Street-Level Bureaucrats' Impact on the Emergence of Local Governance Networks

This book focusses on the emergence of local governance networks and examines the role of street-level bureaucrats during this process. It aims to identify whether some organizations are favored as state partners, whereas others have a lower chance of becoming part of such networks. Four different potential logics explaining such divergencies are developed. To find out how street-level bureaucrats influence the formation of governance networks this study considers Germany as an empirical case and takes a closer look at the work of volunteer managers. To identify unequal behavior of bureaucrats, a mixed-methods design is used, including qualitative interviews as well as an innovative field experiment.

Autorentext

Lisa Fischer studied political science, communication science and administrative science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, the University of New Caledonia and the University of Konstanz. She wrote her dissertation at the chair for Empirical Theory and Politics of Prof. Dr. Christoph Knill. At present, she works as research associate at the Institute for Health and Generations at the Kempten University of Applied Sciences.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Welfare, governance, and street-level bureaucracy: Links and research gaps.- Theory, concept, and research design.- Initial position of SLBs and their self-perception of cooperation interest.- A field experiment: The prevalence of logics that determine the cooperation interest of SLBs.- Conclusion.