Abstract
Research on environmental governance would benefit from greater attention to the practices, agency and subjectivities of the frontline civil servants who implement and shape environmental policies and interventions on the ground. These actors conduct the everyday work of bringing global agreements and state policies into being. In doing so, they influence how citizens experience the state and environmental governance. In this review paper, we provide a brief overview of existing literature on ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (SLBs). We then suggest three key research areas through which insights into the role of SLBs in environmental governance could be further developed, including (i) the nature of SLBs agency and practice as they enact global and national environmental agendas, (ii) the subjectivities of SLBs and how they affect environmental governance and (iii) the outcomes of the activities of SLBs on state-citizen relations. This research agenda has explanatory power in understanding existing and desired environmental governance.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 100108 |
Journal | Earth System Governance |
Volume | 9 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Sept 2021 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Street-level bureaucrats
- Environmental governance
- Fontline work
- Civil servants
- Agency
- Practice