Michael Rowe, "Researching Street-Level Bureaucracy: Bringing Out the Interpretive Dimensions" (Routledge, 2024)

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Nick Cheeseman
Guest: Mike Rowe, Senior Lecturer in Public Sector Management, University of Liverpool
Book Discussed: Researching Street-Level Bureaucracy: Bringing Out the Interpretive Dimensions (Routledge, 2024)
Date: October 1, 2025

This episode explores the concept of street-level bureaucracy—frontline public service work where discretion, interpretation, and context shape encounters between officials and citizens. Mike Rowe draws on both foundational theory and his own ethnographic experience (primarily in the UK civil service and police) to elaborate the complexity inherent in street-level decision-making and the interpretive research approaches best suited for understanding it.

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Key Topics and Discussion Points

1. Defining Street-Level Bureaucracy

• Origin of the Concept:
  • The concept has roots in the late 1960s, with Michael Lipsky's seminal 1980 book Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services as the foundational text ([02:16]).
  • The concept refers to frontline public officials whose discretionary decisions bring policy to life in real-world encounters with citizens.
• Complexity Beyond ‘Obvious’ Discretion:
  • Rowe notes many people assume the term is self-explanatory, but Lipsky’s work “got away from the simple idea of bureaucrats as following instructions or being self-interested manipulators and budget maximizers and actually described a world that I kind of recognize” ([04:08], Rowe).

2. Context and the Importance of Interpretive Methods

• The Limits of Variable-Driven Research:
  • Quantitative studies focusing on demographics or motivation “miss the point that places the locus of decision making in the individual's head alone” and overlook context ([06:20], Rowe).
• Ethnography as Key:
  • Ethnography and familiarity with the field reveal the nuanced ways discretion operates—how, for instance, small, unofficial actions by clerks or even security guards make a system function ([07:11]).
  • “I’m not arguing that you have to do ethnography if you’re going to understand street-level bureaucrats... But if you have personal experience or have gained familiarity in some way, then that helps you...” ([13:36], Rowe).

3. Familiarity and Insiders/Outsiders

• Reconsidering the Ethnographic Ideal:
  • Familiarity with the setting (gained through long-term presence, prior experience, or repeated engagement) provides insight beyond the “well-told stories” of traditional interviews ([13:36]).
  • Rowe suggests a move away from a simple insider/outsider binary: “It’s not very helpful. So I guess, yeah, familiarity for me is an attempt to get past that. I’m not an insider in terms of the police and I’m not an outsider” ([15:36]).

4. Interpretive Dimensions and Change

• Interpretivist Approaches and Real-Time Change:
  • Interpretive methods help researchers understand how meaning is made—and how it changes over time and in response to organizational developments or contextual shifts ([16:22], [18:43]).
  • “Getting past the idea that you can go into the field and see something static, record it, write it up and move on, I would emphasize that things change all the time” ([16:22], Rowe).

5. Technology and the ‘Screen-Level Bureaucracy’

• Digitalization & New Complexities:
  • While “street-level” still matters, new technologies and AI shift the terrain, sometimes introducing more errors or exclusions—for instance, forms that inadvertently disqualify citizens due to rigid computerized protocols ([18:54]–[21:22]).
• Notable Example:
  • “If you want this help, you’ve got to answer in this way. And I think also we can’t codify rules in computer code if we can’t write bureaucratic rules that encompass all situations in legislation and procedures. What makes us think computer programmers can do it?” ([21:50], Rowe).

6. Impact and Researcher Role

• Research-Informed Change:
  • Rowe discusses how interpretive research—like recording unmonitored vehicle stops by police—can prompt policy changes ([24:34], [26:25]).
  • “Much police action was being driven by, to use a pun, vehicle stops... and it’s quite interesting that that’s led to change, that there are now recording vehicle stops. So, yeah, we’re perhaps surprised that that was taken up, but that insight has led to changes in processes and procedures.” ([24:34], Rowe)
• Meaning-Making and Intervention:
  • Researchers help clarify where interventions break down, such as when managerial “solutions” (e.g., poorly received training videos) fail due to misunderstandings at the front line ([29:11]).
  • “They thought from their vantage point how to change officers, but didn’t understand how they were heard... If you want to change the way officers think about it, you’ve got to put some effort into it. You can’t just do a video.” ([29:11]–[30:36], Rowe).

