Administrative Discretion

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). 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….