When the State Meets the Street: Public Service and Moral Agency

by Bernardo Zacka,
Psychology Today, November 15, 2017

More often than not, we use the word “bureaucrat” as an insult. By their very nature, bureaucrats, we believe, are rule-obsessed, callous, petty, power-trippers. Encounters between ordinary people and “public servants” can be demeaning and disempowering.