7. Global and Comparative Perspectives

• Expanding Beyond the Global North:
  • Rowe acknowledges the book’s initial Euro-American focus, pointing to new and valuable research emerging from places like Bougainville and Latin America ([31:35]).
  • These contexts can make dilemmas of discretion even more stark, for instance, when eligibility for aid is tied to politically manipulated electoral registers ([31:35], [33:29]).

8. Defining Discretion—Authority, Corruption, Context

• Authorized vs. Unauthorized Discretion:
  • Rowe distinguishes authorized discretion (“legitimate authority to make judgments in these particular circumstances”) from abuse (corruption, violence) ([27:28]).
  • Managerial discretion (e.g., closing a police station) operates very differently from frontline discretion about individual cases ([27:28]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the enduring importance of the concept:

  • “Bureaucracy’s alive and kicking. Yes, it is computerized very much. But actually I think that makes it more important to focus on where discretion lies.” ([18:54], Rowe)

• Advice, half in jest, regarding “screen-level” policing:

  • “If you’re going to take cocaine in the streets... aim for the end of the police shift and then you’ll be probably safe.” ([11:44], Rowe, humor)

• On ethnography and insight:

  • “I’m not arguing that you have to do ethnography if you’re going to understand street-level bureaucrats... But if you have personal experience or have gained familiarity in some way, then that helps you...” ([13:36], Rowe)

• On attempts at organizational change:

  • “They rolled out a training video... I observed that video with some officers and recorded their reactions to it, which was largely confusion, and reported this back to senior officers who then thought the next step would be to do an online webinar... which provoked more confusion.” ([29:11], Rowe)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:37 — Show introduction, overview of series, guest introduction
• 02:16 — Defining “street-level bureaucracy” and history
• 04:08 — Why Lipsky’s concept is more complex than it appears
• 06:20 — Why interpretive, contextual methodologies matter
• 07:11 — Rowe’s own experience as a street-level bureaucrat; value of ethnography
• 09:37 — Ethnographic fieldwork with police; context around discretion in action
• 13:36 — The value of familiarity, inside/outside fieldwork perspectives
• 16:22 — Interpretive methods, fieldwork, and change over time
• 18:54 — The impact of technology; “screen-level bureaucracy”
• 21:50 — Limits of digitalization; discretion persists
• 24:34 — Role of researchers; influencing policy, e.g., vehicle stops data
• 27:28 — The difference between street-level and managerial discretion
• 29:11 — Examples of miscommunication between management and frontline staff
• 31:35 — Street-level bureaucracy in non-Western/global South contexts
• 33:29 — Problems of discretion and authority across varying contexts
• 35:59 — Rowe’s current research and writing interests
• 36:41 — Book recommendations for listeners

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Further Reading and Recommendations (from the Guest)

• James Scott, In Praise of Floods
  “It just takes his ideas and... stretches them a bit outside his normal terrain.” ([36:41])
• Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End (office politics fiction)
  “Lots of little scenes that don’t string together as a storyline as such to start with. But then the storyline is beginning to emerge, which I find quite interesting as a style of writing.” ([36:41])

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Episode Takeaways

• Street-level bureaucracy is a complex, interpretive, and evolving field of study, still vital despite digitalization.
• Familiarity and context matter—ethnography is valuable, but deep familiarity can be developed through other means.
• Research is not just observation: It can prompt changes in practice and policy by revealing how discretion, meaning, and miscommunication actually unfold.
• Global perspectives are important, with new research expanding the conversation beyond its traditional, Western-centric focus.

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers listeners a rich, practice-based, and theoretically informed dive into street-level bureaucracy. Whether you're researching public administration, interpretive methods, or the sociological aspects of frontline work, Rowe’s insights provide an up-to-date and nuanced understanding of a classic but still-evolving field.

Transcript

[Mike Rowe]

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Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Poe, the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Nick Cheeseman]

