CfP SISP Conference | Panel 9.6 ‘The street-level burocracy (SLB) lens. Discretion and coping-mechanisms for public services provision in multilevel settings

Call to submit an abstract for the SISP Conference, Genova 14-16 September 2023 within the Panel 9.6 ‘The street-level burocracy (SLB) lens. Discretion and coping-mechanisms for public services provision in multilevel settings’ (Section 9 – Regional Studies and Local Policies).

Submission deadline: 31 May 2023

Please find here the SISP Conference website

Please find here the Call for papers

 

Panel description:

The Street-Level Bureaucracy (SLB) theoretical framework, introduced by Lipsky (1980) more than 40 years ago, has had considerable recognition from the scientific community, especially in the United States and in the UK. However, contributions in the field have also considerably increased in the EU countries and in particular in northern Europe, especially in the Netherlands (Barberis, Paraciani, Saruis 2019). In contrast, the adoption of the SLB theory in the Southern and Eastern EU countries is still scarce. Only in recent times the interest in the topic is rising in these contexts, such as in Greece (Exadaktylos et al. 2021; Witcher 2021), Italy (Barberis, Paraciani and Saruis 2019; Leonardi and Stefani 202; Dallara and Lacchei 2021; Raspanti and Saruis 2021) and Poland (Gajewska, K.2017; Klaus and Szulecka 2021).

Thus, this panel aims at gathering scholars that study public service delivery with the lens of the SLB theory in Europe. The Session’s contribution to the SLB theory is threefold.
First, we want to understand SLB’s effectiveness in countries with very different characteristics from those in which SLB theory was born and developed. Indeed, context plays a crucial role, since various institutional and organisational settings (Jewell 2007) and different conceptions about citizenship, solidarity, and trust clearly affect service implementation (Rice 2017; Møller and Stensöta 2019).

Secondly, our goal is to set the scene for SLB theory in Europe developing new analytical tools relevant for the whole discipline. In the awareness that the state of knowledge on SLB is characterised by multiple diversity in terms of conceptualisations, research designs, epistemological positions and methods (Hupe, Hill and Buffet 2019), we would like to bring researchers working on SLB in Europe together with respect to their shared interest in studying the subject.

Finally, we are interested in analyzing how SLB uses discretion and other mechanisms in service delivery to cope with complex implementation processes, with what impacts on users and on multilevel settings.
The panel welcome papers that reflect on how discretion is used, street-level bureaucrats’ work context characteristics, the relationships between frontline workers and clients, as well as the impact of Street-level organizations in local policy implementation. Works comparing different local contexts, tasks, professionals or organisations are extremely welcomed.

Panel Chairs: Matteo Bassoli, Cristina Dallara, Giorgia Nesti

 

Posted in Call for papers.