Ethnic and Racial Stereotypes and Biases in Frontline Implementation: A Systematic Review of Patterns and Possible Interventions

The equal treatment of citizens is a fundamental principle of rule of law. Nevertheless, a persistent issue in frontline policy implementation is the prevalence of (conscious or unconscious) ethnic and racial stereotyping and bias leading to unjustified inequities in the everyday interactions between public servants and policy targets. A growing body of evidence looks into the resulting patterns of discrimination along ethnic or racial stereotyping, their institutional and behavioural sources. However, much less attention has been paid to the question of what can be effective interventions to address ethnic and racial bias in frontline implementation. This study argues that in answering this question, not only the public policy and public administration literatures but also the broader literatures from behavioural science offer important lessons. Accordingly, we conduct a systematic review of empirical studies in these fields. We offer unprecedented, comprehensive evidence about patterns of discrimination and actual and potential effects of possible interventions to address stereotyping and biases at the system, organizational, and individual level. We give indicative proposals for the contextual scope conditions for these effects.