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Phillip Cooper defines administrative discretion as the “power of an administrator to make significant decisions that have the force of law, directly or indirectly, and that are not specifically mandated by the Constitution, statutes, or other sources of black letter law” (Cooper 2000, p. 300).
Introduction: What Is Administrative Discretion and Why Does It Exist?
In practice, public administrators have a few situations in which they do not apply discretion. High-ranking administrators such as superintendents of school districts and city managers, among others, know that at times, situations may arise in operations and program implementation processes in which existing administrative regulations or legal procedures are inadequate or inappropriate. Use of discretion becomes necessary, especially in situations in which immediate action is needed. For the most part, frontline or street-level bureaucrats work in situations where discretion...
References
Cooper PJ (2000) Public law and public administration, 3rd edn. F.E. Peacock Publishers, Itasca
Koch CH Jr (1986) Judicial review of administrative discretion. Faculty Publications. Paper 624. Retrieved from http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/624
Lipsky M (1980) Street –level bureaucracy: dilemmas of the individual in public services. Russell Sage Foundation, New York
MacIntyre AA (1986) The multiple sources of statutory ambiguity: tracing the legislative origins to administrative discretion. In: Shumavon DH, Hibbeln KH (eds) Administrative discretion and public policy implementation. Praeger, New York, pp 67–88
Vaughn J, Otenyo E (2007) Managerial discretion in government decision making: beyond the street level. Jones and Bartlet, Sudbury
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Otenyo, E.E. (2016). Administrative Discretion. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_955-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_955-1
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