Cops, teachers, and counselors, stories from the front lines of public service – 2nd edition, new and expanded. By Steven Maynard‐Moody , Michael Musheno , The University of Michigan Press. 2022. pp. 280. Paperback (U$29,95) and hardcover (U$80)

• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Author: Gabriela Lotta,Roberto Pires
• Date: 01 March 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13605

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13605

Cops, teachers, and

counselors, stories from the

front lines of public

service –2nd edition,

new and expanded

By Steven Maynard-Moody, Michael

Musheno, The University of Michigan

Press. 2022. pp. 280. Paperback

(U$29,95) and hardcover (U$80)

Gabriela Lotta

1

| Roberto Pires

2

1

Department of Public Administration at Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV),

Fundaç˜

ao Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2

Department of status, institutions, and democracy Studio at the Institute for

Applied Economic Research (IPEA), Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA),

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Correspondence

Gabriela Lotta, Department of Public Administration at Getulio Vargas Foundation

(FGV), Fundaç˜

ao Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Email: gabriela.lotta@fgv.br

Major recent events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, and

a marked increase in other persistent situations, such as

police violence and responses to natural disasters, have

certainly made frontline work and workers prominent in

the global public consciousness (Gofen & Lotta, 2021;

Musheno et al., 2021). By observing encounters between

citizens and the state, scholars go beyond initial accounts

of heroism and villainism in search for the logics that

underly government operations and the actual measures

set up to put public policies and services into practice

(Brodkin, 2021). Moreover, frontline inquiry has become

an important strategy for researching the repercussions

to those affected by public policies. Since Lipsky’s seminal

book, Street-Level Bureaucracy (1980) (Lipsky 1980/2010),

the analysis of frontline work and public service encoun-

ters has advanced considerably, with scholarly attention

to the issue growing steadily over time. Nearly two

decades ago (2003), Maynard-Moody and Musheno’s

Cops, Teachers, and Counselors (CTC) was a landmark text

for studies on public policy implementation. Now,

scholars in public administration, political science, and

sociology interested in understanding what actually hap-

pens on the ground floor of government can enjoy a new

and expanded edition of CTC (2022), which incorporates

the latest conceptual developments.

CTC’s first edition (Maynard-Moody and Musheno,

2003) asked the fundamental question: How do frontline

workers make sense of their world and account for what

they do? The research involved the collection and inter-

pretation of more than 100 stories about levels of fairness

in the provision of government services as told by street

cops, public school teachers, and vocational rehabilitation

counselors. The findings indicated that these workers

were strongly influenced by face-to-face interactions.

They made judgments about the identity, character, and

conduct of people and used law-related claims to enforce

sociocultural beliefs. Up until then, our understanding of

the frontline worker’s rationale and reasoning process

was still dominated by a narrow focus on how formal

rules were adapted as workers coped with adverse condi-

tions. CTC was innovative by calling attention to the fact

that frontline workers do not solely respond to rules, but

are deeply affected by the people they are supposed to

serve on a day-to-day basis. CTC expanded the ways we

could interpret frontline action and its implications by

introducing an alternative narrative to account for sense-

making by agents charged with policy implementation. It

reinforced existing interpretations around a “state agent

narrative,”according to which frontline workers related

primarily to rules (rule compliance) and used their discre-

tion to strive for self-preservation when dealing with

adverse situations. CTC also added a second narrative

about the “citizen agent”who relates primarily to social

status and shared values when making judgments about

clients’identities, characteristics, and behaviors in face-to-

face interactions (cultural compliance).

When discussing how frontline workers make sense of

what they do, the authors reinforced a sociological per-

spective in debates about frontline policy implementa-

tion. The book encouraged and inspired a growing group

of scholars who sought to understand frontline workers

as socially situated agents that recognize themselves as

belonging to social and professional groups and who use

their agency based on judgments about the situations

and people they encounter. In these situations, rules tend

to be adjusted by the judgments that frontline workers

make about people in the first place, rather than the

other way around. Or, as the authors argue, frontline

workers do not play by the rules, but rather play the rules.

Now, in 2022, the authors revisited the first edition of

the book, reinterpreting the original stories and launching

a fresh version that includes a new preface, two addi-

tional chapters, and an new afterword. The revised edi-

tion of CTC draws from important new conceptual

developments in the field as well as reflections made by

the authors during the last twenty years. In this time, both

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