Community-level bureaucrats conserving the Peruvian Amazon

This paper explores to what extend Lipsky's street-level bureaucrat (SLB) model fits forest-level bureaucrats implementing environmental policy. Based on the research of a state-led payment for an ecosystem services scheme in the Peruvian Amazon, the common features of SLBs – discretion, distance from power, and closeness to public policy users – are key analytical tools to understand the work of SLBs in rural contexts, where the presence of the state is usually precarious. Results suggest that, for this case study, SLBs use their discretion to reshape formal regulation and procedures and even relegate the accomplishment of environmental activities to cope with the burden of bureaucracy and accountability reporting. The political but also geographical distance from the center of power is fundamental for SLBs to use their discretion. However, applying the SLB model to the margins also requires paying attention to alternative elements. SLBs are better understood as brokers rather than gatekeepers since they assume responsibilities to close the bureaucratic and administrative gaps between the state as provider of public services and the real capacities of indigenous peoples as policy users. It also demands paying better attention to the role of public accountability and the effect they produce on bureaucratizing the communities where they work.