Governing Street-Level Bureaucracies

This book examines how caseworkers are governed in today's street-level bureaucracies. It redefines our understanding of public sector governance by highlighting the subtle, informal, and everyday forms of organizational governance that shape caseworkers' subjectivities beyond formal policies and professional identities.

Kerstin Jacobsson is a Professor of sociology at the Department of Sociology and Work Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has published extensively on discourse and governance in the field of social and labour market policy, as well as on street-level bureaucracy. Håkan Johansson is a Professor of social work at the School of Social Work at Lund University, Sweden. He has published extensively on topics related to comparative social policy and activation reforms and their implementation in Nordic welfare states.

1. Introduction: Governing Street-Level Bureaucracies 2. Normative Governance in Street-Level Bureaucracies 3. The Organizational Context 4. Governance by Discourse 5. Governance by Emotion 6. Governance by Peers 7. Governance by Numbers, Colours, and Symbols 8. Caseworker Subjectivities and Responses to Governance 9. Conclusion