Hello and welcome to New Books in Interpretive, Political and Social Science on the New Books Network. I'm Nick Cheeseman, series host, and I'm delighted to be joined for this episode by Mike Rowe, a Senior Lecturer in Public Sector management at the University of Liverpool, to discuss his Researching Street Level Bringing out the Interpretive Dimensions, which is the first among a number of new titles in the Routledge series on interpretive methods that we'll be featuring on the show. Show Mike, for the uninitiated, what is street level? Bureaucracy. Can you give us your best gloss on the term?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, it's an idea that's been with us since the late 1960s in its early forms, but emerged really through the 70s and came to prominence in 1980 with the publication of Michael Lipsky's book, Street Level the Dilemmas of Individuals in Public Service. It's one of those books that people know of and refer to without necessarily going back to look at it in great detail. So I think that's part of the purpose of writing this book. In one sense I've seen reference to Lipski's work, which I find a little awkward, clumsy, but it's also treated almost as if it's obvious that there's something simple and obvious about the idea of street level bureaucrats who exercise discretion. This is not something to worry our heads too much about. So 40 plus years on it's perhaps worth going back to look at some of the ideas, where they came from and how then that helps us think about our research when we're looking at these street level bureaucrats, I should perhaps be clear. I've also sort of launched into talking about street level bureaucrats assuming everybody knows who they are. They are, I mean Philipski frontline workers who in the course of their actions or their duties encounter citizens, clients, customers and make policy by the way in which they respond to the needs of those clients, customers, et cetera, and interpret the rules, procedures in those instances. So policy becomes real in a sense the moment it hits the street.

[Nick Cheeseman]

Isn't that obvious? I imagine most listeners will have had encounters with street level bureaucrats and they observe them doing precisely what you've just described, having a certain amount of discretion within a framework for decision making. What more is there to be said and done with that?

[Mike Rowe]

Yes, it is in one sense it is obvious and actually that's why for me, when I was first encountered the idea that's why for me it was such a useful book because it got away from the simple idea of bureaucrats as following instructions or being self interested manipulators and budget maximizers and actually described a world I that I kind of recognize. I don't think Lipsky is saying just that. I think he's saying more than that, which is to get away from the idea that it's. It's street level bureaucrats as individuals exercising some kind of free will, if you like, almost. And that's sometimes the way it's presented and it can appear like that from the outside. Why did I get treated like this and somebody else get treated better or, or differently to myself? Why is my case treated in this way? It must be those individuals behind that desk. They must not like me or they must be exercising their prejudices or what have you. So it's a kind of simple idea if you treat it at that level and that's sometimes the way it is treated. But I Think it's more complex than that. And this is where it's worth going back actually to the 30th anniversary edition of Lipski's book, because in the extra chapters at the end, he begins to spell out a little bit more the origins of his thinking. So he's not interested in kind of this. Almost blame the street level bureaucrats for their errors, if you like, or their deviation from the intention of policy, or their, you know, their unaccountability. He's interested in understanding what are the contexts in which they're making decisions and how those contexts shape those decisions. So it's not about the individual exercising free will. It is somebody in a position holding an office, encountering a citizen with available options that make more or less sense in particular circumstances, constraints in terms of resources, expectations in terms of performance from the organization, priorities to be met, and so on and so forth. So it's a complex environment in which they're operating.

[Nick Cheeseman]

Is that attention to context why interpretive methodologies and methods recommend themselves for study of street level bureaucrats?

[Mike Rowe]

In my view, yes. I mean, I think there's been a good number of studies in recent years that has, that sought to isolate key variables and conduct surveys and so forth on motivation or educational background or the demographics of street level bureaucrats and to sort of work out what factors improve or change or affect discretion. For me, that kind of misses the point that places the locus of decision making in the individual's head alone. So, yes, this is about getting the context.

[Nick Cheeseman]

You said that it was a world that you kind of recognized. You yourself were in fact a street level bureaucrat. Tell us a bit about that experience and how it led you into the work you do and how that informed your thinking about the appropriate methods for study of these people.

[Mike Rowe]

So I was a civil servant and in apparently the most bureaucratic of parts of the civil service, the Department of Social Security Administration, so the local office in Bristol, and we're processing claims for pensions, sickness benefits, unemployment and so forth. These are very tightly constrained by rules and regulations. But nevertheless the practice didn't look the way one would think if one just read Weber. What you begin to see is actually the small things that people did and could do that made things work more effectively. I mean it down to and including the security guards, who had officially no place in decision making, but who knew the clients and just made things work in small ways. But also then if you've got a. If you're a clerk in the office and you've got 10 cases, land on your desk, you've only got time to process. 7. Which one do you do first? Little decisions like that have consequences. So one person might prioritize easy cases so that you can process more in the day. Others might think, okay, I should prioritize those that look like they might be more complicated, almost urgent in some way because of maybe there's children involved in a claim. So there is that scope for free will. But that free will is exercised in that context where you've got this pressure to process as many as possible. It made sense of that world for me. And that's then gone on to influence my research more or less explicitly at different times. Which has always been interested in public services and in those encounters between public officials and citizens, customers, clients, however we want to think of them more recently, for the last 10 years or so, I've been focused on police officers. So I did a six year ethnography with officers, looking at how they exercise their powers to stop and search people to arrest, et cetera. And so I find Lipski is never very far from my thinking.

