Researching Street-level Bureaucracy

Mike Rowe is a Lecturer in Public Sector Management at the University of Liverpool, UK. Before returning to higher education, he was a civil servant in what was then the UK’s Department of Social Security. Indeed, he was a street-level bureaucrat at times. His research has concerned discretion in welfare and in mental health, partnership working across public and community organizations and, most recently, discretion in policing. This last project took the form of a six-year ethnography of frontline officers in three different police organizations, bringing a unique longitudinal and comparative dimension. He has organized an annual Ethnography Symposium since 2006 and was founding co-editor of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography. Rowe is the author of Disassembling Police Culture (2023), co-author of Police Street Powers and Criminal Justice (with Geoff Pearson, 2020), and an editor of Governing Police Stops Across Europe (2024), The Politicization of Police Stops in Europe (2024), and Ethnography and the Evocative World of Policing (2024).

• Acknowledgements. Series editors’ foreword. Preface. 1. Discovering street-level bureaucrats 2. Research at the street-level 3. Studying street-level bureaucrats up close 4. The continuing relevance of street-level bureaucracy research 5. For more cases and many variables

"In his illuminating synthesis and discussion of street-level bureaucracy analysis, Mike Rowe opens up new avenues for reflection. How can this theory be adapted to the considerable changes brought about by NPM and information technology in bureaucratic work? How can we include client’s practices and viewpoints in the analysis? More generally, how can we conduct SLB research using ethnographic methods and following an interpretive perspective? These are just some of the questions that Mike Rowe addresses, and to which he offers most useful answers."Vincent Dubois, Professor of Sociology and Political Science, University of Strasbourg"This book offers a fresh and sophisticated contribution to street-level bureaucracy research, emphasizing the importance of interpretive sensibility to understand public encounters. Rowe demonstrates how scholars should be familiar with the settings, capturing lived experiences and meanings from a bottom-up perspective. This book provides significant theoretical and methodological contributions to the research field."Gabriela Lotta, Associate Professor of Public Administration, Getulio Vargas Foundation