On Frontline Workers as Bureau-Political Actors: The Case of Civil–Military Crisis Management

Abstract

We focus attention on the public policy-making influence of frontline bureaucrats. They are increasingly operating in interorganizational partnerships and networks in which they develop collaborative relations with frontline workers of other public organizations. We theorize that their embeddedness in local interorganizational environments induces and enables them to defy locally inappropriate policies and to pursue locally relevant policies as policy entrepreneurs simultaneously. The case study of policy-making in Dutch civil–military crisis management demonstrates that this “frontline bureaucratic politics” bears considerably on policy outcomes. We conclude that viewing frontline workers as bureau-political actors enhances our understanding of public policy-making in interorganizational arrangements.