[Nick Cheeseman]

We'll come back, I'm sure to Lipski. Hard to move too far away from him and that important volume. But you've just referred to one of the methods that you use, recurrent methods or methodology on some accounts in the discussions we have in this series. And that's ethnography. So why is it that ethnography recommends itself to the work that you do? Clearly, context is a part of the story, but I gather that there's more to it than that.

[Mike Rowe]

I have conducted interviews in my past and I found that useful where I've been familiar with the people and the work of those people. So I've interviewed former colleagues and others in Social Security. And because I know how those offices work, I could ask questions in a way that when I have done other studies and relied on interviews, I'm not confident that I really did get to what was going on. I'm not sure I knew those small things that you only notice when you are either in that world or very familiar with it. When the opportunity to undertake the study with the police came along, we proposed ethnography as a way of getting past looking at a particular decision to stop and search and place that decision in the context of an officer's understanding of their role of the entire shift, but also of the kind of their colleagues and so forth. What makes an officer turn to that power at that point and not at other times? Because actually what we found was most officers didn't use the power to stop and search citizens very often. And why was that? That was almost as interesting as why did they when they did? So it's trying to get away from just asking the question you want the answer to and seeing how that issue, that problem that you may have fits in a more rounded context. And in policing, that's led me to be writing about things where apparently nothing is happening. The absence of activity sometimes is important to note because that in a sense highlights the excitement when something does happen. So it is trying to get away from looking at an individual decision where you might focus upon what's going on in the individual's mind again and putting in that context of a 10 hour shift of what they're being asked to do. How many prison cells are there available if you're going to start arresting people? Is there space? It's lots of little decisions. I've just been writing a paper where I've looked at four instances from the same officer on the same shift being directed by somebody watching CCTV over City center on a. On a busy, busy night. And the operator is an expert and has spots four people who are taking cocaine on the street and it directs the officers to search the four people. There are four different outcomes for apparently the same offense. So why, why would that be? It's just getting to things like that. Understanding how actually during the course of a shift, as the prison cells are filling up, you don't even consider arrest anymore. And actually the fifth instance, they've got so much paperwork to complete before the end of the shift, they don't even respond to that. So if you're going to take cocaine in the streets of a city in England and Wales, aim for the end of the police shift and then you'll be probably safe.

[Nick Cheeseman]

All right, everyone, you've heard it here. That's the best, the best advice that you're going to get in the course of this, not only this episode, but possibly the entire series. I think one of the things, in all seriousness, that that last point draws out, which goes to a term that you've used a couple of times already, Mike, and that you draw attention to in the book, is the need for familiarity. Is there a particular valence to this term for you? I mean, how, for instance, is it different in any way from the conventional understanding of ethnographic immersion being present in the field site in ways that clearly you are, and attending to the relations, the subjective meaning making among your research participants, is this much of a muchness or is there a special quality to this notion of familiarity? That you think you're bringing to your work on strictly bureaucrats that we ought to be drawing listeners attention to.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm not arguing that you have to do ethnography if you're going to understand street level bureaucrats. I think if you are, if you have personal experience or have gained familiarity in some way, then that helps you if you're going to conduct interviews or other, or take other approaches. I'm thinking of the work of Maynard, Moody and Moschino. They didn't undertake ethnographic research, but they are very familiar over the years and have done observations well. Those haven't been the main focus of their research, but it's informed their interviewing and their narrative approach. So you can gain that familiarity and employ different approaches. You don't have to do ethnography. I'm also thinking of that kind of concern. Ethnographic research is a long term commitment and that's not always feasible. I was fortunate to be able to do it over a period of six years. But if you can get gained familiarity and shorter bursts of ethnographic research is one option, but some familiarity through reading other ethnographic material and then engaging. There are different ways, I think, of gaining that familiarity such that you ask the questions that get past the tell me a story about type approaches. As long as you've got familiarity such that you can get past the well tr. Well told stories that you'll get from a standard kind of approach to interviewing. I think that's. That's the key, that's helpful.

[Nick Cheeseman]

And then a related point is you push back a little bit against this juxtaposition or binary of insiders and outsiders. Again, you're certainly not the only person to do it. There's now a rich literature problematizing this distinction. But it seemed to me that again, you ought to suggest that if you're becoming familiar in the ways that you're characterizing your own work, then the distinction is unnecessary or unhelpful.

