Close Encounters of the Bureaucratic Kind: Older Americans and Bureaucracy

Abstract

Bureaucratization is one characteristic of American political institutions; bureaucracies have become important actors in policy making at all levels of government and at all stages of the policy process-from agenda setting to decision making to implementation to service delivery. Many Americans obtain services through agencies (e.g., Nelson, 1980). Scholars have attended increasingly to one question about bureaucracy: What factors help to shape citizens' contacts with and use of agencies and their programs? In this research note, I examine that issue, using data from a sample of older Americans. While considerable research has accumulated on citizens' contacts with the bureaucracy, results are often contradictory. For instance, sometimes socioeconomic status has no significant effect on contacts (Verba and Nie, 1972; Zuckerman and West, 1985) and sometimes it doesalthough the nature of that relationship varies from study to study (e.g., Sharp, 1982; Jones et al., 1977; Vedlitz and Veblen, 1980; Lehnen, 1976). One reason for these divergent findings may be the nature of the dependent variable itself-citizen contact with government officials. Nelson (1981) has made the basic point that there are several ways by which individuals interact with service-delivering agencies (see also Lewis and Anechiarico, 1981: Percy and Scott, 1985).

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