In response to workloads and service demands, frontline workers often prioritize among their clients when delivering public services. This article examines the implications of such bureaucratic prioritization on democratic governance, specifically the public's attitudes toward how frontline workers prioritize among clients. Using data from a pre‐registered, rank‐based conjoint survey experiment conducted among residents (n = 2655) in Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, we explore two key aspects of bureaucratic prioritization from the public's perspective: (1) citizens' preferences on how teachers should prioritize among students and (2) citizens' beliefs about how teachers do prioritize among students. Our findings reveal general alignments between the public's normative preferences, their descriptive beliefs, and the prioritization tendencies of real‐life teachers as documented in previous research. We discuss the implications of these results in terms of administrative legitimacy and the governance perspective of New Public Service.

中文翻译：

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公众眼中客户之间的官僚主义优先顺序：来自三个国家的实验证据


为了响应工作负载和服务需求，一线工作人员在提供公共服务时通常会优先考虑他们的客户。本文探讨了这种官僚主义优先次序对民主治理的影响，特别是公众对一线工作人员如何优先考虑客户的态度。使用在丹麦、荷兰和新西兰的居民 （n = 2655） 中进行的预先注册的、基于等级的联合调查实验的数据，我们从公众的角度探讨了官僚主义优先次序的两个关键方面：（1） 公民对教师应该如何在学生中优先考虑的偏好，以及 （2） 公民对教师如何在学生中优先考虑的看法。我们的研究结果揭示了公众的规范偏好、他们的描述性信念和先前研究中记录的现实生活中教师的优先排序倾向之间的普遍一致性。我们从行政合法性和新公共服务的治理角度讨论了这些结果的影响。