[Mike Rowe]

It's not very helpful. So I guess, yeah, familiarity for me is an attempt to get past that. I'm not an insider in terms of the police and I'm not an outsider.

[Nick Cheeseman]

You're talking about the interpretive dimensions of research on street level bureaucrats. Is this interpretivism with all of its generic characteristics applied to this object or objects of inquiry? Or are there one or more dimensions of this approach that are original to the work that you and others working on street level bureaucrats do? That might be useful for people who aren't studying street level bureaucrats, but are interested in interpretivist approaches generally.

[Mike Rowe]

I'm not sure it's original. I was very aware when starting out, approaching the research of the police, that there was a lot of literature and a good deal of classic ethnographic work had been done. I'm not claiming to have gone into the field with a complete blank canvas. I was obviously familiar with some of that. But I tried to keep away from it as much as I could. My partner was infuriated because I'd be coming off a shift and she'd be saying, you know, so what's. What was it? What did you make of it? What's going, you know. And for about the first two years I. I tried not to draw any kind of conclusions or formulate any ideas or read much literature. We started in 2013, so it's 2016 before we wrote anything. So it wasn't just myself, there was two others involved at different points, but one colleague in particular. And we argued with each other regularly about what we were seeing because what we were seeing was the variation. And that variation became clearer as we discussed our different observations and understandings and interpretations. We were understanding rules differently because we'd observing officers who saw it differently. That long term process was very valuable for me. Partly also because during that time what we saw was change. Not major change, but a piece of new kit or austerity. So I think for me, getting past the idea that you can go into the field and see something static, record it, write it up and move on, I would emphasize that things change all the time. So the more we were in the field, the more we wanted to stay there.

[Nick Cheeseman]

Listeners, we're going to take a short break here for one or two sponsors messages. We'll be right back to pick up where we left off. And we're back with Mike Rowe talking about his researching street level bureaucracy. Change is a theme towards the end of the book because you do point to how there are so many developments in and around street level bureaucracy or bureaucrats. Perhaps we should tease those terms apart. I'm now attentive to them. You're talking about the introduction of new technologies is also an expression that I hadn't heard of before. Screen level bureaucracy.

[Mike Rowe]

Right.

[Nick Cheeseman]

The introduction of course, of computerization and everything that's coming in now with AI against that backdrop. What's the staying power of this idea? Street level bureaucrats.

[Mike Rowe]

Just quickly on that kind of definitional distinction, street level bureaucrat I think is clear, is the individual making decisions. Street level bureaucracy is a kind of system, if you like. But when street level bureaucracy becomes applied to an organization, it becomes a bit more problematic. And street level bureaucracies, as this type of organization is for me very definitely problematic because it confuses an individual decision of a street level bureaucrat with an organizational or managerial decisions. And they're very different because I think that what distinguishes street level bureaucrats is they're making decisions in individual cases rather than on classes of cases or at an organizational level. But in terms of then, how have things changed since 1980? Yeah, I mean, it's almost as if Lipski wrote at the wrong time, because everything changed after 1980 with the new public management, but also then obviously privatization, contracting out subsequently with a whole new emphasis on partnerships and network modes of governance. In fact, the language of governance has intruded. And so there's been the tendency for some to say this idea that we've got rid of bureaucracy, it's no longer with us. And I think first and foremost that's transparently nonsense. Bureaucracy's alive and kicking. Yes, it is computerized very much. But actually I think that makes it more important to focus on where discretion lies. It's not disappeared, it's been constrained in some areas, but it remains. So the example I give is of sergeants in a custody who, when somebody's brought into custody, they've got a list of about 40 questions. They have to ask everybody about their health, their dietary needs, anybody need to be informed that you're here, all that kind of stuff. And it's a long list of questions and you can start at the top and just go through all of them. And some sergeants do that and they talk about themselves as just bureaucrats, just form filling. But I observed a custody suite one evening coming up to Christmas and the local authority in their woods decided that nobody wants to see beggars on the streets at Christmas. So asked the police to clear up the city center. What was interesting was that the beggars or homeless people who were brought in were very familiar with the sergeants and would refer to them and actually knew which one they preferred to be dealt with. So what was it was different about one sergeant over another. One sergeant asked them. The first question he asked them was whether they wanted hot food or a drink. And then they proceeded to do the 40 questions. The point being that at the end of the 40 questions the food and a hot drink was ready for them in the cell. Whereas those who asked those questions at the end. Yeah, it's just a small difference, but so it mattered to those individuals. Another example is the Computerization, if you don't understand what the computer is asking you and why it is asking you the questions it's asking you, as you fill in your application online for yourself, then you can very quickly find yourself excluding yourself from entitlement. So the example I'm thinking of is there's a form, computerized now that asks somebody, it's an application for a grant. And the form says, if you don't receive this grant, which is to adapt your home so you can stay independent for longer, if you don't receive this grant, will you go into long term residential care? And so people who want to stay independent, they're applying for a grant in order to stay independent, answer that question saying, no, I will not go into long term care. So then they cease to be eligible for the grant because the grant is only to stop people going into long term care. So the street level bureaucrat is there to interpret that, to say, no, that's not what you mean. If you want this help, you've got to answer in this way. And I think also we can't codify rules in computer code if we can't write bureaucratic rules that encompass all situations in legislation and procedures. What makes us think computer programmers can do it? AI was the other thing. People will start banging around, we won't need to bother about any of this anymore. AI will do it all for us. I don't understand that at all.

