How Do Frontline Civil Servants Engage the Public? Practices, Embedded Agency, and Bricolage

• Author: Merlijn van Hulst,Wieke Blijleven
• DOI: 10.1177/0275074020983805
• Date: 01 May 2021
• Published date: 01 May 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074020983805

American Review of Public Administration

2021, Vol. 51(4) 278 –292

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0275074020983805

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Article

Introduction

The environment of Western governments has substantively

changed over the past decades (Dickinson et al., 2019; Van

der Wal, 2017). In this changed environment, governments

are expected to engage citizens and other stakeholders more

than ever in the development and implementation of projects

and policies, and to respond to local communities’ initiatives,

complaints, and needs. Even if “concern about [such] public

engagement has waxed and waned,” in the Western world,

we can see “a revival, a resurgence of interest among schol-

ars, public managers, elected officials, civic reformers, and

others” (Nabatchi & Blomgren Amsler, 2014, p. 63S).

Indeed, with the “changing boundary between state and civil

society” (Bevir et al., 2003, p. 13), there is a need for govern-

ment to become more “outward-oriented” (Kruyen & Van

Genugten, 2020) and responsive (Lowndes et al., 2006).

From recent public administration literature, we learn that

civil servants can play an important role in public engage-

ment processes (Bartels, 2017; Eckerd & Heidelberg, 2019;

Laws & Forester, 2015) and that they have been expected to

adopt new roles and skills to effectively work with the public

(Dickinson et al., 2019). This article seeks to build upon and

extend the literature by examining the following research

question:

How do frontline civil servants work with and for the

public in the context of present-day public engagement?

What do we know already? Over the last 20 years, a

group of public administration scholars has become more

interested in particular “entrepreneurial” ways of working

that frontline workers increasingly use in their more net-

work-driven work environments (e.g., Arnold, 2015;

Durose, 2011; Johansson, 2012; Nederhand et al., 2018; van

Meerkerk & Edelenbos, 2018; Vinzant & Crothers, 1996;

Williams, 2002). In addition, research in the street-level

bureaucracy literature suggests shifts in the relationship

between frontline workers and citizens. We learn that front-

line workers have increasingly added to their role as “state-

agents” to that of “citizen-agents,” agents who start from

their clients’ needs (Maynard-Moody & Musheno, 2003;

Tummers et al., 2015).

983805ARPXXX10.1177/0275074020983805The American Review of Public AdministrationBlijleven and van Hulst

research-article2021

1Department of Public Law & Governance, Tilburg University,

The Netherlands

Corresponding Author:

Merlijn van Hulst, Tilburg Law School, Department of Public Law &

Governance, Tilburg University, Prof. Cobbenhagenlaan 221, Tilburg, 5000

LE, The Netherlands.

Email: m.j.vanhulst@uvt.nl

How Do Frontline Civil Servants

Engage the Public? Practices,

Embedded Agency, and Bricolage

Wieke Blijleven1 and Merlijn van Hulst1

Abstract

Civil servants in local government are increasingly expected to engage and collaborate with citizens and stakeholders. This

article takes a practice approach to develop a generic picture of everyday work at the front lines of public engagement,

highlighting the relational and improvisational aspects of that work that, to date, have remained understudied. Our data

and analyses build on the existing literature and contribute to it by describing five specific practices of civil servants. Based

on our in-depth interviews with 45 frontline civil servants in the Netherlands, we found that civil servants try to bring

together a range of different interests, values, perspectives, and resources by understanding the situation, building rapport and

trust, developing shared resolutions, aligning processes “outside” and “inside” city hall, and supporting practically. Furthermore, we

substantiate the idea that the practices of frontline workers entail embedded agency, which we specifically label as bricolage.

We demonstrate how agency is constrained and enabled by the local bureaucracy and its policies, and that civil servants seek

alignment possibilities and resolutions.

Keywords

citizen engagement, frontline work, public encounters, civil servants, embedded agency, bricolage