during the implementation of the Swiss Ordinance on Veterinary Medicinal Products (OVMP) where veterinarians are simultaneously implementing agents, policy addressees, and professionals with economic interests. We argue that, because of contradictory reference systems, it is problematic for the output performance if an actor is simultaneously the target group of a policy and its implementing agent.

Third party assessments in trust problems with conflict of interest: An experiment on the effects of promisesm

Is it possible to elicit reliable assessment from an assessor having a conflict of interest (e.g. a professor that writes a recommendation letter for a formal PhD student)? We propose an experimental test and show that compared to a not-incentivized assessment, a promise to give a truthful assessment reduces misreporting to the same extent as an incentivized assessment (i.e. when the assessor gains higher payoff if the assessment is correct).