[Nick Cheeseman]

Let me roll back to a couple of things that you mentioned a moment ago that caught my attention. One was around this point that, well, you have street level bureaucrats who are helping people understand that they have to answer a question a certain way in order to get services delivered that obviously they need and they might be arbitrarily excluded from if they tick the wrong box or press the wrong button. Where does your role come in then? As a researcher who is using interpretive methods? I'm well aware that we have colleagues doing work in policy analysis, analysis, including interpretive policy analysis, who are interested to make contributions to affect change to policies that they're analyzing. In other words, they're interested to intervene and contribute to outcomes which will be beneficial. Where do you yourself sit and how do you see the work of others using interpretive methods for the study of street level bureaucrats. Do you want to contribute in ways would then have bureaucracy say, oh yes, if we change that form so the correct answer is more obvious to the intended beneficiaries? It wouldn't be necessary for the street level bureaucrat to do that work? Or is it just the case, as you were saying a moment ago, that because of intersubjective meaning making, because of the way that texts work and how they're interpreted, as we know from hermeneutic theory, there will always be ambiguities and contradictions that call for exactly the type of interpretation from street level bureaucrats that you were describing. Am I answering the question myself?

[Mike Rowe]

Help me out anyway. Yeah, that's fine. It always takes me back to the long title of Pressman and Wildavski's implementation. That sense of frustration that you get from policymakers that great expectations are dashed in Oakland or wherever it was. I think it's actually understanding not why things go wrong in terms of policy failure, but anticipating how things could be or the various ways in which policies will be interpreted, understood, translated. I think also, I mean, it surprises actually that as an ethnographer who's very poor at counting at the best of times, not one for numbers. It's been interesting to see how over six years we've counted the numbers of particular incidents. So one thing, for instance, is vehicle stops in the UK keep records of stop and search, where a citizen is searched by the police, but we don't keep records of vehicle stops at the moment. We recommended that that should change because what we were seeing was that much police action was being driven by, to use a pun, vehicle stops. So many stop and searches, where there's disproportionate and use of powers against black people, and it's very controversial, is actually preceded by a vehicle stop. So what is going on? Where is discrimination appearing, if anywhere? And it's quite interesting that that's led to change, that there are now recording vehicle stops. So, yeah, we're perhaps surprised that that was taken up, but that insight has led to changes in processes and procedures. Obviously the point now is to do some analysis of the data that emerges from that, to then make recommendations for changes to practice or law or what have you. But I don't see the world of the street level separate from policy. There's a tendency to think in those ways. I don't. I see that connection very clearly in my mind. I'm comfortable going from the street to talk to the policymakers.

[Nick Cheeseman]

I wonder though, if you could spell that out a little bit more, because I understand what you're saying, but at the same time, it seemed to me that you're quite clear in the book about the importance of focusing on the front line and that's where, as it were, the action is. And it seemed to me Also that you wanted to suggest that while there are interesting things to be observed about managerial discretion, that's a different domain. And so that was one of the reasons that I was interested to ask that question. Question precisely because we do have a lot of colleagues who would sort of say, okay, if I want to deal with questions of policy, then primarily I need to do it say at that managerial level, rather than by going and talking to street level bureaucrats or observing them, even if there may be some limited usefulness in that regard. Is that because, and you get to this in the book, and I'd like to hear from you about it briefly if you don't mind, is that because of how discretion is differently conceptualized at those levels, managerial discretion rather than the discretion of the frontline worker?

