A Relational Grounding for (Urban) Governance: Street‐Level Practices of Responsive Improvisation and Practical Change

• Author: Koen P. R. Bartels
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12762
• Published date: 01 May 2017
• Date: 01 May 2017

466 Public Administration Review • May | June 2017

Koen P. R. Bartels is a lecturer in

management studies at Bangor University

(Wales), United Kingdom, where he teaches

public administration and qualitative

research. His research interests are social

innovation, urban governance, participatory

democracy, communication, practice

theory, and interpretive policy analysis.

He is author of

Communicative Capacity:

Public Encounters in Participatory Theory

and Practice

(The Policy Press, 2015) and

articles published in journals including

Public Administration Review

,

Public

Administration

, and

International Journal of

Urban and Regional Research

.

E-mail: k.bartels@bangor.ac.uk

David Laws and John Forester , Conf‌l ict, Improvisation,

Governance: Street Level Practices for Urban

Democracy ( New York : Routledge , 2015 ). 371 pp.

$144.00 (hardback), ISBN: 9781138025684 .

Reversing the tide and finally starting to build

a relationship between residents and the local

government seems more than a stretch, given the

escalating conflict and lack of understanding

that prevailed as Tonie started his work. Yet this

is what he managed to do. His efforts help us

see how conflict can provide a starting point for

development. (139)

I t seems wholly appropriate to start this review of

Conflict, Improvisation, Governance . Street Level

Practices for Urban Democracy with practice.

The story above not only provides a window to the

main message and contribution of the book, it also

illustrates the astute practice-based approach through

which David Laws and John Forester illuminate

the day-to-day work involved in enacting urban

democracy. The book presents 13 profiles of “street

level democrats”—“exemplary” and “innovative” (6)

practitioners who creatively deal with the tensions and

conflicts innervating the everyday practice of urban

governance and whose responsive improvisations and

practical changes make or break its democratization.

Situated in four major cities in the Netherlands, Laws

and Forester set out to “theorize concretely through

accounts of day-to-day work” (346) in order to reveal

the real difficulties and opportunities of navigating

complex urban affairs and offer a fresh perspective

on the democratic implications of these discretionary

practices.

The 13 profiles are presented in four thematic

parts. Part I addresses what Laws and Forester see

as the fundamental challenge of urban governance:

responsively and creatively improvising in complex

political and social realities. Here we meet people like

Ellen Hiep, whose efforts to develop a shared vision

for the renovation of a multifarious neighborhood

transform the trained incapacity of the housing

association in question to learn about the actual

problems and desires of residents. In Part II,

“Learning to change communities,” Tonie Boxman

(who features in the story above) narrates how

his careful and authentic listening helped to work

through a conflict about a community center. Part III

confronts the thorny challenges of cultural and ethnic

diversity and immigration. Here, Halim el Madkouri

teaches us about how becoming aware of how we

relate to and learn about others can help prevent local

tensions to turn into a cycle of mutual fear, escalation,

and polarization. Part IV, finally, encourages us to

rethink administration in, for example, multi-agency

collaboration. The story of Erik Gerritsen shows

that encouraging conflict can break patterns of

miscommunication and mutual blame and rekindle

passion, commitment, and joint problem solving.

These are just some brief examples of the rich

grounded profiles through which Laws and Forester

are “illustrating through exemplars rather than

making a distanced and abstract argument” (346)

about conflict, improvisation, and democratization in

urban governance. They take a practice approach, an

increasingly popular way to refocus our field on the

seemingly mundane everyday activities through which

administrative actors perform their jobs in interaction

with the people, rules, materials, institutions, and

bodily dispositions at hand (see e.g., Cook and

Wagenaar 2012 ; Laws and Hajer 2006 ; Wagenaar

2004 ). By taking a practice approach, they aim to

resist summary and confusing conceptual language

and, instead, provide a concrete sense of the actual

work involved and the real life challenges, messiness,

emotions, interactions, and unexpected turns that

present themselves as people engage with complex

situations. Throughout the book, they avoid extensive

theoretical discussion as they prioritize unpacking and

grounded theorizing of the practices of their street-

level democrats over dense literature review. But while

their initial embedding in literature on street-level

bureaucracy, conflict resolution, and participatory

Danny L. Balfour , Editor

Koen P. R. Bartels

Bangor University, United Kingdom

A Relational Grounding for (Urban) Governance:

Street-Level Practices of Responsive Improvisation

and Practical Change

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 3, pp. 466–469. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12762.