Introduction

This chapter is a reflection on the studies that we have conducted in recent years concerning the relationship between policy governance and front-line governance.1 Attention to front-line governance is consistent with the re-evaluation of the operational side of public governance that began in the Netherlands and other Western countries in 2000 (Tops 2003; Hill and Hupe 2002). This process of re-evaluation did not come out of the blue; it was a reaction to a crisis in which public administration had landed. In the Netherlands, the name of Pim Fortuyn is associated with this crisis (Cuperus 2003; Pels 2004; Couwenberg 2004; Wansink 2005). His criticism of the incumbent political elite was appealing to many. According to Fortuyn's line of reasoning, these elites had squandered the quality of public administration by neglecting the position and interests of operational professionals (e.g. officers, teachers, nurses). Fortuyn's star rose quickly on the political scene in the Netherlands. His chances for a national breakthrough were excellent, but he was assassinated on 6 May 2002, shortly before the national elections. Nonetheless, his party experienced a landslide victory in the elections.

Fortuyn's rise reflected a loss of legitimacy and credibility on the part of the administrative practices that were dominant at that time. It caused an astounded political and administrative elite to take stock of their functioning and to re-discover the meaning of policy implementation. Politics and administration had dug themselves into abstract policies and large-scale plans, losing sight of the concrete realities of citizens in the process, according to one widely shared analysis. Implementation was back on the political agenda.

Front-line governance is primarily another way of looking at implementation. It is an approach that can be placed within an important and well-known stream in the public administration implementation literature. This stream, which is sometimes known as the bottom-up approach (see Sabatier 1986), was founded by Lipsky, whose famous study of street-level bureaucrats (1980) led to a relatively somber and critical approach to the autonomy and discretionary space of front-line workers. These workers inevitably set their own objectives instead of simply following the official political objectives, thus undermining the democratic decision-making process. Our study is set within a contrasting context, in which the quality and efforts of front-line workers are seen as a condition for reinforcing or ‘re-claiming’ political legitimacy.