[Mike Rowe]

For my business, in terms of talking about street level bureaucrats, I think it's important to distinguish between discretion as I'm using it, which is decisions about individual cases, about the application of the law, availability, resources and so forth. So the kind of individual strip of a bureaucrat encountering a citizen, and that's authorized discretion as well, as opposed to the misuse of authority. So in some versions of police discretion, police assaulting a citizen is discretion, but that's to kind of confuse things really. So authorised discretion, you have a legitimate authority to make judgments in these particular circumstances, as opposed to corruption or violence or misuse of abuse of authority. That is important to separate out from then the more managerial discretion or what have you, which might be to say, so in this example of the police to close a police station, yes, that's a discretionary decision, but it's not about individual cases or the application of law to an individual case. It does affect the way street level bureaucrats then go about their work, but it's not in itself a discretionary decision of the same kind as those being made by street level bureaucrats. And it's interesting though that managerial discretion is very often taken without understanding the consequences for street level discretion. And I'm thinking of that example of closing an office or a station or what have you. What are the consequences? How does that affect not just the street level bureaucrats, but the clients that they're dealing with. And you only understand those consequences by getting down to the street level and observing.

[Nick Cheeseman]

And then that's again where you have an opportunity to make some kind of intervention through attention to meaning making at the street level.

[Mike Rowe]

I mean, a very clear example to me was one police organization was trying to change the way officers behaved. And so they thought the way to do this was to have a training video. And they rolled that out and required all officers to engage with this training video. I observed that video with some officers and recorded their reactions to it, which was largely confusion, and reported this back to senior officers who then thought the next step would be to do an online webinar with senior officers answering questions which provoked more confusion. They thought they understood from their vantage point how to change officers, but didn't understand how they were heard. So it was a really interesting position to be in to say, hang on a second, you've not only confused them, you're beginning to make yourselves look a bit out of touch. Think again about how you do this. And actually if you're going to. If something is important and you want to change the way officers think about it, you've got to put some effort into it. You can't just do a video. So they in the end put every officer on a one day training course, took them out of the station, said this is important. By doing that, the whole day is being spent on this. Just those that simple kind of almost tone deafness really. When you're on the street, when you're engaging with the strict old bureaucrats, you can understand why they misinterpret or interpret it in those ways.

[Nick Cheeseman]

That sounds very much like my university, but that's.

[Mike Rowe]

Well, yes, we could get on about that, couldn't we?

[Nick Cheeseman]

One other thing you mentioned, which I wanted to touch on momentarily and see if I could pull something out from it, is the obvious fact that bureaucracy, like the state, is not withering away. But you do also discuss in the book how there's more literature on street level bureaucrats, frontline workers in very different contexts than the European setting. For instance, you allude, and I appreciate this, to work by a couple of my colleagues in Bougainville, certainly this work in the Pacific and elsewhere on street level bureaucrats, frontline workers in conditions where the state may be rather more absent than present. And that's always been the case. So how do you think work of that sort from very different contexts is helping to inform and develop the literature on street level bureaucracy?

[Mike Rowe]

I think in writing the book I was very aware how much my focus was Northern European, North American, Australasian. And so if and when there's a second edition, that would be a larger focus. Part is because it is beginning to emerge as a point of discussion over the last ten years or so. There's some interesting work being done in South America as well as Bougainville, and I think it's just revealing of some of the starker choices in a sense, for me, it made some of the dilemmas much more apparent than perhaps they can feel in the context I'm more familiar with. So I'm thinking some of the examples from South America was about giving aid to people, poor families would be determined partly by their being on the electoral register. And if that electoral register is subject to political interference, that determines who gets aid. And so how do you get around that? That's discretionary, you know, in a very different context. And it was really intriguing to kind of think actually does street level bureaucrat as an idea of applying that context? Or is this something, something different? But that focus on what those individuals do at the street level reveals that, I think. And that's what's interesting. And the bougainville thing, I think is you almost have just this contrast anyway. You have this appearance of a state to external viewings. And then there's the practice, which is very different. I teach occasionally on masters in public health and I introduce them to the idea of implementation and street level bureaucracy. And I think that understanding how simple ideas that we should vaccinate everybody. Okay, that sounds like a simple idea. Very easy. This is, you know, health economics tells you it's cost effective or what have you. But what is the practice? How do you actually do this in remote areas, in places where there isn't the infrastructure for refrigeration or whatever it might be? Those sorts of questions when you get down to the street level, and I'm.

[Nick Cheeseman]

Wondering if that's because of the distinction which you alluded to a while back, between discretion and, let's say, illicitness, arbitrariness, that you still have frontline workers making decisions in individual cases, having alternative courses of action. But the difference between what you're trying to work through, where you're doing your research and some of those other researchers, is the question of whether or not those decisions are authorized. Does it turn on the problem of what constitutes discretion after all, as to whether or not then this would be street level bureaucrats? Or rather is the question is this street level bureaucracy, even though these are frontline workers, if they're not engaged in their activities in ways that can form with this authorization criterion? Am I right in thinking that way? I'm going to say then what are the implications again, from an interpretivist standpoint, once again, that attention to contingency, to context, to intersubjective meaning making? Perhaps there's a problem in attempting to apply that criterion in context in which it may not have the kind of purchase then in settings where you're working and the context in which Lipski was doing his work.

[Mike Rowe]

Absolutely. And I think that's where the attention on the focus on the streets would be what I would argue for. From that attention we would learn whether, yes, street level bureaucracy has any purchase in that context. I do think it made sense in those examples in South America that I've read about. It's less clear elsewhere. There's some talk of kind of community level bureaucracy. Maybe that makes more sense in some contexts where in a sense you've got a role almost interpreting or mediating between central government and a local community. So to translate practice into a language that the center can understand. That was quite an interesting idea. I used street level bureaucracy because it made sense to me as a practitioner and subsequently as a researcher. But it helped me make sense of that frontline. And if that doesn't make sense in the front line in different contexts, then that's something important to learn as well.

[Nick Cheeseman]

All right. You at some point said if and when there's a second edition. So you already have your mind on that. But in the meantime you were you working on other books? Do you have another project under, where it sounds like the work on the police culture is still taking up a lot of your time and interest? Is that what you're continuing to work on or is there other things coming down the pipeline?

[Mike Rowe]

Yeah, the police culture stuff is. Is there? I think I'm trying to get away from the police, but I'm finding it difficult. I'm trying to remember, remind myself that I'm not a criminologist. The work on analyzing the, the data that's coming from traffic stops should be interesting. So I'm collaborating with colleagues who are more into their quantitative criminology, but I'm then also kind of looking around for something and other street level bureaucrats to remind myself that I'm not a criminologist. As I say, six years of data. There's plenty to write about still.

[Nick Cheeseman]

So I did ask you before you came on if there's anything that you're reading these days that's inspired you that you would like to recommend to listeners. So before we conclude, what do you have for us?

[Mike Rowe]

Well, I've just, just finished In Praise of Floods, James Scott, and I know you'll appreciate that one. And just because I, I've read pretty much everything I think that James Scott's written. And so that was, it was nice to pick up. Not because it informs any research Particularly, but it just takes his ideas and put, you know, kind of stretches them a bit outside the kind of normal, his normal terrain. And you mentioned higher education and the stage of play. I've been rereading a lot of campus fiction, partly for amusement, but partly because some of the themes that we seem to be encountering these days kind of appear there quite prominently. And through that came across some other references to literature. So there's just a book called Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, which is a kind of office politics fiction. And it's just lots of little scenes that don't string together as a storyline as such to start with. But then the storyline is beginning to emerge, which I find quite interesting as a style of writing. And I could imagine, I'm thinking, you know, if and when I come to retirement and write my campus fiction, that kind of style might be more, you know, astronomers like to think they can write, but I'm not sure I've got a novel in them.

[Nick Cheeseman]

Well, that's advanced warning for everyone that you're, that you're working with right now.

[Mike Rowe]

That, that's, that's advance warning to my colleague because they'll appear in it.

[Nick Cheeseman]

That's at least in the back of your mind. Good, we'll see that we get those links onto the website. Look, thank you very much, Mike Rowe, for joining me today to discuss your researching street level bureaucracy.

[Mike Rowe]

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

[Nick Cheeseman]

Listeners, if this episode has held your attention, then the good news is that I've already spoken to most of the authors of the other books in their Outledge series on interpretive methods, beginning with the series editors, Dvorah Janow and Peregrine Shwarcze, all the way back in 2019. To see all of those episodes a date to listen to them, go to the website, that's newbooks network.com and click on the special series tab in the menu to find this series.